Hi, James!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  Caries = decay of teeth and/or bones.  :-))

JB>  That's so over my head...


          I think you meant "carries", not "caries"... [chuckle].



JB>  Like you say, there is a name for the dot over an "i"
JB>  or "j".


          It finally came to me... "tittle".  Some day, when you
have nothing else to do, try looking up "tittle" in the
dictionary.  Fascinating....  :-))



AH>  Thankyou.  I studied French for seven years....  :-))

JB>  I told you you had *attributes!*


          Uh, I'll take that as a compliment... [chuckle].



AH>  I don't see any accent marks in the above when you're
AH>  quoting back to me what I typed, from which I conclude
AH>  you're not using the same character set.

JB>  Sheesh... I'm outa my league!


          Not to worry.  I happen to know this because I helped the moderator
of the ENGLISH_TUTOR echo sort out the same details a few years ago....  :-))



JB>  A couple of Russians were flabbergasting me with "code
JB>  page" this, and "alternate character" that.


          Ah... they use the Cyrillic alphabet, which is different from
ours, when they're writing in Russian to one another.  They can type the
same words phonetically, using our alphabet... but we may lose a lot in the
translation!
If we don't want their alphabet to look like a dog's breakfast at our end, we
need a computer program which can understand it.  OTOH if you are using
IBMPC while I'm using IBMPC 2 your computer will just ignore the accent
marks.  :-)



JB>  This reader allows for an alternate character set,
JB>  but the plumbing - For the lack of a better term -
JB>  aint in place. While the world turns, I just keep
JB>  being amazed at its direction and fervour.


          I can relate.  Although it's important to me to put accent marks
in the right places even if you can't see them, it's a pretty big leap for
me to learn a language which uses a different alphabet.  Some day I'd like
to learn Russian & Greek & Hebrew, but they may have to wait for
another life....  ;-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+