"G" and "g" are the same letter. They started off as stylistic forms of a unicameral alphabet. Over time they took on separate meanings, and now we have a bicameral alphabet, where the two forms have different code points.
Of course, over the last 2000 years, we've developed rules for how to use them. "I was reading a nice book on Polish polish on the way from Reading to Nice" contains three pairs of words where the capitalization changes the meaning and pronunciation. (In simplified form, "What do you know about polish?" is different than "What do you know about Polish?")
If there were a simple rule to specify capitalization, eg, only the first letter of a sentence, and it were easy to detect the start of a sentence, then the alternate you might say it's pointless to have both "g" and "G"; we should have only a single form and let the local setup determine how to display it. (Something like the Greek sigma, which has the form ς when used at the end of a word, though Unicode has them as two different glyphs.)
In Someone's nice example, it's easy to think of how the two divergent forms of 'g' might take on their own meaning. Perhaps the Americans have decided that double-story g was the sign of true patriots, and that single-story g was for traitors. (Akin to the shibboleth of how to say 'H' in Northern Ireland; aitch was Protestant, haitch was Catholic, and using the wrong version could get you into trouble.) Perhaps they started to use the new 'g' preference as a currency symbol, in the way that £ is the same letter as L, from the Latin libra pondo.
The premise of Someone's hypothetical was to explain to theon144 why it might be both hard and important to guess. The hypothetical assumed that the difference already existed. It echos the larger context of Han unification that com2kid started, but with an example that's a lot easier for native English speakers to understand.
So while I agree that they haven't yet diverged, that's outside the context of the hypothetical, where they have diverged.
That's wrong. Someone's hypothetical had no diverging meaning involved, only a stylistic choice in the presentation of the same letter.
And he is still wrong when it comes to the claimed necessity to "guess".
The user has set up his system correctly. "Guessing" only comes into play if you want to force your stylistic variation on others.
And that is obviously a bad idea, for all the reasons called out before, like familiarity and readability.
Let's not kid ourselves. When it comes to Han unification opposition there is mostly one issue at play: plain racism. "Our holy script shall not be defiled by those dirty bastards". And that works in all directions.
"G" and "g" are the same letter. They started off as stylistic forms of a unicameral alphabet. Over time they took on separate meanings, and now we have a bicameral alphabet, where the two forms have different code points.
Of course, over the last 2000 years, we've developed rules for how to use them. "I was reading a nice book on Polish polish on the way from Reading to Nice" contains three pairs of words where the capitalization changes the meaning and pronunciation. (In simplified form, "What do you know about polish?" is different than "What do you know about Polish?")
If there were a simple rule to specify capitalization, eg, only the first letter of a sentence, and it were easy to detect the start of a sentence, then the alternate you might say it's pointless to have both "g" and "G"; we should have only a single form and let the local setup determine how to display it. (Something like the Greek sigma, which has the form ς when used at the end of a word, though Unicode has them as two different glyphs.)
In Someone's nice example, it's easy to think of how the two divergent forms of 'g' might take on their own meaning. Perhaps the Americans have decided that double-story g was the sign of true patriots, and that single-story g was for traitors. (Akin to the shibboleth of how to say 'H' in Northern Ireland; aitch was Protestant, haitch was Catholic, and using the wrong version could get you into trouble.) Perhaps they started to use the new 'g' preference as a currency symbol, in the way that £ is the same letter as L, from the Latin libra pondo.