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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#11

Post by elros »

nordsieck wrote: post #9
yorwba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) all went through a phase where Chinese was the only literary standard and as a result they also borrowed large amounts of Sino-Xenic vocabulary together with the writing system. This got me curious about whether Mongolian has enough Chinese loanwords that it could be written in a…

> Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) What does "adopt the script" mean? From what I understand, Korean is an alphabet language designed to look a bit like Chinese if you squint hard, and Vietnamese is straight up a latin alphabet language.

This is their current situation, but historically this has not been the case. Korean for a very long time was written with Chinese characters, as was Vietnamese.

The article posted by GP also clarifies a distinction between adopting Chinese loan words as any given language may (such as the word "tea" in English), versus a particular model of bulk adoption of not only characters but vocabulary that occurred in JKV languages.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#12

Post by yorwba »

nordsieck wrote: post #9
yorwba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) all went through a phase where Chinese was the only literary standard and as a result they also borrowed large amounts of Sino-Xenic vocabulary together with the writing system. This got me curious about whether Mongolian has enough Chinese loanwords that it could be written in a…

> Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) What does "adopt the script" mean? From what I understand, Korean is an alphabet language designed to look a bit like Chinese if you squint hard, and Vietnamese is straight up a latin alphabet language.

The script was such a bad fit that it was abandoned later, but it was in widespread use (among those who were literate at all) in both Korea and Vietnam:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%E1%BB%AF_N%C3%B4m

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#13

Post by sametmax »

WilTimSon wrote: post #8

UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Although I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. I don't suppose any Mongolians are here to give their input?

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it

There are downsides to any situation. E.G:

- cost

- available resources for education and work

- adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other

I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing.

It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves.

Language preservation is overrated. Sure, it's nice. But compared to one day, having the entire earth speak the same language, be able to communicate and understand each other better? Small price to pay.

It get why they do it. Mongolia is a very peculiar culture, and I don't think it benefits much from mondialisation. Quite the contrary. And it's a way for their society to break from a painful part of their history.

But to me, it seems, at least on the long run, a step backward. Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information.

Granted, the cyrillic alphabet is not very universal, but it is certainly more common than the traditional mongolia alphabet.

Now since I don't live there, I may be missing some crucial informations. Maybe the population still massively use the old alphabet unofficially and it makes sense. Maybe the use of the cyrillic alphabet brough problems I can't see.

So of course, I'm not the right peson to judge the situation.

But I wanted to bring a counter point to this the enthusiastic parent comment. We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#14

Post by oehtXRwMkIs »

nordsieck wrote: post #9
yorwba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) all went through a phase where Chinese was the only literary standard and as a result they also borrowed large amounts of Sino-Xenic vocabulary together with the writing system. This got me curious about whether Mongolian has enough Chinese loanwords that it could be written in a…

> Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) What does "adopt the script" mean? From what I understand, Korean is an alphabet language designed to look a bit like Chinese if you squint hard, and Vietnamese is straight up a latin alphabet language.

Read more about Hangul, it was never designed to look like Chinese. It has many interesting design decisions which are unique and not found in any other script.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul

Its history will also tell you what it meant for Chinese characters to be adopted by China's neighbors.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#15

Post by enriquto »

boznz wrote: post #6

Ouch! imagine trying to re-write your gui for this, I cant even think how I would adapt one of my business programs to vertical orientation, except for maybe turning the screen by 90degrees.

I guess if your site/program is well-designed you should only have to edit a single style file, and nothing else.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#16

Post by hypnotist »

sametmax wrote: post #13
WilTimSon wrote: post #8

UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Although I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. I don't suppose any Mongolians are here to give their input?

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.G: - cost - available resources for education and work - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to spe…

>> nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used.

seems it is used a lot already - they are just making it a standard.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#17

Post by tnova »

nordsieck wrote: post #9
yorwba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) all went through a phase where Chinese was the only literary standard and as a result they also borrowed large amounts of Sino-Xenic vocabulary together with the writing system. This got me curious about whether Mongolian has enough Chinese loanwords that it could be written in a…

> Chinese script is a bad fit for any non-Sinitic language. The languages that did adopt the script (mostly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) What does "adopt the script" mean? From what I understand, Korean is an alphabet language designed to look a bit like Chinese if you squint hard, and Vietnamese is straight up a latin alphabet language.

To add to what has already been said:

Hangul is the script you are thinking of, which was invented and introduced in the 15th century by King Sejong.

However, there are many Chinese loan words in Korean language, especially on an academic level. You can even find Chinese characters in Korea today, usually in newspapers, on street or restaurant signs. For example, the Korean word for "president" is 대통령 (Taet'ongnyeong), but in newspapers it may be written as 大統領, which are the matching Chinese characters.

Also, most Korean parents choose Chinese characters to write for their children's names, which read (more or less, as Korean does not have tones) the same as the Korean characters.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#18

Post by sametmax »

keiferski wrote: post #10

I think (and hope) that as translation tech gets better, we'll see a renewed interest in local languages and dialects.

I think it will have the opposite effect.

Once we see the benefit of being able to communicate freely with anybody, and losing the protective aspect of being able to communicate in a language others can't understand, I think people will lose interest in local languages and dialect?

Why learn them when you can just translate them when you need them? What do they bring, except some aesthetical pleasure? Given the work it is to translate materials to a language, it will stop to be done: let the automatic system do that for you!

Then, people will be able to mix and travel more, exchange more, and so they will.

In this env, and using translation again and again, people will start to pick up whatever language is the most common.

Eventually, what is not useful will diseapear, only artefacts that we can translate automatically, will remain.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#19

Post by robin_reala »

Brosper wrote: post #7

As a web developer I reject that change :P

Seriously? As a web developer, you already have all the tools needed to work with this change should you ever find yourself needing to build a Mongolian website. We live in world that has Unicode, wide dispersal of compatible fonts, CSS text-orientation rules with decent browser compatibility, etc etc.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#20

Post by adrianN »

sametmax wrote: post #13
WilTimSon wrote: post #8

UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Although I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. I don't suppose any Mongolians are here to give their input?

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.G: - cost - available resources for education and work - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to spe…

The French language protection is the reason why the league of nations didn't adopt Esperanto as an official language. I'm quite grumpy about that.
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