From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: etc/HELLO: On Chinese and Cantonese Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2020 16:21:49 +0300 Message-ID: <83wnzil7ki.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87mu0e3giu.fsf@posteo.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="4657"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: matthewzmd@posteo.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org, ksqsf@mail.ustc.edu.cn To: Stefan Kangas Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Oct 22 15:22:08 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kVaXg-00015N-NQ for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:22:08 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60900 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kVaXf-00061k-QO for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 22 Oct 2020 09:22:07 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:33148) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kVaXA-0005WX-QF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 22 Oct 2020 09:21:36 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:43229) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kVaXA-00037B-DL; Thu, 22 Oct 2020 09:21:36 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=2420 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kVaX9-0007go-Fe; Thu, 22 Oct 2020 09:21:35 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Stefan Kangas on Thu, 22 Oct 2020 04:45:23 -0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:258283 Archived-At: > From: Stefan Kangas > Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2020 04:45:23 -0700 > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > > > Therefore I propose to rmeove the Cantonese line entirely, and change > > "(中文,普通话,汉语)" to "(中文)" > > The purpose of the HELLO file is to demonstrate the capabilities of > Emacs to display various scripts (and detect problems in that support). Indeed. Therefore, the requirement to be in line with how the speakers of a particular language would say Hello is secondary. > As far as I understand, written Chinese is pretty much always the same > but there are two ways to write the characters: traditional and > simplified. In contrast, the spoken languages (of which there are many) > can be completely different. > > So perhaps we should ideally just replace "Chinese" and "Cantonese" with > these two entries: > > Chinese (simplified) > Chinese (traditional) > > And then try to find some greetings that are actually different in the > two scripts. I don't think they need to be natural in spoken language, > but they would have to be technically correct in the written language. > If they are unusual, that is fine, because the purpose is mostly to show > the difference between the scripts. > > Does that proposal make sense? AFAIR, there are some non-trivial aspects here, some of them political and even ideological. There's PRC and there's ROC (a.k.a. Taiwan), and I'm not sure what will each group say about the proposed changes. So unless we have a representative group of Chinese speakers from both camps (traditional and simplified), and they agree on some change without any controversies, I'd rather not touch this ticking bomb with a 3-mile stick. The current text might not be 100% accurate, but it has been there for many years. I'd rather not risk causing a diplomatic incident by a change in Emacs.