I think that when Paul wrote "On the other hand, my guess is that the ability to read Arabic is as common in, say Korea, as it is in the U.S.", he was being ironic. Only a small percentage of people in the USA can read Arabic, and the percentage of people in Korea who can read Arabic is likely to be even smaller. So, he meant the same thing as you did when you wrote "If I leave my home where I use Cyrillic script and go to "Egypt " to see the "Pyramids" how will I manage when my only scripts are Cyrillic and Roman with a bit of effort?'.
-------Original Email------- Subject :Re: [OSM-talk] Languages, OSM, scripts and all that. >From :mailto:[email protected] Date :Fri Aug 06 15:51:47 America/Chicago 2010 On Sat, 7 Aug 2010, Paul Houle wrote: > Cultural imperialist or not, my suspicion that that the roman > alphabet is (at least somewhat) understood by educated people who use > non-roman alphabets regularly (this is definitely the case in the CJK > area.) On the other hand, my guess is that the ability to read Arabic > is as common in, say Korea, as it is in the U.S. Step one pace to the side and consider again If I read in Cyrillic script normally I will have been taught some Roman script at school. If I leave my home where I use Cyrillic script and go to "Egypt " to see the "Pyramids" how will I manage when my only scripts are Cyrillic and Roman with a bit of effort? _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- John F. Eldredge -- [email protected] "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
