[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Platonides wrote:
> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>> * I think it would be doable to make a tab that Egyptianizes (or any other
>> dialect) the Arabic article, that is, if we have some sort of conversion
>> memory, that is if the dialect is stable (or standard), the dialect differs
>> from a place to another, from a muhafazah to another (
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhafazah). if anyone knows the technical
>> method we could make a trial instead of the great mess of dialect
>> Wikipedias. I'm not too sure about this compromise yet.
> 
> If there're clear (algoritmic) rules for that, it can be done.
> See at http://zh.wikipedia.org/ how it can be viewed on seven! different
> variants.

The Chinese variants just use conversion tables, not an algorithm. That's
the only kind of conversion that can be done by the current software.

If literacy is the aim of this Egyptian Arabic project, then perhaps a
useful first step would be to implement a de-vocalising filter. That
should be possible with the current software. Then, with the filter on by
default, editors can add vocalic marking in the edit box without annoying
too many people. That's the approach that seems to be indicated by pages
7-12 of this paper:

http://papers.ldc.upenn.edu/EALL/ArabicLiteracy.pdf

Like zh-min-nan, we'd probably be accused of encouraging baby-talk, but if
the community was behind it then it could go ahead.

-- Tim Starling