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Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

bbc.com

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

#411

Post by gandhium »

vkou wrote: post #384
gandhium wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would this help with any kind of Russian insurgency, espionage, etc. at all? According to the article there is 20% of ethnic Russians and more fluent Russian speakers (94%) than Kazakh speakers (74%). Look at the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Russia was succeeded to instigate an insurgency there mostly because people there were heavily influenced by Russian propaganda. And I assume after those events Kazakhstan h…

Crimea happened, in large part because Ukraine was moving away from Russia. This is playing with fire.

Crimea happened because Russia thought they can do anything and without repercussions.

There's no protections from that kind of behaviour.

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

#413

Post by Fins »

mantas wrote: post #408
Fins wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's true. But then I tried to learn at least "please" and "thank you" even when I was visiting in the 80's. It does actually seem that it's the same people who would've refused to speak Russian before who are perfectly happy to do it now. Not that I would blame them at all, just find it amusing really. Mantas I know is ~40+ years old, so probably not because of a movie.

> But then I tried to learn at least "please" and "thank you" even when I was visiting in the 80's. Which already puts you way above local Russian-speaking population. We appreciate that. A lot. > It does actually seem that it's the same people who would've refused to speak Russian before who are perfectly happy to do it now. Not that I would blame them at all, just find it amusing really. It's kinda natural. People…

Thanks. Really, I can't understand how wouldn't you learn at least conversational language if you live in a country where it is spoken all the time...

I have a feeling that if not Ukraine, then something else would have happened anyway.

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

#414

Post by madeel »

kingofhdds wrote: post #409
madeel wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now I see the meaning of your commentary, thanks! Still, I don't see how it could be related to what I wrote here, or even to what you wrote opening the thread. Also, let me tell you: trying to explain every phenomena in terms of liberal conspiracy is rather unproductive. The world is way more complex than that. Actually, in post-Soviet countries conservatives (in politological meaning) are often pro-Western, and lef…

Liberalism is not right or left it's the proliferation of thoughts in manner which creates confusion.

Conspiracy is a abusive word for anything society deems expulsive from the status-co.

World is not complex it's the expression of meaning related to facts are over-loaded.

Example,

If you call injustice injustice you solve the problem complexity problem in 1 step.

If you describe societal injustice as systematic with various traits, laws and blah blah, you end up doing the govt's job. Regardless of democracy or choosing any fancy term to fill the blank.

Except in the 1st case people have a clear goal knowing their is a better future possible by overcoming the injustice to find a new path. While in the 2nd case a few generations are wasted trying to only comprehend what's the complexity all about.

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

#415

Post by smcl »

kislotnik wrote: post #340
smcl wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Listopad is a Ukrainian word for October

I just double checked and it seems everywhere I look lists Listopad as meaning November, with October apparently being “Жовтень”. However there are a bunch of other Slavic languages which DO have October as something like Listopad (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar) so perhaps I shouldn’t be so sure of myself in future :-)

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

#416

Post by PunchTornado »

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…

The leader, Akhtem Chiygoz, was found guilty of inciting mass riots protesting the Russian presence in Crimea.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41224383

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

#417

Post by _delirium »

kwoff wrote: post #388
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…

In terms of hurdles, of those four I think Danish is a clear winner there. Finnish is "ah, hell no" as far I know. :) In terms of usefulness, I'm not sure - maybe Polish. (That seems quite complicated grammatically, like other Slavic languages.) Chinese, if you don't care about writing it, is simple grammatically (though a few concepts are hard to wrap your head around).

Danish is "ah, hell no" if you want to try speaking it out loud...

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

#418

Post by mantas »

Fins wrote: post #413
mantas wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then I tried to learn at least "please" and "thank you" even when I was visiting in the 80's. Which already puts you way above local Russian-speaking population. We appreciate that. A lot. > It does actually seem that it's the same people who would've refused to speak Russian before who are perfectly happy to do it now. Not that I would blame them at all, just find it amusing really. It's kinda natural. People…

Thanks. Really, I can't understand how wouldn't you learn at least conversational language if you live in a country where it is spoken all the time... I have a feeling that if not Ukraine, then something else would have happened anyway.

Me neither. I don't understand why Russian settlers after WW2 didn't feel a need to learn local languages. It looks like at least some of them feel culturally superior and try to stay away from "peasants" language.

As for the locals, when you're being forced at gunpoint to learn another language, resentment is natural. When the push is gone, it's kinda natural to exercise your newfound freedom too.

Of course, Ukraine was a symptom, not the cause. But if the cause for Ukraine was not there, it'd be damn nice. Now it will take at least another generation change for people to drop subconscious hate/fear of Russia. The clock is set back by 30 years if not more :(

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

#419

Post by Fins »

mantas wrote: post #418
Fins wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Really, I can't understand how wouldn't you learn at least conversational language if you live in a country where it is spoken all the time... I have a feeling that if not Ukraine, then something else would have happened anyway.

Me neither. I don't understand why Russian settlers after WW2 didn't feel a need to learn local languages. It looks like at least some of them feel culturally superior and try to stay away from "peasants" language. As for the locals, when you're being forced at gunpoint to learn another language, resentment is natural. When the push is gone, it's kinda natural to exercise your newfound freedom too. Of course, Ukraine…

Really. A lot of them don't even try to learn English in the US either.Even though unlike Lithuania you cam't really expect that random people on the street would be even a little bit familiar with it.

If the cause for Ukraine weren't there... I m afraid it would have been possible only if Russia weren't Russia.

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

#420

Post by evincarofautumn »

ithkuil wrote: post #300
evincarofautumn wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yeah, that is a common trap. When I was taking language classes in college, I noticed that some people were definitely reading text as though it were just “funny English”. However, the problem still happened (albeit less often) with different writing systems, including Russian, so I think the root of the problem was that they hadn’t practiced the skill of listening to sounds and reproducing them—instead, they made the mistake of mapping them onto the closest sound in their native language.

Fortunately that was a minority—maybe 5–10% of students had that difficulty and couldn’t grow out of it. Part of the issue is also that people seem to hold back and don’t try to really imitate the accent of a language, which they may not get is really an essential part of the pronunciation. You’ve got to put on your best “French accent” if you want to properly speak French!

Speaking of “closest sound in your native language”, my Polish coworkers and I a couple of jobs ago had a lot of fun one day when I transcribed their English speech using Polish spelling—lo and behold, it gave quite an accurate representation of their accents. (E.g., “It would be funny” = “it łód bi fany”.)

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