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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#51

Post by p1mrx »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34
sametmax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hear what you're saying, but at the same time - coming from an area with its own relatively small language (<500K speakers) - there is a definite need or interest in websites and media in one's "own language", in our case it's things like local news websites (with comment sections of course), newspapers and a TV channel. Said TV channel, like all the other regional channels, get some shared time on the public netwo…

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu_ R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#52

Post by yiyus »

aquadrop wrote: post #45
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a recent case, look at Kazakhstan which is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin - https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-ch... .

That makes much more sense though, you're changing from something less known to more know, easier for tourists etc. Changing to a less approachable vertical system is different...

While I agree with you, that is a very occidental point of view.

I think it is important that the system they are changing to is better for Mongolian people, not tourists. If people there is more familiarized with this vertical system than left-to-right with a latin alphabet, I do not think it is fair to call it "less approachable".

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#53

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

billfruit wrote: post #41
lonesword wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Yes, but this is about script. Some languages like Turkish and Vietnamese are doing fine adopting the foreign Latin script as Languages. Sometimes people want/demand change in the direction of modernity too. I think during 1911 revolution in China, the people were really fed up with the system in place for centuries that they wanted it totally rid off; there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the…

> there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic.

No, there wasn’t. As a former Esperantist (very dedicated and active at the organizational level in UEA), I remember a lot of these claims being pitched to the public about how Esperanto was so esteemed here or there in history that it was almost used officially, but if you actually looked into the facts, never was serious consideration given to using Esperanto. At best there was just one or two government officials involved in these historical events who were Esperantists themselves, but they had no influence in this regard.

These are the sort of disingenuous claims about Esperanto that Marcus Sikosek sought to debunk in his book Esperanto sen mitoj, and they do more harm than good to Esperanto and they make the movement look kooky.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#54

Post by hanche »

robin_reala wrote: post #19
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.

The real challenge would be to design a multi-lingual website for both vertical and horizontal scripts. I suspect you'd end up with two very different designs.

It's interesting to look at the Mongolian president's web page (https://president.mn/mng/): It scrolls horizontally. And see how it responds to the hamburger menu, for example.

Edit: Oh wait, the president's web page is itself a good example: Here is the English version (https://president.mn/en/).

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#55

Post by peterburkimsher »

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.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the state of internationalisation (i18n) in 2018. We're not there yet, but some projects (especially the Bible) have made a huge effort to try to have local dialect translations.

https://peterburk.github.io/i2018n/

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#56

Post by fastball »

keiferski wrote: post #29
sametmax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Having amazing machine translation capability doesn't make it any easier for humans to learn a language.

And the "richness of expression" argument doesn't really hold water in such a reality – if there are things that "can't be easily expressed in English that can be expressed in Chinese", then your magical auto-translator presumably won't be able to actually convey what you're trying to convey if you say it in Chinese and want it translated to English. If the translator can accurately express your meaning, then the initial premise is invalid, no?

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#57

Post by swilliamsio »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #30

I wonder if China will interpret this as an agressive act with the intent to extend influence over inner Mongolia.

Inner Mongolia already uses the traditional script so if anything this news is indicative of increased Chinese influence and decreased Russian influence in Mongolia.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#58

Post by qwerty456127 »

aquadrop wrote: post #40
qwerty456127 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> always at the front of a word. That's because е is usually used to represent the same sound if it's not in the beginning of the word. Russian could be much easier to read closer to proper for non-natives if only Russians would write э everywhere where it reads э. For example consider the word "энергия" (energy) - the first and the third letters sound the same in this word and the same they sound in English yet they…

That's because 'e' also usually makes previous consonant softer(not in your example though, because it's a loan word I guess), so you'd have to put 'ь' everywhere then.

usually makes - so why not use 'e' only in the cases when it actually does? I don't say 'э' should always be used in place of 'е'. I mean why not use 'э' when it sounds 'э' (without the preceding letter softening) and 'е' when it really sounds 'е'? The Russian writing system tries to be phonetic but doesn't seem to do well this way.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#59

Post by Freak_NL »

eukgoekoko wrote: post #37
robin_reala wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> wide dispersal of compatible fonts Would you please share a link where I can download Mongolian Helvetica?

Why? If you were designing a website with Mongolian as a language option you would choose a font that has support for Mongolian, not something completely unsuitable like Helvetica. The same goes for any language not written with a Latin alphabet.

If you don't want to provide a font and just want whatever passes for sans-serif on a computer with Mongolian fonts installed, use font-family: sans-serif; in your CSS and let the OS handle it.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#60

Post by pcdandy »

eukgoekoko wrote: post #37
robin_reala wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> wide dispersal of compatible fonts Would you please share a link where I can download Mongolian Helvetica?

Google's Noto project has a decent sans-serif Mongolian script typeface (https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-mong) that is pre-installed on newer Android and iOS devices.
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