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Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

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Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#171

Post by _delirium »

azangru wrote: post #147
kolinko wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that there is little political/military threat from France towards Canada. I'm Polish, and thanks to the latin alphabet we're using, the country has it much easier to be close to the west. People have easier time learning English, and it eases the communication a lot. If we were using cyrylic, the country would be naturally leaning more towards Russia - which, considering the history, wouldn't be go…

> People have easier time learning English, and it eases the communication a lot Is this really so? Are you sure having a different alphabet would make it harder for people to learn a western language? I am Russian, and I can safely say that pretty much every literate adult in Russia who has at least a basic school education can read Latin letters just fine, because there is no way around it; the alphabet is taught a…

That's also true in Greece. Almost everyone can read the Latin alphabet fine, in addition to the Greek alphabet. The exceptions are mainly older people. It's only 26 letters and it's absolutely everywhere nowadays, in addition to being taught formally in schools, so it's not really a big problem to pick it up. Learning the actual languages to a good level is another story of course, but the alphabet itself isn't the difficult part.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#172

Post by gajomi »

cpursley wrote: post #164
aethant wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should visit Ukraine. Ha

Visited Ukraine (Kyiv) last summer. I spoke a little Russian with them; nobody seemed to mind.

Honest question from a less than A1 level Russian student... Is there really a significant difference between the two? I have no doubt that there is different vocabulary etc. and of course that there are political reasons to count them as different languages but are they effectively mutually intelligible?

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#173

Post by _l0oo »

PunchTornado wrote: post #129

Isn't it better/easier to type at a keyboard using a latin alphabet rather than Cyrilic? There was once a guy trying to type Russian on my computer and he had to go to a website to type it. While when using a latin alphabet you can easily type Romanian with a US or French keyboard or whatever latin based keyboard. This benefit is huge.

Created an account just to comment on this.

I live in an English-speaking country but know Russian. Because of where I live, and because the Internet is like 99% English, I type in US-English layout 99.9% of the time.

When the time comes to write in Russian I just have no muscle memory since I never use it, and it becomes a really slow process.

An interesting tool is transliteration, where you can type a Latin letter or combination that sounds roughly the same as a Cyrillic letter, and the tool converts it to the Cyrillic equivalent for you. I use this: http://translit.net.

However I haven't noticed anything wrong with the Cyrillic layout by any means. I'm just not used to it. Maybe the guy you saw was in the same position. This is the case for most Russians who live in countries that use the Latin alphabet. It shouldn't reflect poorly on the Russian keyboard layout.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#174

Post by jpatokal »

blattimwind wrote: post #155
eCa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of latin-alphabet languages have letters that don’t exist in English. Czech, for example, has 42 letters[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_orthography

By that logic German uses a thirty letter alphabet, but no one says so.

Does too. Finnish, for example, has a 29-letter alphabet, because diacritics count separately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_orthography

That said, letter with diacritic vs separate letter is a surprisingly fraught topic, the same character can be considered a letter in one language and not a letter in another. Look up collation rules in European languages for a real nightmare...

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#175

Post by disordinary »

yosito wrote: post #162
gsich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrillic is not hard to learn.

Most people don't learn a new alphabet just to go on vacation though, so this change will remove a lot of friction.

You're just backing up the stereotype of an English speaker unfortunately.

Cyrilic is extremely easy to learn, you can do it in under an hour, and even in Russia most places that tourists interact will have latin and cyrilic versions of the same text (on the metro, etc).

Countries like China are tougher to travel in, but it's not exactly difficult.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#176

Post by disordinary »

jacquesm wrote: post #63
jsgo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak English only. I find it much easier to translate either online or via English-to-X dictionary if the other language uses Latin script. Could it be done? I'm sure it is possible, but without previously interacting with them, not easily. I'll say this, for work I travel to Montreal at moderately regular intervals. Because everything is in French, it makes it a bit harder, but I can either: a) infer based off si…

> I speak English only. That's the problem right there. Speaking only one language is super limiting.

Not to mention the proven cognitive benefits and reduction in things like Alzheimers when you learn a second language.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#177

Post by jpatokal »

kornakiewicz wrote: post #113
Semirhage wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hungarian (and Finnish) are unique cases; you haven’t identified a pattern, but the Uralic exceptions. It’s a language family only 25 million people on Earth speak, it is the proverbial exception proving the rule.

I've moved to Finland four months ago. There are not so many (indo)-european patterns you notice right there, although they exist. Some words are tricky like "appelsin" - "orange" or "matka" - in my mother tongue "mother" ("travel"). Needless to say,I would be much more lost if alphabet were not latin. Or if Finland were not officially bilingual, so most useful information is available also in germanic Swedish.

Appelsiini is from the German dialectal Apfelsine, so it actually is an Indo-European loan.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#178

Post by emodendroket »

disordinary wrote: post #175
yosito wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't learn a new alphabet just to go on vacation though, so this change will remove a lot of friction.

You're just backing up the stereotype of an English speaker unfortunately. Cyrilic is extremely easy to learn, you can do it in under an hour, and even in Russia most places that tourists interact will have latin and cyrilic versions of the same text (on the metro, etc). Countries like China are tougher to travel in, but it's not exactly difficult.

> Countries like China are tougher, but it's not exactly difficult.

Uh, no, that's definitely wrong. Learning Chinese script is a very difficult and time-consuming task. Literacy in Japanese requires about 2,000 characters; literacy in Chinese requires about 5,000.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#179

Post by [deleted] »

gajomi wrote: post #172
cpursley wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visited Ukraine (Kyiv) last summer. I spoke a little Russian with them; nobody seemed to mind.

Honest question from a less than A1 level Russian student... Is there really a significant difference between the two? I have no doubt that there is different vocabulary etc. and of course that there are political reasons to count them as different languages but are they effectively mutually intelligible?

[deleted]

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#180

Post by vatueil »

kolinko wrote: post #137
vbezhenar wrote: post #17

I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…

The difference is that there is little political/military threat from France towards Canada. I'm Polish, and thanks to the latin alphabet we're using, the country has it much easier to be close to the west. People have easier time learning English, and it eases the communication a lot. If we were using cyrylic, the country would be naturally leaning more towards Russia - which, considering the history, wouldn't be go…

Using a Latin alphabet might help Kazakhstan interface with the West. However, I think the more direct reason is that a Latin alphabet would facilitate links with Turkey and other Turkish speakers who use Latin alphabets.

Either way the move away from Cyrillic may loosen ties to Russia, but the fact that Turkey uses a Latin alphabet is a stronger motivation than any hopes of building bridges with the West. The latter, if it happens, would just be a bonus.

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