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

[nullius <nullius@nym.zone>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4946 bytes --]

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

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 228 bytes --]