Re: Wikipedia logo katakana error.

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:06:00 GMT, mirror wrote:

I took another look at it. It could be ワィ but I'm not convinced it is.
Because it's on the curvature of the globe the letters are distorted and
one cannot tell for certain. The angles between the first character and
the second character would suggest that the characters are クィ and not ワィ.
I'd considered that perhaps the curvature was misleading me, but the
curvature does not distort the other characters in a way that would suggest
the angle between the Japanese characters was caused by curvature and not
by the characters themselves. At any rate, the characters definitely are
not ウィ which is the start of the transliteration of Wikipedia (ウィキペディア).

The New York Times reports two of the characters are wrong...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/technology/25wikipedia.html
Japanese and Devanagari.

This makes a lot of sense. Though I used to have a passing conversational
ability in Hindi 33 years ago, I never learned any of the writing systems
including Devanagari. I do know, however, that the Indic scripts are
complex scripts from the standpoint of computer support and that you have
to have the right software to merge the supporting shapes and diacritics
into the correct result. So, it's understandable that Mr. Friedland, even
with degrees in linguistics and computer science, was the victim of a
glitch. He's also acknowledged that misrepresenting the Japanese character
was a careless mistake on his part.

I feel a little vindicated. When I first looked at the low resolution
screen shot you referenced in your original post, I thought the characters
were ウィ. This is what they were intended to have been even though a high
resolution version of the puzzle globe clearly revealed they were not.

Phil Yff
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Wikipedia logo katakana error.
    ... The angles between the first character and ... I'd considered that perhaps the curvature was misleading me, ... curvature does not distort the other characters in a way that would suggest ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Wikipedia logo katakana error.
    ... If you're referring to the characters on the globe, ... Phil Yff ... the ending letters of their alphabets. ... To see all the letters and characters, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Wikipedia logo katakana error.
    ... If you're referring to the characters on the globe, ... Phil Yff ... To see all the letters and characters, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Senator Kennedys first name
    ... give the readers or audience a false idea of historical events and the ... imaginary dialogues in the mouths of real characters. ... the geography of Oxford was correctly represented. ... by authors who set their books in places I know well but distort the ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Senator Kennedys first name
    ... imaginary dialogues in the mouths of real characters. ... the geography of Oxford was correctly represented. ... by authors who set their books in places I know well but distort the ... mind distorted geography. ...
    (alt.usage.english)