- From: John Clews <Webbing@sesame.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 23:47:56 GMT
- To: everson@evertype.com
- Cc: alona@c2i.net, Peter_Constable@sil.org, unicode@unicode.org, unicore@unicode.org, ietf-languages@eikenes.alvestrand.no, iso639@dkuug.dk, langtag@unicode.org, www-international@w3.org, locales@yahoogroups.com, i18n-prog@yahoogroups.com, Trond.Trosterud@hum.uit.no, havard@hjulstad.com, Tagging@sesame.demon.co.uk, Webbing@sesame.demon.co.uk
In message <200202171557.QAA10825@dkuug.dk> Michael Everson writes: > John this has been argued a thousand times. The preferred form of the > word, as found on page 1644 of the New Oxford Dictionary of English > (2001) is "Sami", with no accent. Well, the New Oxford Dictionary of English may represent use in the UK in times past, but it does not necessarily represent English use worldwide, or even an international source. When it boils down to it it's a proprietary usage. Well used, I grant you, but it remains proprietary, and it is not explicitly accepted as a standard (UK or wider) in the same way that other reference sources (e.g. Duden in German speaking countries) is. "Saami" certainly appears in some American general usage dictionaries and encyclopedias. > "Saami" does not appear in this dictionary, which remains Oxford University Press's problem, rather than the rest of the world's problem. Generally - and certainly with the start of the Oxord Dictionary series of publications - they always prided themselves on recording various usages. > and in any case should be avoided because people may > hypercorrect it to Såmi, confusing it with equivalences like Ålborg > and Aalborg. The councils for Saami speakers in Norway, Sweden and Finland have recommended the use of the term "Saami" and they, more than anybody, are all used to needing to deal with specific uses of the string "aa" in words. If the Saami and non-Saami speakers in Norway, Sweden and Finland can cope with it, and indeed recommend it, I don't see why anybody should propose over their heads that they have to think that what is done by a UK publisher, just because we on standards committees think we know better, particularly when the term that they recommend is already in widespread use in various English language publications worldwide, in both linguistic and more general publications. Best regards John Clews -- John Clews, Keytempo Limited (Information Management), 8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG Email: Scripts@sesame.demon.co.uk tel: +44 1423 888 432; Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization; Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes
Received on Monday, 18 February 2002 03:02:22 UTC