Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP 39: Add language identifier strings for wordlists

[Greg Sanders <gsanders87@gmail.com>]

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Let me re-phrase: Is it a known thing for users to actually use it?

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 9:52 AM, Matias Alejo Garcia <ematiu@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 11:34 AM, Greg Sanders via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone actually used the multilingual support in bip39?
>>
>
>
> Copay (and all its clones) use it.
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> If a feature of the standard has not been(widely?) used in years, and
>> isn't supported in any major wallet(?), it seems indicative it was a
>> mistake to add it in the first place, since it's a footgun in the making
>> for some poor sap who can't even read English letters when almost all
>> documentation is written in English.
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:13 AM, nullius via bitcoin-dev <
>> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2018-01-08 at 07:35:52 +0000, 木ノ下じょな <kinoshitajona@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is very sad.
>>>>
>>>> The number one problem in Japan with BIP39 seeds is with English words.
>>>>
>>>> I have seen a 60 year old Japanese man writing down his phrase (because
>>>> he kept on failing recovery), and watched him write down "aneter" for
>>>> "amateur"...
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> If you understand English and can spell, you read a word, your brain
>>>> processes the word, and you can spell it on your own when writing down.
>>>> Not many Japanese people can do that, so they need to copy letter for
>>>> letter, taking a long time, and still messing up on occasion.
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>> Defining "everyone should only use English, because ASCII is easier to
>>>> plan for" is not a good way to move forward as a currency.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Well said.  Thank you for telling of these experiences.  Now please,
>>> let’s put the shoe on the other foot.
>>>
>>> I ask everybody who wants an English-only mnemonic standard to entrust
>>> *their own money* to their abilities to very, very carefully write this
>>> down—then later, type it back in:
>>>
>>> すさん たんろ りゆう しもん ていおん しとう
>>> とこや はやい おうさま ほくろ けちゃっふ たもつ
>>>
>>> (Approximate translation:  “Whatever would you do if Bitcoin had been
>>> invented by somebody named Satoshi Nakamoto?”)
>>>
>>> No, wait:  That is only a 12-word mnemonic.  We are probably talking
>>> about a Trezor; so now, hey you there, stake the backup of your life’s
>>> savings on your ability to handwrite *this*:
>>>
>>> にあう しひょう にんすう ひえる かいこう いのる ねんし はあさん ひこく
>>> とうく きもためし そなた こなこな にさんかたんそ ろんき めいあん みわく
>>> へこむ すひょう おやゆひ ふせく けさき めいきょく こんまけ
>>>
>>> Ready to bet your money on *that* as a backup phrase in your own hands?
>>> No?  Then please, stop demanding that others risk *their* money on the
>>> inverse case.
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> If you cheat here by having studied Japanese, then remember that many
>>> Japanese people know English and other European languages, too.  Then think
>>> of how much money would be lost by your non-Japanese-literate family and
>>> friends—if BIP 39 had only Japanese wordlists, and your folks needed to
>>> wrestle with the above phrases as their “mnemonics”.
>>>
>>> In such cases, the phrases cannot be called “mnemonics” at all.  A
>>> “mnemonic” implies aid to memory.  Gibberish in a wholly alien writing
>>> system is much worse even than transcribing pseudorandom hex strings.  The
>>> Japanese man in the quoted story, who wrote “aneter” for “amateur”, was not
>>> dealing with a *mnemonic*:  He was using the world’s most inefficient means
>>> of making cryptic bitstrings *less* userfriendly.
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> I began this thread with a quite simple request:  Is “日本語” an
>>> appropriate string for identifying the Japanese language to Japanese
>>> users?  And what of the other strings I posted for other languages?
>>>
>>> I asked this as an implementer working on my own instance of the
>>> greatest guard against vendor lock-in and stale software:  Independent
>>> implementations.  —  I asked, because obviously, I myself do not speak all
>>> these different languages; and I want to implement them all.  *All.*
>>>
>>> Some replies have been interesting in their own right; but thus far,
>>> nobody has squarely addressed the substance of my question.
>>>
>>> Most worrisome is that much of the discussion has veered into criticism
>>> of multi-language support.  I opened with a question about other languages,
>>> and I am getting replies which raise a hue and cry of “English only!”
>>>
>>> Though I am fluent and literate in English, I am uninterested in ever
>>> implementing any standard of this nature which is artificially restricted
>>> to English.  I am fortunate; for as of this moment, we have a standard
>>> called “BIP 39” which has seven non-English wordlists, and four more
>>> pending in open pull requests (#432, #442, #493, #621).
>>>
>>> I request discussion of language identification strings appropriate for
>>> use with that standard.
>>>
>>> (P.S., I hope that my system did not mangle anything in the foregoing.
>>> I have seen weird copypaste behaviour mess up decomposed characters.  I
>>> thought of this after I searched for and collected some visually
>>> fascinating phrases; so I tried to normalize these to NFC...  It should go
>>> without saying, easyseed output the Japanese perfectly!)
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> nullius@nym.zone | PGP ECC: 0xC2E91CD74A4C57A105F6C21B5A00591B2F307E0C
>>> Bitcoin: bc1qcash96s5jqppzsp8hy8swkggf7f6agex98an7h | (Segwit nested:
>>> 3NULL3ZCUXr7RDLxXeLPDMZDZYxuaYkCnG)  (PGP RSA: 0x36EBB4AB699A10EE)
>>> “‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.’
>>> No!  Because I do nothing wrong, I have nothing to show.” — nullius
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Matías Alejo Garcia
> @ematiu
> Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!
>

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