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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

#341

Post by roman_g »

apaprocki wrote: post #238
pc2g4d wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be a mental barrier to even trying, but Cyrillic is pretty easy to learn and then retain the knowledge. Pronunciation of it is straightforward. Personally, I find it much harder to decipher Polish pronunciation in realtime in my head because it uses latin letters that I already associate with certain sounds. (e.g. swapped w and v)

Polish is a Slavic language and Latin letters are not suitable for it. I'm Russian who speaks English and a bit French and I can understand some Polish words (common roots etc.) like dobrze, dzień dobry, wiedzieć, znać, but I have no idea how to write them (looked up this words in Google Translate).

P.S. And I like to play Witcher III with Polish voices and Russian subtitles.

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

#342

Post by ajuc »

roman_g wrote: post #341
apaprocki wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a mental barrier to even trying, but Cyrillic is pretty easy to learn and then retain the knowledge. Pronunciation of it is straightforward. Personally, I find it much harder to decipher Polish pronunciation in realtime in my head because it uses latin letters that I already associate with certain sounds. (e.g. swapped w and v)

Polish is a Slavic language and Latin letters are not suitable for it. I'm Russian who speaks English and a bit French and I can understand some Polish words (common roots etc.) like dobrze, dzień dobry, wiedzieć, znać, but I have no idea how to write them (looked up this words in Google Translate). P.S. And I like to play Witcher III with Polish voices and Russian subtitles.

Most Slavic languages use Latin as primary script. Polish took a few questionable decisions compared to other western/southern Slavic languages (not switching from sz/cz to s^/c^ for example), but it's almost fully phonetic and pretty consistent. I'd argue Polish pronunciation is easier to learn than Russian, because we have no movable stress (we always stress the penultimate syllable - easy).

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

#343

Post by konart »

everdev wrote: post #184
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…

In Crimea and Georgia, Russia used the argument of defending Russian speaking populations to justify military intervention. Perhaps, they see the Russian language as a threat to their independence?

>Perhaps, they see the Russian language as a threat to their independence?

Maybe, but changin the alphabet for your own language won't change the fact that many people are still speaking russian and many people are actually russian nationals.

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

#344

Post by ajuc »

interfixus wrote: post #264
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…

You are getting a lot of disagreeing comments, but I do believe you're right. No, it isn't that big a deal to pick up a new alphabet, especially not a closely related one like anything in the Latin/Greek/Cyrillic family. But yes, it does make a difference in the absorbtion of a new language whether you are somehow submerged in it, and can run the osmosis routine on it. Having had peek access to all Western European l…

I'm Polish, I can understand 80% when Ukrainians speak without ever learning it (and about 50% of Russian).

But only few years ago I've learnt cyrylic script (by accident, when I was in L'viv for a week ;) ). It's not hard, but it takes time, and I still have to say each letter in my mind when I read cyrylic, it's awkward and takes a long time compared to Latin-based foreign languages.

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

#345

Post by saiya-jin »

rauanm wrote: post #334

(Disclaimer: I'm kazakh and passively pro-switch) I'm gonna ignore political aspects of the switch and focus on pseudo-scientific side. (my personal views and thinking) Except for words and phrases adopted from arabic or sort of persian (also arabic, but 'persianised'), our language is agglutinative and mostly follows vowel harmony. (that might not tell you much, but basically means we don't need any special letters…

As a person attempting to learn french atm, I definitely don't share your admiration for french - it's badly designed language with tons of hacks to make it somehow work, meaning tons of rules 'just because' and megatons of exceptions to them, again 'just because'. Not much logic, you have to memorize it all, listening for beginners sucks simply because they don't pronounce a lot of stuff present in the words, so you 'just need to know what is that and why its that and not that'.

In many places that have both english and french as semi-official languages (ie Seychelles), very few prefer french - saying it's too hard. The foreign people on +-C2 level I spoke to disagreed it's a 'beautiful language' or 'language of love' - there are much better candidates for those (at my level I can't judge that, but listening to common talk of people out there it's just normal talk with a lot of swearing).

I wish everybody would just adapt english, and keep whatever weird stuff they have as second one - medieval languages are a curiosity, nothing more. In real life you need to share information, ask and be efficient. No place for some stupid nationalistic emotions in 2018 in modern society.

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

#346

Post by konart »

PunchTornado wrote: post #134
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…

Well compared to how Russia treats its minorities, i.e. Tatars in Crimea, I think Kazakhstan does a better job.

And how do we treat them? Genuine interest here.

I spent 16 years in Chuvashia, accasionly visiting Tatarstan and I have to say that I've never seen any bad treatment over there. Chuvash and Tatar langauges were always mandatory in schools, all text in the streets in both languages, local holidays and so on. Chuvash products were and are always on the shelves in Moscow stores. Same for Tatarstan.

At the same time I remember quite well how russians were treated in Tudjikistan (I was born in Dushanbe) back in the late 80s before thje civil war. This is one of the reasons some of minorities originatin from our asian ex-republics and sometimes North Caucasus get different treatment (usually from older generations).

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

#347

Post by snovv_crash »

School-Cotton wrote: post #293
saryant wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What isn't clear is how you spell the word after hearing it.

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

#348

Post by almaty »

konart wrote: post #346
PunchTornado wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well compared to how Russia treats its minorities, i.e. Tatars in Crimea, I think Kazakhstan does a better job.

And how do we treat them? Genuine interest here. I spent 16 years in Chuvashia, accasionly visiting Tatarstan and I have to say that I've never seen any bad treatment over there. Chuvash and Tatar langauges were always mandatory in schools, all text in the streets in both languages, local holidays and so on. Chuvash products were and are always on the shelves in Moscow stores. Same for Tatarstan. At the same time I r…

I visited Tatarstan recently, and as a kazakh I find that they have same problem as we do here in Kazakhstan. Tatars who don't speak their own language or poorly(we call them shala).

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

#349

Post by emodendroket »

disordinary wrote: post #229
emodendroket wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good chance whoever you find will have halting, stilted, or limited English. But that's a little different than the situation you'd encounter if you tried, for instance, speaking Japanese outside of Japan.

Maybe in the cities, but it can still take time and you're often in the street trying to find someone to act as a translator, disrupting their day. It's a completely different proposition if you're somewhere rural.

I mean, sure, that's true.

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

#350

Post by nealdt »

gnulinux wrote: post #244
zokier wrote: post #27

Did they seriously go with dotless i, the character that is endless source of fun for any case mapping code. Would í have really been so bad? All the other accented characters are using ´ ffs.

Used dotless, dotted i all my life never had any problems. What endless source of fun are you talking about?

We had a bit of fun with the mapping of the two versions of 'i' here: https://handsonturkish.com/typing-turkish-alphabet/
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