How 5 letters might disappear forever :(

[DanielT]

This a very interesting story of the Romanian keyboard layout and how some characters unique to my language might get lost forever http://kitblog.com/2008/10/romanian_dia ... marks.html .
I have to admit that for a very long time I was one of the people who ignored this but some changes in my life made me understand the importance of saving what makes us unique from the language point of view.
Sadly finding keycaps, decent ones for my language is something close to impossible. If Cherry ever made some decent keyboards with Romanian support these must be as rare as the Triumph Adler keyboards.
On a side note if anyone finds something from Cherry in MX mount with Romanian layout please let me know.

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Romanian language has 5 special letters—they are not diacritics per se, but are generally referred to as such.

Ăă — A/a with BREVE for the sound /ə/;
Ââ — A/a with CIRCUMFLEX for the sound /ɨ/;
Îî — I/i with CIRCUMFLEX for the sound /ɨ/;
Șș — S/s with COMMA BELOW for the sound /ʃ/;
Țț — T/t with COMMA BELOW for the sound /ʦ/.

[bocahgundul]

I will search one for you It just needs 5 of that letter right? In the wiki there are some serial for cherry keyboard right? like HAD for german doubleshot. There might be something that tells the serial for romanian cherry board!

[DanielT]

The problem is I don't know what the codes should be ... I have to search a little bit. Another problem is the fact that we don't have one standard but a couple of them ... The only Cherry keyboard I have ever saw was one with thin lasered caps and it was a long time ago and at that point I was ignorant

The layout looks like this (the characters are printed wrong using cedilla instead of comma ...) :

Tastatura_RO.jpg (822.58 KiB) Viewed 6520 times

[bocahgundul]

Wow best of luck for you bro! I will help too

[scottc]

Very sad story. It's so disappointing how these things turn out. I was appalled to find out that it was even wrong on Romanian banknotes!

If I ever happen to find one of these on my trawls, I promise it'll end up in your hands DanielT! I seem to be lucky finding Slavic- and US-layout boards around here, but I've never seen Romanian so I can't promise much.

[DanielT]

Thanks I doubt that there are many in the wild but who knows ?

It's a sad story, and I realise I was as ignorant as all the others who let this happen. Your language is the very thing that identifies you ... when I saw how many people cripple my family name to the point that I was starting to spell it wrong too something snapped inside me, I was trying to make it easy for others for the price of loosing my own identity. I will never do that again!

[scottc]

I understand completely. Irish is barely used at all in Ireland anymore, to the extent that even the road signs are wrong where I lived. On some streets you've got one incorrect translation on one side, then another incorrect one on another sign opposite it. Very sad indeed.

[flabbergast]

...when I saw how many people cripple my family name to the point that I was starting to spell it wrong too...

Just to point out that this works both ways - some (very) small eastern European countries even have laws that *force* bastardising foreign names in official speech (e.g. TV or radio). For instance Merkel -> Merkelová (and this one's lucky that at least the base of the name is pronounced "correctly").

[scottc]

While I see where you're coming from flabbergast, that sometimes is and sometimes isn't a problem. For example, Polish grammar is very complicated and I have seen "bastardised" foreign names on signs advertising eg. new books from an author ("George Montgomery" became "George'a Montgomerego" or something, I can't recall and my Polish is quite poor). I think this is totally acceptable if you use this to fit the name into the grammar required by the language in question. For example again, Polish uses suffixes on pronouns and names a lot to derive meaning from sentences that would be unobvious otherwise.

Edit: Obviously, Poland is not a "very small Eastern European country", but I think the same case might be made for other Slavic countries at least since many of them have similar-ish grammar.

[DanielT]

Romanians never do that! With some small exceptions foreign names, cities, country names are pronounced by us correctly.
John is John and not Ion, Steven is not Ștefan and so on ... It has a lot to do with our history. During the time Transilvania was under Austro Hungarian Empire occupation the policy of the empire was to change Romanian names to the the Hungarian equivalent, Romanians found tricks and baptised their children with names that could not be changed, most of them had Latin origin. And this is only one example. So knowing what that means we never do it.
But this is open to debates, I know that.

As a side note, considering our history and the fact that our country was ripped apart by one or the other great power for almost 2000 years, and yet we managed to preserve our identity and language only to give it up so easy in the last 25 years since the 1989 Revolution ... that it's really sad... But I don't loose hope

[derzemel]

I think GoguSrl found a lasered cherry g81 or g80 with Romanian diacritics some time ago

[DanielT]

I think GoguSrl found a lasered cherry g81 or g80 with Romanian diacritics some time ago

I know, but back then I ignored them. And don't find the link anymore to get more details.
By the way, not related to this, have you seen this GB ? https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=78367.0

[derzemel]

By the way, not related to this, have you seen this GB ? https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=78367.0

Uhuhuuhuhuhuhuhu... I have not
Thank you!

[flabbergast]

@DanielT: also thanks! I've got one topre blank from him from the previous buy, and it's a good quality keycap.

[photekq]

Ugh... I know I've seen a G81/G80 with doubleshot/dyesub caps, but I can't remember if it was Hungarian or Romanian layout. I think it might have been Hungarian :/

I have to admit that for a very long time I was one of the people who ignored this but some changes in my life made me understand the importance of saving what makes us unique from the language point of view.

Absolutely. I decided not long ago that I must learn Welsh in the near future. It makes me sad to see the decline of such a beautiful language, the language of my paternal family.

[DanielT]

People seem to forget about these things until it's too late... But I say it's never too late. If you ever spot a Romanian G80/81 keyboard let me know

[kbdfr]

I remember the Germans incredulously shaking their heads long ago when France introduced a law aiming at protecting the French language.

[7bit]

Let's do it right, one for all times!


Get rid of all those funny dots, commas, slashes and ligatures!


7bit ASCII FTW!

[scottc]

I have great respect for France's respect for its own language. One thing that I found particularly good about French was the low level of re-use of English words. On the other hand, sometimes speaking "modern" Irish just sounds like using English verbs and nouns but with Irish grammar...

[Muirium]

I hate to say it, but I'm with 7bit on this one. Letters beyond ASCII are stupid. Conform. Conform! Or invent your own script entirely, like Cyrilic. Diacritics look like a hack, to us English speakers. The reserve of rock band names!

[photekq]

Diacritics look like a hack, to us English speakers.

I think that's just you..

[DanielT]

@Muirium: Sorry to say but the 5 characters are letters and not diacritics As a non Romanian speaker you can't understand their importance. For example my family name can't be written correctly without one of those letters, even our country name is using one of the letters România ! So don't give me that theory. Commas are not like accents, and also the hats on A , those are letters .
These 5 letters are not some hacks they have sounds asociated, for some you can hack a combo like oe for ö in German but it's something bastardized

[Muirium]

Okay, I'll admit I'm just trolling really. But I do find dīâçrįtìčś in all their samey forms a lame way to extend someone else's alphabet. Middle English used to have a few extra letters from Norse, which were runic instead so looked quite different to mere Latin with squiggles attached. But someone dropped thorn and ing and the rest, way back. So we went with fiendishly unnatural spelling here instead. "Th", my arse!

[scottc]

Tell that to the Holy Roman Empire who insisted that we all used it, Mu.

[Parjánya]

I don't get why many keyboard layouts have composite characters like â î instead of having just one combining character ^. That's how brazilian portuguese uses ~ ' ` ^, otherwise we would need to have á à ã â é ê í î ó õ ô ú û, a key each.

[Muirium]

Exactly! I love a good dead key. (The Mac has many of them. Option+U for all umlauts, for example.) Keeps things clean and international!

If it weren't for the 9 time zones between us, this would be right about the time of day for Kbdfr to lecture to the contrary. I disagree completely, but i must give the man credit. He's quite consistent in his advocacy for a dedicated physical key for everything!

[Parjánya]

Just to save the keystrokes?

[Muirium]

Nah. He just likes his desk to look like the helm of an aircraft carrier. Or the Death Star. Real work is measured in seldom used keys.

(That phrase is my gift for him to start his counter argument. Only fair seeing as he's asleep and has some catchup to do!)

[DanielT]

For example I hate dead keys, I like more AltGr. Why? because dead keys make my life a nightmare in the terminal. I'm a UNIX admin and I use ' ^ () for scripting and other stuff like that, dead keys slow me down. And I need only 5 extra letters, AltGr is better for me. At this moment I'm using on OSX a modified US International w/o dead keys, the one included with OSX just didn't do it for me.I'm more productiv with AltGr than dead keys.
There is always more than one way to do something and I like that, I like the freedom of choice

[elecplus]

But someone dropped thorn and ing and the rest, way back.

So if "gifu" means "gift", then Aelfgifu (the wife of Aethelred the Unready) meant "gift from the elves"?