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| Computers and linguistic change | | |
|  Anndaluz | Apr 3, 2007 7:25pm | I've just heard that Vista doesn't support Arabic script to the same degree as XP. Someone who worked in the industry told me that you can change your keyboard and alter a few settings and then type in Arabic script if you are using XP but that this isn't possible in Vista. If true this is bad news for speakers of Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Kurdish and lots of other languages, as the Arabic script is the worlds second most used alphabet.
What part does the internet play in the developement of Modern Standard Arabic? In the preservation and developement of the regional dialects? What will be the socioeconomic effects of making communication between users of the Roman script and the Arabic script more difficult?
What effect has the internet had on language in societies where people's first language has a writing system very different to Roman charecters - Chinese and Japanese come to mind.
Could computing technology be used to suppress languages and their speakers? Is this already happening? |
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|  blotsm | Apr 6, 2007 9:53am | | This sounds like a lofty conspiracy theory. |
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Sponsor |  CastorQuinn | Apr 6, 2007 6:02pm | I think there are two issues here: tech specs, and globalisation.
Globalisation does push a lot of the world's cultures towards "interoperability" - and the internet is just one medium of globalisation. The dominance of the western alphabet on the internet isn't so much a deliberate attempt to supress non-western cultures; it's just one of the negative effects of globalisation.
That said, globalisation has a much more noticible impact on minority cultures than it does on major world cultures like Chinese, Arabic, etc. There are enough Chinese speakers on the internet to create a block of Chinese sites, programs, and interactions that is significant. Similarly Japanese, Russian, French, German, and Arabic. In fact French and German is much more under siege than Arabic, because most European countries are already used to having to work in English, and so a Frenchman is far more likely to use English websites, communicate in English and offer English variants of their own sites than, say, a Russian or an Arabic speaker.
This sort of culture-neutralisation is definitely an issue, and something that needs to be considered and addressed. But it's not a deliberate supression of non-western cultures. It's just the perfectly normal effects of cultural contact that have been going on since year dot, now accelerated by globalisation.
As for the tech: it is true that Vista doesn't support Arabic as well as XP. However XP originally didn't support Arabic very well either: five years of patches and updates provided the hard core Arabic support. Windows developed what are called LIPs, Language Interface Packs. These are exactly what they sound like: packages of instructions that sit between the user and the computer to allow non-western script support. XP had limited interface support in it's initial release; LIPs were released progressively as they were designed. The first update of an XP LIP to Vista has been completed (for Hindi) so it's just a matter of waiting for each LIP to be updated and released. You can bet that Arabic script will be right up there.
That said, it is in fact possible to use Arabic script in Windows, but only in certain programs. It does work in Office. There are issues using Arabic script in the actual operating system itself, such as for file names and things like that. You can use it in Notepad and WordPad, more or less. You can sort of use it in Internet Explorer, but not very well.
There is also no Arabic version of Hoolie, the text-to-speech component of Vista. Anyone who knows much about Arabic script will immediately know why TTS is a much more daunting prospect for Semitic languages than it is for other languages.
Chinese, Russian and other scripts have similar problems with the Vista interface, although there is a localised version of Vista for Chinese and Japanese markets, complete with Hoolie TTS engines.
So basically, there are issues, as fundamentally different scripts don't always operate the same way, and Windows does design primarily in English script. However there's no conspiracy or deliberate attempt to supress cultures. Arabic speakers are better off than Australian English speakers in one instance: trying to get Windows to use Australian English spellings or pronunciations is almost impossible. |
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| | Anndaluz | Apr 15, 2007 4:10pm | | Re. Castor Quinn post. Thank you very much for your informative reply. |
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| Computers and linguistic change | | |
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