From: mike@fionn.lbl.gov (Michael Helm)
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 15:50:14 +0800
To: Jonathon Blake <grafolog@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Why Americans feel no compulsion to learn foreign languages
In-Reply-To: <grafolog@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199603282112.NAA08380@fionn.lbl.gov>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Mar 27, 10:57pm, Jonathon Blake wrote:
> 	One other advantage to knowing a language other than
> 	English.  Legal encryption.  << Unless a federal law

> 	encrypt it with PGP.  Would the cryptanalysts recognise
> 	the plain text, even if they had it?  >> 

Well, it's a special case of security by obscurity, isn't it?
If the language is something unusual, maybe that helps, but
if the language is too obscure, you may be identified
(by your ethnicity, your history, or your friends/community) as
a speaker of it.  I guess it does raise the economic cost
of "decipherment" some.  But many immigrant parents have learned
to their embarrassment that this kind of encoding doesn't
work too well %^)
 
The Navajo/Na Dene codetalkers (WW II) developed a real arcane jargon,
so I was told.  Maybe it was because the conditions of war were
completely different than their language's environment so they
were forced to invent words, or maybe they thought it was a good
idea, or whatever.  But I believe transcripts of their transmissions
are often mostly unintelligible to native Navajo speakers who weren't in
the know.