Re: Linguistic chaos

["Martin J. Duerst" <mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch>]

On Sat, 11 Jan 1997, Michael Dillon wrote:

> 
> Here are a couple of other examples of how the international venue makes
> the concept of a trademark into linguistic chaos.

While I fully agree with the main thrust of Michael's email,
just some corrections:

> Suppose someone registers MOBIL.INET
[shortened] 

> ...MOBIL is a common word in Bahasa Indonesia. It means
> car.
> 
> The next uproar comes when SEMEN.INET is registered.
[shortened]

> ...SEMEN is Bahasa
> Indonesia for CEMENT and SEMEN.INET is a perfectly legitimate domain name
> for a Cement company in one of the world's fastest growing economies in
> the world's 15th largest country.
> 
> Now, until today, I did not speak a single word of Bahasa Indonesia. In
> fact, I didn't even know that was the name of Indonesia's language. But
> after a couple of hours looking at websites about Bahasa Indonesia or
> written in Bahasa Indonesia, I discovered two potential problems. 
> 
> Those of us in the Western world are heavily biased linguistically because
> our native languages have mostly developped from the same roots and have
> been heavily influenced by Latin over the past 1500 years or so. But most
> of the world speaks languages whose vocabulary does not bear even the
> slightest resemblance to Indo-European languages and large parts of this
> world are now flooding onto the Internet.

This is definitely a problem. But although I also don't speak a single
word of Bahasa Indonesia, and not even had a look at websites about
this language (I knew, however, its name), it is not very difficult
for me or anybody else with some experience with languages that the
two words MOBIL and SEMEN are most probably not from different roots
with not even the slightest resemblance to Indo-European words.
Indeed, MOBIL is most probably an abbreviation of automobil (other
languages use auto), and SEMEN is a phonetic addaption of cement.

Regards,	Martin.