[Spellyans] dictionnaire de l'Académie française

[Michael Everson]

On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:24, Eddie Climo wrote:

> Not in the slightest; I'm perfectly aware of the distinction between fuzzy search criteria and orthography. I think that you have mistaken this forum for a high-school debating society, where the main aim is to score jejune 'points', rather than to elucidate the matter under discussion. Instead of indulging yourself in patronising condescension, you might attempt to address the substantive issue that I raised..

I would like you to review what I wrote. I did not write anything to "score points". I think accusing me of "patronizing condescension" is not really very civil, and I would ask you not to indulge in such rhetoric. I don't deserve it. 

Your argument was that it was OK to drop accents in fuzzy searching in French, and that therefore we ought to use that functional situation as a reason to consider making diacritics in KS optional. I pointed out, as did Nicholas with his example with Hungarian, that dropping accents in fuzzy searching did not affect the orthography.

I think that for Cornish, as for French and Hungarian, it is perfectly acceptable to drop accents in fuzzy searching. 

Diacritical marks are used in KS, as in French and Hungarian, for linguistic reasons (and in response to some choices in the SWF). In KS, as in French and Hungarian, diacritical marks are not optional. They are a normal part of the orthography.

We cannot force anyone to write a grave accent over a u, any more than we can force someone to write qw instead of kw. But we are not going to make the same mistake that Nance made, which is to say that diacritics should not be used in ordinary writing. Since 99% of people who wish to use Cornish are learners, and since there is no native-speaker community to help model and maintain good pronunciation. Jenner did not apologize for his use of diacritics, and neither do we. I really don't see what good is done in looking for excuses to make diacritics optional. If there weren't reasons for them, we wouldn't use them. 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/