[UA-discuss] Language - how do you refer to non-ASCII to a non-technical audience?

[Naomi Pearce]

I keep tripping up on referring to language being "non-" something.

Here's why. If I ask you to think of an elephant that isn't 
blue, what's the first thing you think of?  Often, it's a blue 
elephant first, then one works to get to non-blue.

In sports, coaches deal with this all the time. For example, if 
a coach tells a baseball pitcher to avoid pitching low and 
inside, sure enough, the tendency will be low, or inside. 
Therefore, the coach is the one who has to do the translation of 
what it is they actually want, rather than what they don't want 
-- in the example, to pitch to the outside, or to pitch higher. 
[Feel free to adjust the example to any sport, or coached 
activity, that you like.]

In our case, I ask myself if it would be better to focus on what 
the language is, rather than isn't. That's where it gets challenging.

A half-step would be talking about languages 'beyond' English. 
It still has a fair amount of the blue-elephant problem.

I think 'domains in world languages' is heading in the right 
direction, though it's a tad dense in that I have no idea what a 
'world language' is unless I mentally work really hard. Ergo, 
some brainstormed notions below... take what you need and leave 
the rest.

On 7/22/16 at 12:41 PM, jothan at jothan.com (Jothan Frakes) wrote:

>Not sure if 'domains in world languages'

In case any of these suggestions or ideas resonate, how about:

'domains in all languages'
'domains in all written languages'
'domains in every language'
'domains in any major language'
'domains in any language used in the world'
'domains in most major languages'
'domains in many kinds of languages'
'domains in various languages used in the world'
'domains in the native languages used in the world'
'domains in native languages'
'domains in local languages'

Just thoughts...

-- 
TTFN, tah tah for now,

Naomi Pearce
Pearce Communications
510/528-0824

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