From: soufi@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Khaled S. Soufi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: Re: AlpaLeb V 1.0
Date: 2 Oct 92 21:16:14 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL

medawar@prism.poly.edu (Bassem Medawar) writes:

>In article <1992Oct1.182810.11452@m.cs.uiuc.edu> soufi@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Khaled S. Soufi) writes:
>>medawar@prism.poly.edu (Bassem Medawar) writes:
>>
>>>In article <1992Sep29.225504.6097@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna) writes:
>>>>Having skimmed through your proposal, and while I am always interested in 
>>>>new ideas on how to transliterate Arabic in Latin, I frankly see little or
>>>>no merit in this so-called "AlphaLeb".  Existing Arabic-Latin-Arabic 
>>>>transliteration schemes, such as Qalam, can accomodate any dialect of 
>>>>Arabic with little or no additions/modification.  
>>
>>>Great!  Why don't you explain what the Qalam transliteration scheme is?
>>>What's its alphabet or mapping rules.. so on.
>>
>>I don't understand this game.  You are a member of a trio trying to

>The game is in your mind only Khaled.  This is a serious discussion.

>>invent some "language" that you can label as a non-Arabic language!

>The proposed standard is not for a language, it is for an alphabet.

Alphabet for what?

>Do you know the difference between a language and an alphabet?  (I wonder)

>>Frankly, one would expect *you* to be an authority in linguistics, not

>I am not an authority on Natural languages (I know a little bit about
>Computer languages though).  Waleed said there is an "Existing Arabic-Latin-
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Do you mean programming languages or the jargon that some people use
to make them look like they know about computers?

>Arabic transliteration schemes, such as Qalam.."  I genuinly wanted to know more
>about it because I am REALLY interested in ways to represent ARABIC alphabet
>on ASCII terminals.  I am even going into the trouble of saving the Arabic
>coding sets that Ibaa is posting and making them available for PUBLIC access
>on an anon-ftp host.  If I wanted to replace Arabic with Lebanese, WHY WOULD I
>DO THAT????

I think you missed the point.  Nobody has accused you of trying to
*replace* Arabic with Lebanese.  The point that was made was that you
people are trying to reinvent the wheel!  As to your point about
Arabic and ASCII, I think you ought to look at the smart Japanese.
They were not "interested in ways to represent JAPANESE alphabet in
ASCII".  Instead, they made those dummy machines understand their
alphabet, which, of course, is the smarter way to do it!  Computers
are good because they are *general-purpose*.  They are dummy machines
that will do what you want them to do.  It should *not* be the other
way around!

[...]

>>Waleed.  I was expecting you to know more about Qalam much less asking
>>others what it meant!

>Really?  Anybody can come and say, there is an XYZ that does the same thing
>and shut up (or worse yet start rediculing what took many months to develop).

Then you should have pointed out it was an XYZ.  You are one of three
authors of a brand "new alphabet" for goodness sake!

>If you object to some proposal, fine that is your privilege, but either give 
>a counter proposal so that we can discuss its merits versus our proposal and
>maybe your proposal would win or KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!

I guess you rushed a little here because I did give a proposal at the
end of my post.  By the way, I don't know about you, but when I type
my posts, I tend to keep my mouth shut!  It's better, try it.

>>I have a little more serious proposal for the three of you that you
>>might want to think about.  Knowing that Saied Akl, a definitely much
>>better authority on linguistics than any of you three, has miserably
>>failed to introduce "Alphaleb" before any one of you was probably even
>>born, how about if you speak Arabic-Lebanese backwords :-) That way

>I don't see what speaking "Arabic-Lebanese backwords" has any relevance to
>this discussion so please stick to serious discussion.

Okay, then you didn't like my proposal.  But I still believe it will
serve you guys better than the "Alphaleb" hocus-pocus.

>>you would definitely not sound like you are speaking Arabic.  A lot of
>>time psychologists attempt to counter some of the phobias their
>>patients have.  Even though I am not a psychologist, I bet by speaking
>>the language you dread so much, you know, the language of Qur'an
>>(woooooohhh), backwards, it might just be a healing process for you
>>guys.  I hope you take my proposal much much much more seriously than
>>I took yours and good luck.

>I am proud that I speak Arabic and will continue to do so.  Your remarks
>show that you feel threatened that Lebanese will one day become a recognized
>language and the Lebanese identity will start replacing the Arabic identity
>in the mind of some Lebanese people.  That is really the issue.  Why don't you

I thought you were accusing me of taking you lightly in the beginning.
Now you say I "feel threatened that Lebanese will one day..."  Which
one is it?  Besides, you said that I should keep my mouth shut.  So,
you really must be confused and looking at the wrong end here.

>have the courage to stand and say it rather than wrap yourself with
>"Arabic-Lebanese backwords" nonesense.

I will not take your remark that my wholesome "Arabic-Lebanese
backwords" proposal is nonesensical seriously because for one I also
took your proposal lightly too.  No harm's done.

>>By the way, I know people who speak Arabic/Lebanese backwords.  This
>>certainly is not a bogus proposal.

>Good for you.. I hope this gives you your daily doze of entertainment.

Actually, the entertain-O-meter in my office did not indicate any
marked increase in my "daily doze of entertainment".  You know what
this means, don't you?  I just have to read more proposals such as the
threatening "Alphaleb".  Keep them coming.

>bassem

-- 
+-----------Khaled Soufi-------------+--------------------------+
|   Department of Computer Science   | email: soufi@cs.uiuc.edu |
| U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | phone: (217)244-2274 (W) |
+------------------------------------+--------------------------+