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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: CAPITAL LETTERS
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References: <31E6545B.167EB0E7@ren.er.usgs.gov> <4sg8au$oif@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> <Duwxw7.IJ3@midway.uchicago.edu> <4t5caj$pkd@herald.concentric.net>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 18:15:07 GMT
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In article <4t5caj$pkd@herald.concentric.net>,
Chuck Coker <cjcoker@cris.com> wrote:
>> :the only laguages using capitals are european, correct? i was wondering
>>
>>If you aren't really strict on the meaning of `european', you may be right.
>>Capital letters are a feature of the writing system, not of the language, and
>>occur in the following ones: latin, greek, cyrillic, georgian, armenian.
>
>Some non-European languages use capital letters, too.  Hualapai (an
>American Indian language in Arizona, United States), for example, uses
>capital letters, but the written form of Hualapai is a fairly recent
>phenomenon.  The writing system is still evolving, having been started
>on about twenty years ago.
>
>My personal opinion (not that anyone really cares, I'm sure) is that
>capital letters are a waste.  Why is there a need for two symbols to
>represent one sound or idea?

Why indeed!  Let's immediately dispense with all redundant symbols in
all writing systems in the world.  In fact, let's dispense with all
writing systems but IPA.  Then it wouldn't be taking so dang long for
us to get Unicode off the ground.



-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
