Re: Article on Finno-Ugric in the Economist


Ar an naoú lá is fiche de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Jukka K. Korpela:

> > I said “The UK took up [this] convention three decades ago”
>
> You quoted that the Prime Minister said that a convention will be applied
> "in papers concerning Government statistics". As I already pointed out, that
> covers but a minuscule part of the use of English in the UK.

And I’ve already cited a recent, British, dictionary that listed the billion
as ten to the twelfth convention as the second meaning of the word, and
described it as dated and British. But, your original criticism was of my
“The UK took up [this] convention three decades ago” sentence and I’ve
demonstrated that as exact.

> > I wrote about two conventions in two separate paragraphs;
>
> Once again, obscure references to quoted text using vague pronouns made
> the message unnecessarily confused.

Ah, so you’d prefer I be direct about what I perceive as your reading
comprehension difficulties, instead of accepting an apology. Right; I think
you had trouble understanding what I wrote, and what I wrote was plenty
clear enough.

> > > > Despite this, the U.S. meaning is still rare outside journalism and
> > > > finance, [...]
> > > > So even your source says that the UK adopted no such convention.
> > It doesn’t say any such thing.
>
> It clearly says that the UK has not adopted the convention,

Nope. A legitimate meaning for “the UK” is its government.

> [...] despite government efforts for a fairly long time. The only thing
> that the government policy has achieved is uncertainty and obscurity so
> that it is now surely best to avoid the word "billion" completely.

The uncertainty and obscurity existed before the government policy, and in
the long term, it’s eliminating it. Find an English twenty-year-old and ask
them what “billion” means to them. There won’t be any ambiguity.

> > > > > Sorry, but anyone who writes that an em dash has the width of "m"
> > > > > cannot be taken seriously in matters of dash usage.
> > > >
> > > > Or maybe he’s been exposed to different publishers ...
> > >
> > > Irrelevant. Either you know what you are writing about, or you don't.
> > And it seems that on this, you don’t.
>
> Apparently you, too, refuse to make an actual experiment with the em dash
> character in different fonts, comparing its width with the width of
> "m". Such stubbornness would be worth a more noble cause.

Your lack of knowledge of what you’re writing about is demonstrated by the
limited relation between what you say on the treatment of punctuation in
foreign-language quotations and reality, not especially by the length of the
em dash.

> > > What are you asking about? The quotation marks around a quotation
> > > belong to the language of the quoting document,
> >
> > I regard them as a border between the two, and I don’t see a
> > reason--beyond typographic convenience--to prefer the language of the
> > first document for them.
>
> It's a matter of orthography, not typography. Quotation marks are part of a
> language, not in some no man's land between languages.

And which language they’re part of is open to question; indeed, much of the
time for quotations from a foreign language, they’re not used at all, the
typeface is just changed to italic.

> > Note also that ten years ago, citations in US books from English-language
> > sources that didn’t use US spelling conventions would be respelled without
> > a second thought, and vice versa. This is changing with more exposure to
> > typeset matter from the other tradition.
>
> Or perhaps due to the fact that people in the US are becoming better aware
> of the existence of language forms other than US English. But quoting
> British English in a text in US English can hardly be characterized as a
> _foreign-language_ quotation.

It’s a language, and it’s foreign; why not?

> [...]
> > If it’s conformant to house style, and there’s no more universally
> > accepted convention, then it can’t be ‘wrong.’
>
> Of course it can. House styles can be wrong, as any style. For example,
> if a house style requires the omission of diacritic marks from foreign
> names especially in languages where they are distinctive and important,
> then the style is just wrong. Any norm can be considered in the light of
> a more fundamental norm, up to the level of ultimate values such as
> respect for other people, languages, and cultures.

And it can and should be considered in the light of the knowledge of other
people, languages and cultures of both the writer and the copy-editor. Which
knowledge is necessarily limited; how much confidence can a copy-editor with
no command of Japanese have of the accuracy and orthographic correctness of
a Japanese quotation in Kanji and Kana?

> > Well, sufficent sources would ideally prove that your stated norm for
> > civilised language isn’t observed in actuality,
>
> First, that would not prove it. Most people break the norm that forbids
> stealing, at least in small scale and there is no risk of getting caught;
> this does not make the norm "do not steal" wrong.

Right, so you have no interest in the evidence? Then arguing with you is, on
the face of it, a waste of time.

> Second, no sources have been cited to show that the norm is not observed in
> actuality. I am sure that such sources exist, too, but it's really not my
> task to find them, even though my opponents keep finding sources that
> support _my_ view.

I cited two sources; you ignored them.

--
I AM IN JAIL AND ALLOWED SEND ONLY ONE CABLE SINCE WAS ARRESTED WHILE
MEASURING FIFTEEN FOOT WALL OUTSIDE PALACE AND HAVE JUST FINISHED COUNTING
THIRTY EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDERED TWENTY TWO NAMES WHOS WHO IN MIDEAST.
.

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