Problems with Unicode.
We all have our worries about what will happen when, as ex-Marxist Martin Jacques says, China rules the World (in six years?). Mine are about texting.
But first, an anecdote. I needed, urgently, to text my daughter ‘Delayed by schizo friend can’t cook supper right now’. I reached for my phone, in a bad light, on the Holloway Road, and found that the text was coming out in Greek! Naturally I panicked and it took half an hour to find the simple way out (You go to Settings, of course; but why was it texting in Greek in the first place?)
Anyway, to return to the Chinese. As we know the first 127 (128?) bits in the unicode character set UTF-8 are the hegemonic Eurocentric Ascii characters; these things having been decided when the USA ruled the world. There follows a sort of hierarchy of characters in any other language you can think of, including, of course, Chinese. What’s bothering me is that currently, because the Chinese don’t rule the world,
a Chinese Unicode character has (say) two more bytes than one of ours, so – in my rather goofy perception of how this works – it will take a Chinese longer to text the same message. [I know there aren't more bytes, but they're later; so you'd have to wait for them as, if A comes first, you have to wait for Z.]
Apart from obvious points like whose language is more economical. (See remarks about the Finnegans Wake translation, supra.)
It follows, as the night the day, that when the Chinese rule the world they will reverse the order of Unicode priorities, Ascii characters will come trailing at the end, and it will take forever – several microseconds more – for us to text each other. I thought you’d like something more to keep you awake at night.
A propos, I’ve been also worrying about the Maldivians. Not, like everyone else, because they soon won’t have any land left 
as it’s only 6 metres above sea level max and will all soon disappear due to global warming so book your holidays pronto; but because their language is written in a script called Thaana, using Unicode characters like 078x and 079x. (Isn’t this educational?) Thaana, a mixture of Arabic and Indian numbers and other odd bits, is so bizarre that I can only refer you to Wikipedia for the full insanity of its origins, history and structure. Let this quote suffice:
‘The order of the Tāna alphabet (hā, shaviyani, nūnu, rā, bā, etc.) doesn’t follow the order of other Indic scripts or of the Arabic script. There is no apparent logic to the order; this has been interpreted as suggesting that the script was scrambled to keep it secret from average islanders.’ I’ve heard of the wickedness of the ruling class and the deviousness of the intellectuals, but scrambling the order of your script seems to take it to a new level.
Beginning of the Thaana ‘alphabet’
Sport: (Ee-I-Addio). You heard it here first – Arsenal did win the Cup as we predicted or at least hoped, defeating Everton 2-0 (Kelly Smith (15), Yukari Kinga (62)). Second cup final running for the Arsenal ladies, still leaving the men trailing…
From the official website
The fightback begins! Good news from the current edition of our sister publication ‘Diaspora Romaneasca’ (unbeatable title!): ‘Un român a solicitat urmărirea penală a lui Nigel Farage, liderul formațiunii politice extremiste și ultranaționaliste UK Independence Party (UKIP). Dr. Tommy Tomescu, președintele Alianței împotriva Discriminării Românilor și Bulgarilor din Marea Britanie și al partidului Europeans Party îl acuză pe politicianul britanic pentru declarațiile rasiste făcute de acesta la adresa prezenței românești în Regatul Unit.’
Tomescu tries to nick Farage
(See http://www.diasporaro.com/ for the full article.) Right on, Tomescu! Rather than listening to the rasiste urgings against the Românilor și Bulgarilor, we should be kicking out the extremiste și ultranaționaliste UKIP’s.
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?
Now he’s kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he’ll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
(Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy.
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare’s milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion’s reform,
(Chorus) And religious reform,
Hideous in form.
I’ll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,
Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys
All your butter is in your horns.
(Chorus) His butter is in his horns.
Butter his horns!(Repeat) Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty, change that shirt
on ye,
Rhyme the rann, the king of all ranns!Balbaccio, balbuccio!We had chaw chaw chops, chairs, chewing gum, the chicken-pox
and china chambers
Universally provided by this soffsoaping salesman.
Small wonder He’ll Cheat E’erawan our local lads nicknamed him.
When Chimpden first took the floor
(Chorus) With his bucketshop store
Down Bargainweg, Lower.So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous
But soon we’ll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery
And ’tis short till sheriff Clancy’ll be winding up his unlimited
company
With the bailiff’s bom at the door,
(Chorus) Bimbam at the door.
Then he’ll bum no more.Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island
The hooker of that hammerfast viking
And Gall’s curse on the day when Eblana bay
Saw his black and tan man-o’-war.
(Chorus) Saw his man-o’-war
On the harbour bar.
Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha’pence, he bawls
Donnez-moi scampitle, wick an wipin’fampiny
Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface
Thok’s min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker
Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.
(Chorus) A Norwegian camel old cod.
He is, begod.
Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil, ye! up with the rann,
the rhyming rann!
It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
(Chorus) Woohoo, what’ll she doo!
The general lost her maidenloo!
He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,
For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.
Begob, he’s the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo,
(Chorus) Messrs Billing and Coo.
Noah’s larks, good as noo.
He was joulting by Wellinton’s monument
Our rotorious hippopopotamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of the omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,
(Chorus) With his rent in his rears.
Give him six years.
‘Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won’t there be earwigs on the green?
(Chorus) Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen.
Suffoclose! Shikespower! Seudodanto! Anonymoses!
Then we’ll have a free trade Gael’s band and mass meeting
For to sod him the brave son of Scandiknavery.
And we’ll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and the Danes,
(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes,
And all their remains.
And not all the king’s men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there’s no true spell in Connacht or hell
(bis) That’s able to raise a Cain.
At the opera: I know this will seem a bit lowbrow after the Xenakis, but I couldn’t resist including a chunk of Philip Glass’s ‘Satyagraha‘, which I caught on Sky Arts 2 – believe it or not – this morning.
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