Earlier quoted context omitted.
All Cyrillic alphabets I am aware of do use diacritics. Й, Ў, Ё, Ґ..
Those letters use no diacritics. They are just letters.
These are the letters with diacritic marks.
Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
61–70 of 70 posts
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are those diacritics? I tend to think of them as separate letters just as å and ä are separate letters in Swedish. Of course, ё is usually written as е so I may well be wrong about that. This is different from è, é, ë, and ê in French where these are all e, but with different diacritics.
That's my impression of the statement as well. Even if technically they can be called diacritics it doesn't make much sense, not within this discussion. "Й" sounds absolutely unlike "и" and has pretty much no connection to it. "Ё" is a bit more tricky, but nevertheless — there's no another letter in Russian alphabet we could put umlaut on and get the result similar to putting umlaut on "е". I guess "ь" has more right…
Й is absolutely linked with и, and it arose as alphabetic distinction from it. It appeared and disappeared for certain periods; in Russian it reestablished as a letter only in 20th century. It is still commonly collated with И in indexes and dictionaries.
> "Ё" is a bit more tricky, but nevertheless — there's no another letter in Russian alphabet we could put umlaut on and get the result similar to putting umlaut on "е".
This is a bizarre distinction: diacritics in natural languages aren't supposed to be freely recombinable.
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I studied Russian for one semester when I was in middle school. I didn't learn very much and can remember even less: only a few simple words like яблоко (yabloko -- "apple"). But I can still sound out words in the Cyrillic alphabet without any difficulty. Learning another alphabetic script really doesn't take that much time or effort.
Same here, but in college. Got the Cyrillic alphabet in a couple weeks but it was by far the easiest part of a very difficult semester. I switched to French.
I've learnt azbuka purely from our national TV news (in central Europe), during the course of a year, and I was not trying at all - one day I realized I could read the sentence they showed (even though I couldn't understand it).
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aside from that, Spanish, Catalan, and Occitan have historically been written using both the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, by their respective user communities. Same for Yiddish, linguistically a Germanic language, which was often written using Hebrew script. Turkish seems to flip from Arabic to Latin and vice-versa every few decades. English written in Arabic script looks surprisingly natural to me.
Is there a simple algorithm for Latin letters to Arabic ones (meaning logic input letters, not shaped ones)? Or are there lots of complexities? My understanding of the Arabic language is that most vowels are omitted in writing, but that might be wrong.
Languages work more on holistic than algorithmic principles, so no, there is no algorithm, just a loose set of conventions that people may or may not be aware of and may or may not choose to follow.
The omission of vowels in writing is not a problem for someone familiar with the language¹, whether it be Arabic or Judeo-Provençal, although when writing non-Semitic languages, some letters may take a vocalic role.
¹ See for example modern "SMS-speak" or old Latin inscriptions, both of which make heavy use of abbreviation, yet are/were perfectly intelligible within their respective user communities.
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#65Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are the letters with diacritic marks.
No. іе -> ё, іі -> ї, иі -> й. оу -> ў. They are just shortened, to write less.
Well, ў for once is not a shorthand for оу (e.g. слаўны, ўзяў). But it's beside the point, all diacritics are used to "write less".
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you are of course right, that there exist such characters, Belorussian and Ukrainian are not all Cyrillic alphabets. But then, I'm also not an expert on all Slavic languages, I just remember when I was taught Russian and azbuka years ago, there was none and that caught my attention.
> Belorussian and Ukrainian are not all Cyrillic alphabets. LOL Please, tell us an «all Cyrillic» alphabet. Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodius maybe? Why Belorussian and Ukrainian are «not all Cyrillic alphabets»? (I'm Ukrainian).
There's the difference between 'some' and 'all'. Ukrainian and Belorussian are 'some', not 'all'.
Language may have some local specifics - Serbians have Ћ, which all other Cyrillic-using languages do not have. You have І instead of И, etc.
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#68This should certainly be adopted by official/serious projects (such as albums, movies, events, etc.) with Arabic names written in Latin script. The use of the "chat" form (e.g. "7" for "ح" and "3" for "ع") is just horrid and makes any serious work look childish.
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. іе -> ё, іі -> ї, иі -> й. оу -> ў. They are just shortened, to write less.
Well, ў for once is not a shorthand for оу (e.g. слаўны, ўзяў). But it's beside the point, all diacritics are used to "write less".
> But it's beside the point, all diacritics are used to "write less".
That may be the reason for misunderstanding. In my language (Slovak), diacritic is not used to "write less". It is used to express different sounds, i.e. s = с, š = ш, c = ц, č = ч.
Re: Show HN: Eskéndereyya – Learn How to Read and Write Arabic in Latin Script
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, ў for once is not a shorthand for оу (e.g. слаўны, ўзяў). But it's beside the point, all diacritics are used to "write less".
> But it's beside the point, all diacritics are used to "write less". That may be the reason for misunderstanding. In my language (Slovak), diacritic is not used to "write less". It is used to express different sounds, i.e. s = с, š = ш, c = ц, č = ч.
Sure, but just as you demonstrate you have fewer distinct characters when you use diacritic than when you don't. And arguing whether Е and Ё are same character with diacritics, or just different letters that happen to have diacritics by the virtue of canonizing in alphabet is really splitting hairs. They serve same purpose, in the same circumstances, with the same visual arrangement. Quacks like a duck etc.