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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#21

Post by okasaki »

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?

> 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.

Why is it good?

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#22

Post by eps »

I once saw a Mongolian book (written in Cyrillic alphabet) and it was very jarring.

It looked like half of the letters were Э (pronounced like a very deep Eh). It is a low frequency letter in Russian, mostly commonly seen in short words like это ("this") and virtually always at the front of a word. But there every word was long and liberally sprinkled with multiple Эs. Looked completely alien. In fact, looked like a square peg of an alphabet in a round hole of a language.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#23

Post by robin_reala »

sametmax wrote: post #18
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…

Different languages and scripts don’t just convey information, they shape the speaker and reader.[1] Sure, there’s value in a shared communication language (and International English[2] is well on the way to being that), but that mostly communicative medium doesn’t capture everything that language is.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shape...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#24

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ah-ha wrote: post #4
yorwba wrote: post #2

The traditional Mongolian script is notable for being written vertically, which breaks a lot of assumptions usually made in UI design. The Mongolian president's personal website is an example of designing around vertical text: https://president.mn/mng/

Looks like Arabic script written vertically. I was expecting something closer to Chinese writing.

It’s based on Old Uighur and originates from western Xinjiang. Not really invented by Uighurs, but whatever culture they succeeded in Turpan.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#25

Post by simonh »

yorwba wrote: post #2

The traditional Mongolian script is notable for being written vertically, which breaks a lot of assumptions usually made in UI design. The Mongolian president's personal website is an example of designing around vertical text: https://president.mn/mng/

That's beautiful, thanks. My wife is Han Chinese from Inner Mongolia, where the traditional script is used widely in signage, posters, dual-language leaflets and such so I'm quite familiar with the look of traditional Mongolian script. In fact until now I had no idea Mongolia itself largely used a different script.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#26

Post by lonesword »

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…

> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity

And that's not necessarily a good thing. It is not just a language that dies, but a part of the culture also dies with the language. I do get the appeal of the world having one language, but attaining it at the cost of diversity would be a _big_ price to pay.

I speak a southern Indian language called Malayalam (34 million speakers). There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live. Now if everyone in my town starts speaking only English suddenly, it would definitely affect the way they think[1], function, and would inevitable change the culture. I am not claiming that change is bad, simply arguing that preserving a language might help preserve a culture.

[1] IIRC there's been some scientific literature on this. I'll look it up and edit this post when I get time

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#28

Post by rguiscard »

> The difference in alphabets has split the Mongolian people, with three million living in Mongolia and writing in Cyrillic, and nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used.

I wonder how much it deviates from the script used in Inner Mongolia.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#29

Post by keiferski »

sametmax wrote: post #18
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…

I think the opposite will happen, personally. Imagine that you can speak and understand any language known to man. Furthermore, you can create any language fairly easily, and in order for others to understand this language, they simply need to download a file. It seems like the choice of language would then become an aesthetic, political or simply personal choice.

Certain human languages are definitely more suited for certain topics; talking about music in Italian is no doubt richer than in English (especially considering that many English music words are just Italian imports.)

We'd also see ad-hoc private languages develop on the fly in between people or machines. This already happens on a micro-level, but technology would make it far easier to implement.

Seems like a beautiful future to me.

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