[OSM-talk] Languages, OSM, scripts and all that.

[Paul Houle]

    I just recently pointed my nooscope at places outside the U.S. and 
was quite amused to see arabic letters in the tile maps around Tunis...

http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/topic/82500/Tunis

    Looking around a bit more I find Japanese writing w/ Romanized text 
around Tokyo

http://ookaboo.com/o/pictures/topic/75666/Museum_of_Contemporary_Art_Tokyo

    I appreciate that the people "on the ground" who make the map are 
going to be people who are located in an area,  and are going to know 
the local language,  but people who want to explore faraway places could 
have a hard time with the rendering that I'm seeing -- are there are 
roman-alphabet tilemaps around anywhere?

    Cultural imperialist or not,  my suspicion that that the roman 
alphabet is (at least somewhat) understood by educated people who use 
non-roman alphabets regularly (this is definitely the case in the CJK 
area.) On the other hand,  my guess is that the ability to read Arabic 
is as common in, say Korea, as it is in the U.S.