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Comment by flyax | Hacker News Reader

Yes. I'm also using my own layout on ErgoDox EZ, my languages are Czech (příšerně žlouťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy) and English. I'm also a (neo)vim user.

I found it hard to switch layouts, I'm using only one with layers. On first layer there are english letters, second layer there are accents (a → á) and some symbols where accent is missing (m → +). On third layer there are arrows on home row and functional keys. Shift without other key is `(`, on second layer `{`. There are some additional keys at the bottom and middle, they cover the rest of symbols. Outliers are mapped to start editor, browser, ctrl+c, ctrl+z, volume, mute, …

I really like having a single layout. I don't like that I'm no longer able to type on QWERTY without looking at keys. On my desktop, I'm 10 % faster, on any other computer I'm 90 % slower. Would I do it again? Probably yes.

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I'm a native English speaker (with a lot of study of Frènch) and I am deeply grateful that English, while we have many dire critics, does not have diacritic accents. But it makes me curious. Could Czech (and the Scandi languages) do away with their diacritics and just stop using them? DONT INTERRUPT LET ME FINISH the question. I understand that you're used to it, and it's "nice", but is all that decoration absolutely necessary? SHUSH I'm not done. Let's look at Hebrew and Arabic: they don't indicate any vowels. Sounds crazy, sounds intolerable, but they get along just fine.

Because English and simple ASCII made such a nice team, just wondering, not trying to say anything diabolically odious or even ďábelské ódy

(I was making a macaronic joke, didn't look up the translation of that till after, but it was perfect! "devilish odes")

The difference between `s` and `š` is similar to `s` and `sh`. Can you omit `h` in Englis? Well, tecnically yes, but you canged the language. Same on you!

yes, I agree, that's the point I'm making: it's doable like abjads and their vowels. And by coincidence, only does Hebrew not have vowels, it also does not distinguish between s and sh, they are both that W-looking character! That's the spirit in which I was asking the question, they don't distinguish, but they still have no trouble reading and writing.

Unlike English, it's possible to read Czech without knowing the words (no tricks like "tomb"). If you omit accents, one would either have to know correct pronunciation or he will read it differently.

What you could do is to replace an accent with an ASCII character. Compare the name of town Český Těšín with its Polish equivalent Czeski Cieszyn (Č → Cz, ě → ie, š → sz). Actually, this is how we got here, 600 years ago Jan Hus (John the Goose) added diacritics to shorten a few diagrams in written language.

You're just trying to make yourself the least pissed off person around. Just stop.

Many things to point out here:

- Diacritics, for example in German, make writing and reading easier than English and you cannot have ghoti[1]

- Diacritics, is an easy way to avoid di-grams and tri-grams: English has "sh", Czech has "š" (it's not a decoration, it has a true meaning)

- ASCII seems to make a nice team with English because it's an American creation. Should English had some accents that ASCII would have included them, like dollar sign (this is an "S" with a stroke…)[2]

- Languages that could go with out vowels are those where words forms have no ambiguity. In English, "bt" for example is ambiguous because there's "bit", "bat", "but", "boat", etc.

So you are just having a ethnocentric point of view, that's human.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign

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