languages et al.

[Ed Montgomery]

Fascinating, as Spock would say...:-)

I taught for two years in a small town called Haenam,
in South Korea, and two years in Japan on Jet program
(currently just wandering around Japan :-)), and
likewise studied a few languages in university, etc.,
having always been fascinated by them. (Kanji holds a
particular fascination for me, for some unknown
reason.)  I can communicate well enough, I suppose in
three languages, (but of course, language learning is
a lifelong process, eh? (eh=famous Canadian emphatic
particle :-))

The really scary people are like James Platt (who,
unfortunately is no longer with us), on the OED team,
who was famously quoted as saying:

consulted "linguistic advisers," such as James Platt
"who knew scores of languages and once famously
declared that the first twelve tongues were always the
most difficult, but having mastered them, the
following hundred should not pose too much of a
problem."

Yikes! :-)  Quoted from here, by the way, for those
interested:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0198607024/ref=sib_dp_pt/105-9251581-0000449#reader-link

Anyways, I have placed at the following link, a first
attempt at a first draft (?!!), a French translation
of a first draft of an English manual of the XO.  I'd
appreciate corrections, etc., as well as an image of
the XO without the English phrases on it. (Yes, I
could use the gimp and wipe out and add the French,
etc. but it would be easier, more elegant and save
time if I could just have the original photo.)  Also,
I have no idea what is going on with page 10. 
Suggestions, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

http://languageknowledge.googlepages.com/xodocv2-fr5.pdf

Ed, you and I are rather similar in our language and
keyboard usage. I
have studied several languages, and have lived in
Korea (Peace Corps)
and Japan (Buddhist training). I use Ubuntu with the
Gnome keyboard
switcher and SCIM. I have worked on documents in
English, Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean together, and on single-language
documents in
French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian,
Georgian, Greek,
Yiddish, and other languages. Not that I speak all of
those languages,
but I can type and proofread to some extent, handle
character set
conversions, and a little of this and that besides.

French accents on an English International keyboard
are added with the
Compose key. So

Compose-`-e gives ?
Compose-,-c gives ?

and so on. The KDE and Gnome keyboard switchers let
the user set the
Compose key to be right ALT (AltGr), right CTL, either
Win key, the
Menu key, or Caps Lock. AltGr is the default for the
XO, but I use
Menu on Ubuntu.

I'll add a version of this to the Wiki page on
Keyboards.



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