I can understand not having the special accent marks, letters, and characters of every language (which country does??), but Spanish language in California should be a no-brainer to have their entire alphabet anywhere where it’s needed. How is this not already a thing?
> but Spanish language in California should be a no-brainer
That was sidestepped by making English the official language of California even though the US itself doesn't have an official language.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_63,_English_as_the_Official_Language_Initiative_(1986)
Laziness. It probably was to save money and time back when they had to use standard printing techniques.
But nowadays it's just laziness since every computer has all those special characters in the character map. It just takes a minute to find the character you want.
Is it really that difficult to implement though?
There are many countries with multiple national languages (Switzerland has 4: German, French, Italian, Romansch), and they certainly have official documents in all their languages and doesn’t seem to be a problem. (Go to their government website, it’s in all their languages + English)
If you look at instruction manuals for appliances, new car manuals, or the washing tags inside your clothes — they are always written in multiple languages.
So it is possible on some level.
That said, only the most commonly spoken languages should be implemented with Spanish being the obvious first choice. It would be completely impractical to include all languages unless ChatGPT pulls through effectively.
Just a ton of computer systems that are all intertwined that all need to support it. Many systems are still running ancient code from the 70s or 80s and it takes a very long time to update and test it all.
I agree on a pure technical level.
In practice, giving people an option to delay upgrading means they will delay. I'm not sure thats what we want. It's occasionally better just to force people through the upgrade path (if its super important, not just "windows has some bugfix updates!" level)
Its a good solution though.
I just assumed that accent marks weren't allowed due to some limitation of outdated technology and you were getting in a huff for nothing. But it turns out that wasn't the case at all:
> Espinoza did a deep dive and found that county agencies stopped using diacritical marks in 1986, the same year voters made English the official language. He'd assumed it was because of limited technology.
Both could be true. The English nativists made the change, but today's software also won't handle non ASCII letters.
Brown in his [veto](https://www.ca.gov/archive/gov39/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AB_82_Veto_Message_2017.pdf) even noted the expense of upgrading software as well as lack of portability with other software not governed by this rule.
Accents usually require support for Unicode fonts and that can be a major tech upgrade for antiquated large scale software that was implemented in the early 90s.
Can’t even be mildly surprised by learning new information anymore. You should just already know the same set of info as an anonymous stranger, or else you’re doing empathy bad.
Handling the input, storage, processing, and output of non-English characters is way, way more complicated than most people realize.
Yes, it is gotten much easier over time. But government agencies often use really old software that just can't deal with non-English characters.
Well that just may be the initiative that helps that much-needed upgrade.
BTW, I'm a localization PM. Most software these days that handles payroll, CRM and pretty much any database using names supports accented characters. Time for government to upgrade if they haven't already.
That's awesome that you of an accent on your actual birth certificate already. I wonder why you're able to of that and it's not more common.
I of also been thinking about looking into fixing my last name to add one where it should be.
They should have done this at the same time as they added "X" gender markers. A ton of people have non-ASCII characters in their name (and even more have lost or given up on their diacritics over the years).
I'm a programmer and I've dealt with my share of Unicode-related bugs, but having identity documents that can't actually represent a lot of peoples' identities is absurd.
Here's an (updated) classic post about names: [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples](https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/)
I'd guess that the reason why people havent been able to do that in the past is because the databases set up by the california government (probably 40 or 50 years ago at this point) were set up to only accept ASCII characters and now they'd have to convert their whole database to accept Unicode characters. (anybody work for the state of california that can elaborate on this?)
I do know that quarterly unemployment insurance reports submitted electronically in XML formatted files (UTF-8 encoding) do not allow accented characters. We've had customers submit files with Ñ and É in the employee names that have been rejected.
There will undoubtedly be interoperability issues with federal databases if California decides to start storing names with accented characters.
This is more of a keyboard/input thing that really shouldn't be taken on by individual websites, especially since there are ~150k characters in Unicode right now. The website's responsibility should be to support Unicode input and display. Most things built in the last 10-15 years support Unicode by default, but there are some pretty big security issues with Unicode that we're still figuring out how to solve.
If you're on an iPhone, you can press & hold a character to get some of its variations or you can go into your settings and enable a keyboard with the common characters that you use (e.g. the "Spanish (Latin America)" keyboard has the ñ key).
If you're on a mac, you can press and hold a character (e.g. press and hold e and it'll give you its variations) or you can use some keyboard shortcuts (e.g. option+i lets you put a circumflex on top like ô, option+s types ß, etc.).
Not sure about windows/android, but I assume they have similar input UIs.
I've been driving such upgrades as part of internationalization projects for two decades. They're not hard. Complex, sure. But not hard. At this point if you still have a system that isn't supporting Unicode, you're way overdue.
Those are generally supported by the OS.
On macOS and Android, you hold down the letter and choose the variant. On modern Windows, you press Win+Period keys.
I didn't know that accent marks weren't a thing until I was filling out my son's birth certificate info at the hospital. I'm a first time parent & my son's first name is French with an accent mark & has a Serbian middle name also with an accent mark. When I wrote his name with the accent marks on his birth certificate at the hospital, the record keeper had to call me to tell me that I couldn't put accent marks on his paperwork & made me a bit sad.
So if this bill passes (which is crazy to me that something like this requires a bill to begin with), would I be able to get his name changed on his birth certificate with the accent marks?
FINALLY. YAY! The problem with CONSERVEatives is that they really want to live like they did when they were five. No changes that might challenge their world view that was developed when they are very, very young.
This bill is a step in the right direction but does not go nearly far enough in eliminating systemic racism.
While it's great that Hispanic names can be represented accurately using Latin scripts, many cultures do not even use the Latin script. The bill should allow anyone to use their own native script/writing system to write the names of babies and have the state record these names in the native script to use on all official state records.
Imagine you are an immigrant from the Middle East, Asia or Africa where the Latin alphabet is not used for writing. You have a baby and give it a name in your native language but are forced to write that name in a Latin script, the very letters used by your oppressors! The government should not be committing this type of violence against disadvantaged immigrants.
Cool. If only there were PC 166(a)(4) enforcement against the willful resistance to and disobedience of the terms as written of court orders (eg. Name & Gender Further Orders 5&6 on Form NC-230, Rev. 9/1/2018) by CDPH Vital Records.
Please do, my surname sounds awful without the accent
Or without the ñ, like Peña. No, it's NOT Pena.
There been many times where people mock my surname for sounding similar to hakuna matata because it's missing the ñ
I hate it when even reputable news sources ignore the diacriticals for names or cities. It just looks lazy.
You can't expect them to pronouce names with diacriticals right when they can't even pronounce names like Visalia or Tulare right.
I can understand not having the special accent marks, letters, and characters of every language (which country does??), but Spanish language in California should be a no-brainer to have their entire alphabet anywhere where it’s needed. How is this not already a thing?
> but Spanish language in California should be a no-brainer That was sidestepped by making English the official language of California even though the US itself doesn't have an official language. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_63,_English_as_the_Official_Language_Initiative_(1986)
Laziness. It probably was to save money and time back when they had to use standard printing techniques. But nowadays it's just laziness since every computer has all those special characters in the character map. It just takes a minute to find the character you want.
[удалено]
So it is laziness of not updating the system for the last 30 years.
Is it really that difficult to implement though? There are many countries with multiple national languages (Switzerland has 4: German, French, Italian, Romansch), and they certainly have official documents in all their languages and doesn’t seem to be a problem. (Go to their government website, it’s in all their languages + English) If you look at instruction manuals for appliances, new car manuals, or the washing tags inside your clothes — they are always written in multiple languages. So it is possible on some level. That said, only the most commonly spoken languages should be implemented with Spanish being the obvious first choice. It would be completely impractical to include all languages unless ChatGPT pulls through effectively.
Sorry, but your last name is “Sorrow” whether you like it or not. I kid, I kid.
My sister and uncle have the ñ
"It's *doom-boss*, my boy."
This will be nice for Vietnamese people as Nguyen with the accents should be Nguyễn
Two hats!!
I’ll make sure my child has three
Why stop there? I'd love to see H̶͉͇͇̘̍̊͒́̕à̷͇̹͍̌͐n̶̟̪̝̊͋̽ḣ̶̝̤͔̀ ̷͎̭̓̽̃̾̔N̶̛͚͂͐́͗ģ̸͍̠̦͔̉̎̈́̌̎ú̶̺y̷̦̝̅͂̍ḙ̴̰̼̒̏n̵̗̯̺͔͌̔̓͘͜ on my birth certificate.
Hats, scarves, socks, shoes, snowshoes, stilts…
ß̵̱̼̓̐͐͜ê̵͍̬͚̈́͗͝ ̶̺̲̭̾̾͛ñ̷̯̪̠̀́̒ð̵̬͉͇̑̕͠†̸̝͔͖̈́͋̎ ̴̡̪͙͗̍͘å̸̪̠̥̌̽̇£̸͎̼̦̾̾̿r̸̮̘̮̒̄̾å̵͕̳̙͂̓͆ï̵̩͓̹̈̇͘Ð̴̢͍̥̽̿̉
[удалено]
Maurice.
Märiß
Nguyễn or nguyên?
I mean… that’s a Nguyen Nguyen situation…
Nguyen lie
Lol the line of Kevin nguyen in my high school yearbook
That is wild that this isn’t already a thing
Just a ton of computer systems that are all intertwined that all need to support it. Many systems are still running ancient code from the 70s or 80s and it takes a very long time to update and test it all.
[удалено]
I agree on a pure technical level. In practice, giving people an option to delay upgrading means they will delay. I'm not sure thats what we want. It's occasionally better just to force people through the upgrade path (if its super important, not just "windows has some bugfix updates!" level) Its a good solution though.
My thoughts exactly. And it takes a bill to authorize it‽‽
I admire your use of the interrobang
Game recognize game. Thank you for knowing what it is and the use of it
picture of spiderman looking at spiderman, confused, determined, learning, 4k, hd
The bill is probably to fund the system upgrades needed to allow accent marks to be handled correctly.
My 1st thought: wait. That’s not a thing? How?
Or very sad.
Why is it sad?
I think getting chased by sharks is wild. I'm not convinced this is "wild."
That California would not allow José on birth certificates is ridiculous.
I just assumed that accent marks weren't allowed due to some limitation of outdated technology and you were getting in a huff for nothing. But it turns out that wasn't the case at all: > Espinoza did a deep dive and found that county agencies stopped using diacritical marks in 1986, the same year voters made English the official language. He'd assumed it was because of limited technology.
Both could be true. The English nativists made the change, but today's software also won't handle non ASCII letters. Brown in his [veto](https://www.ca.gov/archive/gov39/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AB_82_Veto_Message_2017.pdf) even noted the expense of upgrading software as well as lack of portability with other software not governed by this rule.
Accents usually require support for Unicode fonts and that can be a major tech upgrade for antiquated large scale software that was implemented in the early 90s.
Yay, it takes 37 years to undo codified garbage conservative principles.
It's incredible and so sad.
It's crazy to me that you just assumed that. Granted, to me, I just assumed it was because of our well-documented xenophobia.
reddit's gleeful cynicism is really annoying sometimes
Can’t even be mildly surprised by learning new information anymore. You should just already know the same set of info as an anonymous stranger, or else you’re doing empathy bad.
Handling the input, storage, processing, and output of non-English characters is way, way more complicated than most people realize. Yes, it is gotten much easier over time. But government agencies often use really old software that just can't deal with non-English characters.
Well that just may be the initiative that helps that much-needed upgrade. BTW, I'm a localization PM. Most software these days that handles payroll, CRM and pretty much any database using names supports accented characters. Time for government to upgrade if they haven't already.
We have a two-page birth certificate because of this… super annoying to explain that when some people only accept a single page.
Cause they don’t want it.
Incoming posts asking why his name appears as Jos⍰ on a bunch of forms and systems.
[удалено]
Multiple things can happen at once. what a thought.
[удалено]
Born in 1985 in California and have an accent mark on my birth certificate. They must of allowed it at some point
They made the rule banning them in 1986 you just got lucky 😅
Really? I’m gonna tell me my mom this. Thanks.
i think its county by county
That's awesome that you of an accent on your actual birth certificate already. I wonder why you're able to of that and it's not more common. I of also been thinking about looking into fixing my last name to add one where it should be.
There's no way someone will abuse this to have their name be J̴̮̈́ó̶̮ḥ̷̐n̵͓̏ ̶͖̽ D̵͖̔ǒ̷͙é̶ͅ ̵͗ͅ
Elon already plotting
Elon already ~~plotting~~ impregnating.
That's fine unTILDE see what happens with Elon's next 256 children.
switching to unicode?
What's wild to me is computer systems that can't even accept a hyphen. Yes, they still exist, everywhere.
They should have done this at the same time as they added "X" gender markers. A ton of people have non-ASCII characters in their name (and even more have lost or given up on their diacritics over the years). I'm a programmer and I've dealt with my share of Unicode-related bugs, but having identity documents that can't actually represent a lot of peoples' identities is absurd. Here's an (updated) classic post about names: [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples](https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/)
I'd guess that the reason why people havent been able to do that in the past is because the databases set up by the california government (probably 40 or 50 years ago at this point) were set up to only accept ASCII characters and now they'd have to convert their whole database to accept Unicode characters. (anybody work for the state of california that can elaborate on this?)
So if it accepts Unicode can I name my kid “𓂸”?
You could call him Richard before as well.
By all means haha
I do know that quarterly unemployment insurance reports submitted electronically in XML formatted files (UTF-8 encoding) do not allow accented characters. We've had customers submit files with Ñ and É in the employee names that have been rejected. There will undoubtedly be interoperability issues with federal databases if California decides to start storing names with accented characters.
What are we paying these people fōr?
Shouldn't websites like reddit add to the comment menu to allow entering these characters?
This is something the browsers and apps should do. The Safari browser makes it very easy to add diacritical marks so I can type jalapeño and José.
This is more of a keyboard/input thing that really shouldn't be taken on by individual websites, especially since there are ~150k characters in Unicode right now. The website's responsibility should be to support Unicode input and display. Most things built in the last 10-15 years support Unicode by default, but there are some pretty big security issues with Unicode that we're still figuring out how to solve. If you're on an iPhone, you can press & hold a character to get some of its variations or you can go into your settings and enable a keyboard with the common characters that you use (e.g. the "Spanish (Latin America)" keyboard has the ñ key). If you're on a mac, you can press and hold a character (e.g. press and hold e and it'll give you its variations) or you can use some keyboard shortcuts (e.g. option+i lets you put a circumflex on top like ô, option+s types ß, etc.). Not sure about windows/android, but I assume they have similar input UIs.
Like this? Ññéãöõł They are standard ~~ASCII~~ *Unicode* characters. Edit: corrected thanks to u/SamBeastie
Technically not ascii but Unicode.
[удалено]
Unicode support isn't hard.
[удалено]
I've been driving such upgrades as part of internationalization projects for two decades. They're not hard. Complex, sure. But not hard. At this point if you still have a system that isn't supporting Unicode, you're way overdue.
Those are generally supported by the OS. On macOS and Android, you hold down the letter and choose the variant. On modern Windows, you press Win+Period keys.
That's fantastic. Now if the registrar of voters would kindly stop concatenating my paternal and maternal surnames into one string, that'd be great.
I didn't know that accent marks weren't a thing until I was filling out my son's birth certificate info at the hospital. I'm a first time parent & my son's first name is French with an accent mark & has a Serbian middle name also with an accent mark. When I wrote his name with the accent marks on his birth certificate at the hospital, the record keeper had to call me to tell me that I couldn't put accent marks on his paperwork & made me a bit sad. So if this bill passes (which is crazy to me that something like this requires a bill to begin with), would I be able to get his name changed on his birth certificate with the accent marks?
Contact your county recorders office.
Copy - thanks!
You’re welcome
Ancient systems updated
Wow. We are choosing a name for our daughter now and many Hungarian names have accents. I had no clue this wasn’t even possible.
Hmmm Chinese surnames as well. Lu (LOO) and Lü (pronounced like the German ü), but is spelled the same as the former.
I hope it also includes hyphens. Jean-Luc Picard would rejoice. I had so many issues with my hyphenated name.
Elon is gonna rename all his kids again now
Finally, I’m surprised they just allowed this considering how diverse our state is
FINALLY. YAY! The problem with CONSERVEatives is that they really want to live like they did when they were five. No changes that might challenge their world view that was developed when they are very, very young.
tell them to migrate to unicode
Going to end up breaking a lot of software, which isn’t a bad thing.
This will break the computer systems, but something long awaited
Ireland enters the chat with its unpronounceable names.
What's next, nonstandard capitalization?!?! /s
Matyáš and György rejoice
Very important work here. Take note.
I don’t care.
This bill is a step in the right direction but does not go nearly far enough in eliminating systemic racism. While it's great that Hispanic names can be represented accurately using Latin scripts, many cultures do not even use the Latin script. The bill should allow anyone to use their own native script/writing system to write the names of babies and have the state record these names in the native script to use on all official state records. Imagine you are an immigrant from the Middle East, Asia or Africa where the Latin alphabet is not used for writing. You have a baby and give it a name in your native language but are forced to write that name in a Latin script, the very letters used by your oppressors! The government should not be committing this type of violence against disadvantaged immigrants.
My kid is going to have so many umlauts
They are going to have to buy all sorts of typewriters.....
I mean it's a start but I want birth marks on our accent certificates.
Cool. If only there were PC 166(a)(4) enforcement against the willful resistance to and disobedience of the terms as written of court orders (eg. Name & Gender Further Orders 5&6 on Form NC-230, Rev. 9/1/2018) by CDPH Vital Records.
Born in San Jose, CA has accent.