At 10:29 AM -0800 1/31/98, Tim May wrote:
But what mattered is that, for the level of security needed on the battlefield, the system was "essentially secure" against Japanese translation. Sure, in time the Japanese could have found some experts on Navajo, could have trained their own code talker translators, etc. But they didn't have this time. (And if we posit "enough time," then the U.S. military would have had enough time to drop the Navajo code talkers and replace them with Ebonics code talkers. Dat be da jive, mo fo.)
When I was in China, I noted that French accented English was "essentially secure" against understanding by our Chinese hosts. We Americans did a lot of English to English translation on that trip. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Market research shows the | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | average customer has one | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | teat and one ball. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA