Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#81

Post by zhengyi13 »

presentation wrote: post #65
ppseafield wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ge'ez and its adaptations are abugidas, which means one symbol is a full syllable. For Amharic there are over 200 individual symbols. [0] That would be a big keyboard! It does seem that most in-use languages in Africa are alphabets or abjads, which could be adapted to keyboards. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script#Ge%CA%BDez_w... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa

Would these African abugidas be served well with a keyboard like the mobile 10-key Japanese swipe keyboards? [1] Japanese has much fewer sounds so it all fits in a pretty small package but it works so much better and faster than romaji in that context. Maybe it could be adapted with slightly more keys and complex swipe patterns, like up then right/left etc (it looks like for ge’ez at least, such patterns might actual…

It'd be nice, but I don't think that model would be workable here.

Somewhat oversimplified, but the two Japanese syllabaries hiragana and katakana are around 50 distinct characters each, so that a core 3x4 board of "keys" responding to tap(-and-maybe-swipe (up|down|left|right)) will give you roughly the full set of each. Generally, tapping the key designates the consonant; swiping (or not) gives you the vowel. There are 5 vowels, and roughly 10 consonants. There's a couple of other symbols added on as modifiers for voicing, etc. Again, oversimplified, but that's roughly it.

(Side note, and I'm guessing here, but I suspect this model probably evolved from T9 texting)

From a brief inspection of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script, the Ge'ez syllabary/abugida (used e.g. for Amharic) needs 6-8 vowels across at least 26 consonants, and then some more combinations for labialization/velarization, and then some more for application in specific other languages.

Following the Japanese model, that'd be a pretty big grid :) Phonetic input seems a more workable model to me at least.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#82

Post by tsimionescu »

kragen wrote: post #73
saylisteins wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type…

this was the inspiration for http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish , in which i would write 'bro, ai dj7st wok 7p en h4d e s1k br3kfest', because it turns out that english also has a lot of specific sounds that don't have a direct equivalent in the latin script, and i think the solution people have been using for 1000 years in english is a lot worse than the solution arabic-speakers commonly use (unfortunate…

Shouldn't that be "q3t"? Or do some English speakers really pronounce "that" with the vowel in "the"?

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#83

Post by kragen »

tsimionescu wrote: post #82
kragen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this was the inspiration for http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish , in which i would write 'bro, ai dj7st wok 7p en h4d e s1k br3kfest', because it turns out that english also has a lot of specific sounds that don't have a direct equivalent in the latin script, and i think the solution people have been using for 1000 years in english is a lot worse than the solution arabic-speakers commonly use (unfortunate…

Shouldn't that be "q3t"? Or do some English speakers really pronounce "that" with the vowel in "the"?

most do in that context, though not in cases like this sentence, where 'that' takes a heavy stress and therefore doesn't undergo vowel reduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_and_vowel_reduction_in_...

(a shortcoming of that article, and often of linguistic studies of english in general, is that indian english has more speakers than either american english or british english, but gets rather short shrift in it; in particular, i don't know how consistently vowel reduction is applied in indian english, and its prosody is very notably different)

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#84

Post by blacksmith_tb »

saylisteins wrote: post #33
crazygringo wrote: post #28

I've visited all the links and honestly still don't have the slightest idea what this input method does, or exactly what problem it's trying to solve, or why it's a good solution to the problem. I found the video [1] but it has no audio or explanations at all. I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods, rather than wanting to input your desired character directly. For languages like Chinese I under…

> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type…

I like the 3 for the 'ayn (since it's the same shape, only backwards). My Darija is poor, what's the 9 standing in for in "fe9t"? Is the 7 in "wa7d" a ح ?

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#85

Post by saylisteins »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #84
saylisteins wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type…

I like the 3 for the 'ayn (since it's the same shape, only backwards). My Darija is poor, what's the 9 standing in for in "fe9t"? Is the 7 in "wa7d" a ح ?

I forgot the 7! yes you're correct it's for ح

9 is for ق

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#86

Post by blacksmith_tb »

saylisteins wrote: post #85
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the 3 for the 'ayn (since it's the same shape, only backwards). My Darija is poor, what's the 9 standing in for in "fe9t"? Is the 7 in "wa7d" a ح ?

I forgot the 7! yes you're correct it's for ح 9 is for ق

Ah, qaaf, that totally makes sense (same shape again, I guess you could say the same for faaf too, but since the sounds are the same 'f' works fine already).

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#87

Post by lifthrasiir »

j16sdiz wrote: post #79
lifthrasiir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of direct keyboard layouts doesn't always imply that they would be popular though. I think this happens fairly regularly around the world and the only major exception I'm aware of is Korean where no phonetic input methods were widespread at any moment.

Korean is phonetic.

Not exactly, though. And Japanese kana should be phonetic enough that a direct input method should be used for kana, but the dominant input method there is Romaji, i.e. typing Latin characters to get both kana and kanji. So that is not a defining factor.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#88

Post by kragen »

MrJohz wrote: post #76
MisterTea wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> well, perhaps the most famous african writing system has a fairly large inventory of over 1000 characters, but it hasn't been widely used for about 2000 years due to religious persecution Which is ...?

I believe they're referring to hieroglyphics, although I didn't know the story about religious persecution and would be interested in some context there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_ancient_Egyptian_re...

> Where the pagan religion of the Graeco-Roman world accepted the influence and integration of native Egyptian deities and practices into its tradition, Christianity was not nearly as accepting. The strict monotheism of the latter was in stark opposition to the freeform syncretism of paganism. Local Christians engaged in campaigns of proselytism and iconoclasm that contributed even more to the erosion of traditional religion. In AD 333, the number of Egyptian bishops is estimated to be just under 100; the Christianisation of the Roman Empire itself, and edicts by Christian emperors in the third and fourth centuries AD compounded the decline, and the last known inscription[16] in hieroglyphics (regarded by some as a symbol of the decline of the religion itself due to their close ties) dates from AD 394, known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom. It is located at the temple of Isis on the island of Philae, in Upper Egypt believed to be one of the final remaining places of worship of native Egyptian religion.[17] By this time, Egyptian religion was largely confined to the south of the country and to the distant, isolated Siwa Oasis in the west.[18] This century also saw significant expansion of institutionalised Christianity into Egypt, but adherence to the old religion on a smaller, more local scale was still prevalent.[19] Philae is also the site of the final demotic inscription, dating to AD 452. The temple was closed in AD 553 by Byzantine emperor Justinian I,[20] who ruled from 527 to 565. As official temples fell into disrepair, and religious structures across Egypt declined, the religion gradually faded away.[21]

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#89

Post by trompetenaccoun »

saylisteins wrote: post #35
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #4

Apart from Ethiopia, are there any places where they don't use either Latin or Arabic scripts in everyday life? There are technically a whole bunch of alphabets of course but they aren't used much afaik. Maybe the Tuareg script? Is that used by people in North Africa beyond bilingual signs?

North african here! For Moroccan arabic dialect, we mostly use latin alphabets and some numbers to replace some sounds/letters

Very interesting. Is that to avoid confusion with standard Arabic?

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#90

Post by saylisteins »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #89
saylisteins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North african here! For Moroccan arabic dialect, we mostly use latin alphabets and some numbers to replace some sounds/letters

Very interesting. Is that to avoid confusion with standard Arabic?

see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41428987
Post reply on HN