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wakest ⁂

I was reading this this thread about how the New York Times butchers all the diacritics from non English languages and I was like this must be fake theres no way they still do this so I looked up a recent article about Vietnam and fucking hell they are still doing this.
Here is an article (unpaywalled) you can look at to verify archive.ph/dzV80

via @emptyfortress
queer.party/@emptyfortress/110

6 Aug 2023 at 11:29 | Open on social.wake.st
3 comments
wakest ⁂

Look up any of the place names mentioned in that article, every one has the diacritics removed. Imagine if a magazine removed all the vowels from American English. "Bdn flw frm Nw Yrk t Ls Ngls"

6 Aug 2023 at 11:43 | Open on social.wake.st
Obbie King

@liaizon In many languages (Czech is the one with which I'm familiar), removing diacritics *changes the letter*. An 's' with a hacek over it is a different letter than an s without. Just as ñ and n are different letters in Spanish.

To reframe your analogy, the NYT isn't removing vowels, but it's randomly replacing vowels with different vowels.

6 Aug 2023 at 15:17 | Open on urbanists.social
wakest ⁂

@ObbieZ It was simply an analogy that I thought to write. But yes you are right that its closer to changing vowels then emitting them. Tho I guess this also depends on the context of what language they are doing this to.

6 Aug 2023 at 15:21 | Open on social.wake.st
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