[Python-3000] pep 3131 again

[Giovanni Bajo]

On 17/05/2007 11.23, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

> Whether or not Japanese or Chinese people with no knowledge of
> English still can master the Latin alphabet easily, I don't know,
> as all Chinese people I do know speak German or English well.

All Chinese people are taught the Latin-character transliteration of Mandarin 
in school. It's called "pin-yin": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_yin. In 
fact, they use this Latin transliteration as the main *mean* to teach children 
how to pronounce each Chinese character.

This transliteration is so common that it is supported as an input method on 
devices like cellphones or keyboards (even though it is usually not the 
default: they have more specific and tuned input methods for computers and SMS).

So yes, Chinese people do master the Latin alphabet. And funnily enough for 
this thread, Pin-yin cannot be fully expressed in ASCII because it requires 
accented vowels (è, é, and many others I don't have handy).
-- 
Giovanni Bajo