Re: [9fans] combining characters

[Lucio De Re <lucio@iba.co.za>]

On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 06:38:22PM -0700, Roman Shaposhnick wrote:
> 
>   I don't think that wording is accurate. It gets close to the point
>   though: "dictionaries and textbooks" are exactly the only place
>   you might find these. But before I go on, I would like to ask
>   our native English speakers: do you guys consider transcriptions
>   used in the dictionaries a part of English language, a part of
>   separate language or what ?
> 
The Italian-published Italian/English dictionary I occasionally
refer to represents the pronunciation of English words using a
phonetic alphabet.  The collection of those words is, in my opinion,
_not_ the English language, although I often wish it was because
I have a dyslexic girl-friend with an even more dyslexic son, they
battle valiantly with the written language with no hope ever to win.

Which shows that if the alphabet is simple, then some other factor
is brought in to complicate things, like totally inconsistent
spelling.

Go figure!  ISO are not unique.

++L