Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

pc2g4d wrote: post #168

azangru wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. I can only imagine it makes Kazakh even more daunting. I don't think Cyrillic letters pervade American culture in quite the same way that Latin letters pervade Russian culture, so it's not quite the same.

> The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans.

Is this based on your imagination or do you have some source?

I have seen several complete idiots try (and completely fail) to learn Russian, but they all got the alphabet down perfectly in a few days.

It’s almost completely impossible for me to imagine you thinking this if you have made any serious effort to learn Russian.

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

#292

Post by smcl » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:05 AM UTC

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?

I was surprised when a normally-Russian-speaking Ukrainian colleague of mine mixed up months when trying to communicate in Ukrainian with another normally-Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian - talking about something occurring in October but using "Listopad" (which I figured from Czech was actually November). I'd guess that there's enough similarities that you could have a reasonable conversation with someone when you know Russian and the other speaks Ukrainian ... but occasionally you'll encounter words which are just completely unintelligible and not even close.

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

#293

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

saryant wrote: post #254

ahakki wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learing to pronounce French words is rather easy. English is a huge mess.

I don't think it's obvious that 3 of 7 letters in "mangent" are silent (as in "ils mangent").

Yes it is obvious once you learn French.

It’s usually (not always) clear how a word is pronounced in French if you know its spelling.

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

#294

Post by chaoky » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

fusiongyro wrote: post #265

FRex wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that bad. They've added 9 of their own to 33 of Russian Cyrillic for a total of 42 when using it for Kazakh. Now they're gonna add 6 diacritics and two digraphs, that's much less already. Compare this to even Polish that has: 1. 9 additional letters: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż. 2. Technically no x, v nor q, but everyone knows their sound so casually or artistically you can use them, just not in 100% or…

The source of the diacritical mess in Polish is that it is a Slavic language rendered in a Latin orthography. Cyrillic is a good start for Slavic languages. Latin is a good start for Romance languages. Arabic is a good start for Semitic languages. When you start from an orthographic base of a related language, you don't need as much of these shenanigans. Persian, by the way, is in the same boat as Polish: a language…

Absolutely not. Czech orthography is beautiful. Latin letters, clear featural marking of palatal consonants (č, š, ž, ď, ť) and simple marking of vowel length (á). The spelling is even morphophonemic!

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

#295

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #219

ahakki wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learing to pronounce French words is rather easy. English is a huge mess.

Really? French (there are quite a few of them - think CA for example) has just as many idiosyncrasies as English when you really get in to it.

This is categorically wrong. French spelling has absolutely nowhere near as many idiosyncrasies as English spelling.

It is totally impossible to predict how an unfamiliar written word is pronounced in English, but quite easy in French (barring some ambiguous situations like if a noun ends in “s”.)

By the way, I don’t know what CA means. If you’re referring to the French word “ça”, its pronunciation is completely regular and predictable given the spelling.

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

#296

Post by sbmthakur » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

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…

I don't know how that helps. If the idea was getting closer to the West, then they could've promoted the use of English(as we have done in India).

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

#297

Post by rangibaby » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #205

emodendroket wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to pick just one, English is a pretty good choice, because there are few places you can go where absolutely nobody speaks it.

As an English speaker, one problem with learning another language is that there isn't an obvious choice of which other language to learn. Whereas, if you are from a non-English speaking background, then English seems the most obvious choice of language to learn in today's world. I think that is worse here in Australia than in some other parts of the English-speaking world. I mean, in Canada, the obvious choice is Fre…

Chinese, Japanese, or Malay?

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

#298

Post by simias » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

pc2g4d wrote: post #168

azangru wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. I can only imagine it makes Kazakh even more daunting. I don't think Cyrillic letters pervade American culture in quite the same way that Latin letters pervade Russian culture, so it's not quite the same.

Do you have some data to back that up or are you guessing? I studied Russian for about a year and frankly the alphabet was a very tiny hurdle. Sure, it's a little more work than learning a language using the Latin alphabet but you can teach yourself the Cyrillic alphabet from scratch in a few hours (longer if you add the rather terrible Cyrillic cursive, but it's not as important nowadays in my experience).

IMO it's really insignificant compared to the barrier of learning all the vocabulary (it's not like romance languages where every other word is a cognate, plus the stress patterns in Russian are harder to predict), the vastly different grammar (case system, perfective/imperfective etc...) and the cultural barriers.

My Russian is abysmal and I haven't practiced in years but I just went to lenta.ru and was able to read just fine. I don't understand 99% of it of course but I can read the letters reasonably quickly.

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

#299

Post by sbmthakur » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:16 AM UTC

vatueil wrote: post #180

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…

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…

I think this is the most appropriate reason. They could've promoted the use of English if getting closer to the West is the aim.

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

#300

Post by ithkuil » Thu, Apr 26, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

evincarofautumn wrote: post #223

titanix2 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more likely the problem of these people or the American education system because learning a new alphabet as close as the cyrillic is only a matter of days for a motivated person. It’s even the closest to the Latin one (with Greek), not something like the Davanagari with complex ligature rules or that looks totally foreign like thai or that have multiples letter forms like arabic.

It also depends on your learning style when it comes to languages. For someone like me, who learns languages more aurally (listening and speaking) than visually (reading and writing), writing systems aren’t that hard to learn but they’re hard to master in terms of reading at normal speed. With any text in a Latin alphabet, in any language, show me the phonology of the language and I can read it aloud at normal speed…

I noticed that it's very hard for people to "remap" the sound of the letter to match phonology rules of a target language. I.e. the familiarity of the alphabet while helping a bit it also works against "listening" and "getting" the actual sounds.

I remember an Irish guy who was speaking pretty fluent Italian mispronouncing the word "firma" making it sound like English "firm" instead of "feerma", and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen if he had to learn a new alphabet. As part of learning the new alphabet he would match that gliphy with the "ee" sound with less chances of associating it with the English sounds just because of similar spelling.