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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

#391

Post by branko_d »

ajuc wrote: post #339
fusiongyro wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Latin alphabet is particularly well-suited to English either. We pay for C, but it never does anything K or S don't already do. Yet, we cannot be bothered to buy letters for 'sh' and 'th', digraphs which cover two sounds apiece and are extremely common.

DISCLAIMER - rant below. The problem isn't Latin, the problem is how you use it. Nobody forced you to sometimes use C when you mean K. There are many languages where these letters don't overlap. Nobody forced you to use both PH and F for the same sound. Why even use PH? It's not like anybody cares if that particular word was stolen from Greek or not. And if some people do - they can check it on wikipedia. Make it all…

It strikes me that Windows is full of idiosyncrasies and historical artifacts (largely to keep it compatible with existing applications), yet is very successful and widely used - like English!

I guess keeping compatibility over long periods of time can have a lot of value, for OSes and languages alike...

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

#392

Post by emodendroket »

kolpa wrote: post #210
klez wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you can do transliterations doesn't make it a good idea. > French (accents can be dropped) What? No! See for example https://french.stackexchange.com/a/24410

English has non-homophobic homonyms too. We just carry on regardless.

There's no real justification for "C," sinse every instanse of it kan be replased with S or K. Nevertheless, I don't think you would konsent to use a kharakter set that didn't inklude it.

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

#393

Post by disordinary »

Yizahi wrote: post #366
disordinary wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's hard to understand how people view their ethincity as different from their citizenship for people from countries with a colonial heritage. People who are of Russian ethnicity but live in another country like the Ukraine, or Latvia, or Lithuania, or Estonia, or any number of other former Soviet or Russian Empire states often consider themselves as Russian, they also often feel like they're marginalised in…

Lolwhat?!! Are you even aware about state of Russians in Ukraine before invasion and especially in Crimea? They were aggressively removing teaching Ukrainian language in Crimea for the last decades (same in Donbass) to the point of nonexistence. Whole Ukraine was predominantly Russian speaking and maybe still is. And as for "racism" - after invading 4th independent country in last 30 years and occupying its territori…

No doubt, all I was saying is I can understand why the Russian speaking population would want to leave. Multiple wrongs don't make a right.

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

#394

Post by madeel »

kingofhdds wrote: post #383
madeel wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how it is. Chinese/Japanese regardless of it's character hasn't stopped them from carving our respect or economic might the world. So liberalization on an idea for the sake of liberalization is deem to go nowhere.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to communicate. What liberalization? This comment is neither answer to the mine, nor continuation of your own above.

liberalization: How liberals seems to interpret adoption of western systems as cure to all problems. In this very case latinization.

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

#395

Post by gnulinux »

jwilk wrote: post #319
gnulinux wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very strange question. In English you get i. In Turkish or Azeri you get ı. There is a very fundamental difference between ı and i and basically no native speaker mixes them up. When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I. The rule is basic: ı I and i İ. No magic going on.

> When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I That's part of the aforementioned fun. Another part is bugs like this: https://bugs.debian.org/579324

I mean, when you're learning a different language, isn't it normal to make mistakes? Why should other languages optimize for English learning?

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

#396

Post by gnulinux »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #373
gnulinux wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very strange question. In English you get i. In Turkish or Azeri you get ı. There is a very fundamental difference between ı and i and basically no native speaker mixes them up. When you're learning English, for example, you mix up and write capital İ instead of I. The rule is basic: ı I and i İ. No magic going on.

You don't always have the luxury of knowing the language of the text you're processing. You may well encounter both English and Turkish words in the same text stream, and you don't always have the means to distinguish between them. It's the same problem with Han unification. It's fine if you have 100% Japanese, Chinese or Korean and set your font accordingly. But it all breaks down when you try to mix two or more lan…

This might be true but Turkish alphabet was designed in late 1920s when computers barely existed. Maybe they could update it now? I find it hard to believe they would do it though.

EDIT: I guess you could make a case about Kazakh alphabet not inheriting this feature. But having written systems for both Turkish and English I don't find this a huge deal. I guess this alphabet reform has mostly nationalistic motivation and Kazakhs might have wanted to fit their alphabet to similar languages like Turkish or Azeri for which the alphabet is tested and we know it works.

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

#397

Post by skissane »

rangibaby wrote: post #297
skissane wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's still three choices, how does one choose which one?

Back in the 1980s, Japan was having a major economic boom, and it was thought that everyone should learn Japanese. Since then, the Japanese economy has been rather sluggish, and now people don't think that so much any more. China is booming, so now people think they should learn Chinese instead. (Although, I think learning Japanese is easier for native English-speakers than learning Chinese–no tones to worry about.)

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

#398

Post by Fins »

kbenson wrote: post #279
azangru wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. It may be a barrier, sure, but it is a microscopic barrier (33 letters, mostly Greek-based, many in common with the Latin alphabet) compared to the complexity of a language (any language) itself. Would you say that Americans would more readily pick up Danish? Or Finnish? Or Latvian? Or Polish? Just as a side note: I once had to take a cours…

> Would you say that Americans would more readily pick up Danish? Or Finnish? Or Latvian? Or Polish? I would say that Americans (and people in general) are more likely to attempt taking up those languages, if given a fairly equal choice between them and others that also require learning a new alphabet. For the same reason (although on a lesser scale) that they might shy away from Chinese or Japanese. It's one more hu…

Are you saying that "people in general" == "people whose native alphabet is Latin-based"?

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

#399

Post by kbenson »

Fins wrote: post #398
kbenson wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you say that Americans would more readily pick up Danish? Or Finnish? Or Latvian? Or Polish? I would say that Americans (and people in general) are more likely to attempt taking up those languages, if given a fairly equal choice between them and others that also require learning a new alphabet. For the same reason (although on a lesser scale) that they might shy away from Chinese or Japanese. It's one more hu…

Are you saying that "people in general" == "people whose native alphabet is Latin-based"?

Eh, sort of. I kind of got mixed up between the point of saying "I think people in general are more likely to attempt a language with less obvious initial hurdles given a relatively equal set of benefits from learning them (to their understanding)" and a statement about those languages in particular that follows along those lines.

So, for your proposed equivalence, I think my original statement is true, and I also think the more general statement above is likely true in a wider sense.

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

#400

Post by dang »

Mike90 wrote: post #330
shmerl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't move away from Russia as a country. Russia pretty much caused Georgia and Ukraine to do it, thanks to the absurd aggression of the Russian mafia government. So surely you can, if there is enough will for it. First major step should be reducing economic dependency.

"...Russia pretty much caused Georgia and Ukraine thanks to the absurd aggression of the Russian mafia government..." whatever you say western troll https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/12/pushing-nato-to-russia...

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