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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#61

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

Symbiote wrote: post #46
thaumasiotes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CSS text-orientation rules with decent browser compatibility I don't think the support is really there for vertical writing systems.

Posted earlier in the discussion, the Mongolian President's website works well for me, in Firefox on Linux. The mouse scroll scrolls right, selecting text works (with a horizontal cursor), the western text (dates, numbers and "Covid-19") embedded in the text are appropriately rotated. "View source" shows the source text, and it doesn't look like there are any nasty tricks to support this. Is anything missing? https:/…

For me, the mouse scroll doesn't work unless I enable Javascript for the site (I run NoScript). So, at least that aspect seems to be reliant on some kind of JS-based workaround, not CSS itself.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#62

Post by qwerty456127 »

h91wka wrote: post #44
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 е is usually used to represent the same sound if it's not in the beginning of the word. This is far from being a general rule. Your example is an exception. Consider "мера", "монета", "обмен" and so on. You cannot change "e" to "э" in these cases.

You cannot change "e" to "э" in these cases and you should not. What I mean is using "э" where you can, phonetically. Using "е" in those cases actually is "changing" although has made it into the standard.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#63

Post by torben-friis »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #33
eps wrote: post #22

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…

> 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…

Don't take this the wrong way, but it's funny to read a post complaining of the bad relation between written word and pronunciation of a language when said post is written in English :)

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#64

Post by L_Rahman »

LeonidasXIV wrote: post #47
yorwba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> The script was such a bad fit that it was abandoned later The mish-mash of katakana, hiragana, kanji (& their crutch furigana) plus romaji in Japanese sort of signifies how bad of a fit that script is to their own language and its use. In many ways it feels like throwing rocks before one's own feet.

It's visually extremely inelegant as well. Seeing a kanji character next to a single stroke katakana character in the same word is ridiculous and yet somehow commonplace.

I would be more surprised that the Japanese haven't done more to clean this up if it weren't for the cultural conservatism deeply embedded in its society.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#65

Post by eukgoekoko »

Freak_NL wrote: post #59
eukgoekoko wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 l…

Sure, I can go with font-family: sans-serif But what if I have to add Mongolian support for a website using Helvetica typeface for the currently used Cyrillic script?

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#66

Post by andrewshadura »

srg0 wrote: post #50
enriquto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I guess you need at least one person on your QA team who is proficient in a top-down right-to-left language and can read and use the non-standard layouts. And I believe that exclusively "top-down right-to-left" spells "Mongolian". Common Asian (CJK) languages have an _option_ to write text vertically, but they are usually written left to right in the digital media. So basically the same UI layout works for Japanese a…

Actually, Mongolian is one of the few languages which are top-down left-to-right.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#67

Post by chrismorgan »

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.

On the technical front, CSS is extremely well-placed for this, with the comparatively recent shift from absolute axes (margin-left, border-bottom, &c.) to directional axes (margin-inline-start, border-block-end, &c.), with what those axes mean depending on writing-mode, direction and text-orientation.

Browser support for the complete set of this stuff is still a tad patchy; Firefox is best in general, but all the browsers have at least the basics.

But yeah, it mostly seems to boil down to rotating your app’s entire layout by 90°.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#68

Post by h91wka »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #58
aquadrop wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The Russians writing system tries to be phonetic but doesn't seem to do well this way.

It does not? Creating a fully phonetic writing system that is also consistent is an impossible task. For example, different dialects can interchange "o" and "a" sounds, how this should be solved in a "proper" phonetic system?

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#69

Post by fiblye »

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…

Waves of nationalism come and go. If you've got a big enough population, you can easily promote your native language as superior to others because it can express X, Y, and Z beautiful concepts easily while filthy foreign languages can't.

There were a few campaigns where various western countries tried promoting their alphabets over native writing systems. Some succeeded (e.g. Vietnamese) and many others failed. Trying to completely change the language is an even bigger stretch. Places like India have a long history of English, but few Indian people speak pure British English. Most will throw a mix of perfectly pronounced English words in the middle of a sea of their local language. English doesn't have a clear path to domination despite it being spoken by so many people.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#70

Post by gberger »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #38

Looks particularly pretty and mostly adorable but I'm not sure it is going to be as legible as cyrilic (which works is the same as latin, just a little bit different), even after a lot of practice. Needless to say it's not going to be nearly as handy for the modern digital world. This way one can hardly be sure the cultural value of this move is enough to outweigh the practical aspect.

> This way one can hardly be sure the cultural value of this move is enough to outweigh the practical aspect.

How much context do you have on Mongolian culture to be able to make this assertion? Honest question.

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