Has anyone actually used the multilingual support in bip39? If a feature of the standard has not been(widely?) used in years, and isn't supported in any major wallet(?), it seems indicative it was a mistake to add it in the first place, since it's a footgun in the making for some poor sap who can't even read English letters when almost all documentation is written in English.
On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:13 AM, nullius via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > On 2018-01-08 at 07:35:52 +0000, 木ノ下じょな <kinoshitaj...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> This is very sad. >> >> The number one problem in Japan with BIP39 seeds is with English words. >> >> I have seen a 60 year old Japanese man writing down his phrase (because >> he kept on failing recovery), and watched him write down "aneter" for >> "amateur"... >> >> [...] >> >> If you understand English and can spell, you read a word, your brain >> processes the word, and you can spell it on your own when writing down. >> Not many Japanese people can do that, so they need to copy letter for >> letter, taking a long time, and still messing up on occasion. >> >> [...] >> >> Defining "everyone should only use English, because ASCII is easier to >> plan for" is not a good way to move forward as a currency. >> > > Well said. Thank you for telling of these experiences. Now please, let’s > put the shoe on the other foot. > > I ask everybody who wants an English-only mnemonic standard to entrust > *their own money* to their abilities to very, very carefully write this > down—then later, type it back in: > > すさん たんろ りゆう しもん ていおん しとう > とこや はやい おうさま ほくろ けちゃっふ たもつ > > (Approximate translation: “Whatever would you do if Bitcoin had been > invented by somebody named Satoshi Nakamoto?”) > > No, wait: That is only a 12-word mnemonic. We are probably talking about > a Trezor; so now, hey you there, stake the backup of your life’s savings on > your ability to handwrite *this*: > > にあう しひょう にんすう ひえる かいこう いのる ねんし はあさん ひこく > とうく きもためし そなた こなこな にさんかたんそ ろんき めいあん みわく > へこむ すひょう おやゆひ ふせく けさき めいきょく こんまけ > > Ready to bet your money on *that* as a backup phrase in your own hands? > No? Then please, stop demanding that others risk *their* money on the > inverse case. > > ---- > > If you cheat here by having studied Japanese, then remember that many > Japanese people know English and other European languages, too. Then think > of how much money would be lost by your non-Japanese-literate family and > friends—if BIP 39 had only Japanese wordlists, and your folks needed to > wrestle with the above phrases as their “mnemonics”. > > In such cases, the phrases cannot be called “mnemonics” at all. A > “mnemonic” implies aid to memory. Gibberish in a wholly alien writing > system is much worse even than transcribing pseudorandom hex strings. The > Japanese man in the quoted story, who wrote “aneter” for “amateur”, was not > dealing with a *mnemonic*: He was using the world’s most inefficient means > of making cryptic bitstrings *less* userfriendly. > > ---- > > I began this thread with a quite simple request: Is “日本語” an appropriate > string for identifying the Japanese language to Japanese users? And what > of the other strings I posted for other languages? > > I asked this as an implementer working on my own instance of the greatest > guard against vendor lock-in and stale software: Independent > implementations. — I asked, because obviously, I myself do not speak all > these different languages; and I want to implement them all. *All.* > > Some replies have been interesting in their own right; but thus far, > nobody has squarely addressed the substance of my question. > > Most worrisome is that much of the discussion has veered into criticism of > multi-language support. I opened with a question about other languages, > and I am getting replies which raise a hue and cry of “English only!” > > Though I am fluent and literate in English, I am uninterested in ever > implementing any standard of this nature which is artificially restricted > to English. I am fortunate; for as of this moment, we have a standard > called “BIP 39” which has seven non-English wordlists, and four more > pending in open pull requests (#432, #442, #493, #621). > > I request discussion of language identification strings appropriate for > use with that standard. > > (P.S., I hope that my system did not mangle anything in the foregoing. I > have seen weird copypaste behaviour mess up decomposed characters. I > thought of this after I searched for and collected some visually > fascinating phrases; so I tried to normalize these to NFC... It should go > without saying, easyseed output the Japanese perfectly!) > > > -- > null...@nym.zone | PGP ECC: 0xC2E91CD74A4C57A105F6C21B5A00591B2F307E0C > Bitcoin: bc1qcash96s5jqppzsp8hy8swkggf7f6agex98an7h | (Segwit nested: > 3NULL3ZCUXr7RDLxXeLPDMZDZYxuaYkCnG) (PGP RSA: 0x36EBB4AB699A10EE) > “‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ > No! Because I do nothing wrong, I have nothing to show.” — nullius > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > >
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