Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

news.mn

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 292 posts

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#111

Post by flyinghamster »

sametmax wrote: post #101
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…

> And that's not necessarily a good thing. Nothing is 100% gain or loss. But I believe there is nothing in our current situation that is worth more than having a united humanity, which can only happen if well all can understand each others. > There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live It's ok, you can use the native word in an english sen…

One thing that I've noticed over the years is that foreign words readily slide into English, yet English words look and sound very jarring in other languages.

My second language is Spanish, and seeing an English word in Spanish text just looks wrong to me, never mind that Spanish is full of Arabic loanwords.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#112

Post by [deleted] »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #85
simonh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mongolian is also one of the scripts on Chinese bank notes, along with Tibetan and Uyghur, in addition to Chinese characters.

[deleted]

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#113

Post by gnomewascool »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #61
Symbiote wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not as convenient, but you can always scroll horizontally with shift.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#114

Post by bmn__ »

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.

Close, it's derived from Syriac. Arabic and Syriac have a common ancestor, Aramaic.

http://enwp.org/Mongolian_script

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#116

Post by mkl »

chrismorgan wrote: post #67
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 bro…

The attribute used on the Mongolian president's site linked above is "writing-mode: vertical-lr;". It seems like Electron & co. may be the best options for apps.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#117

Post by pbhjpbhj »

torben-friis wrote: post #63
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…

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 :)

Roughly, through what means should we fix it though? :)

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#118

Post by Lermex »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #73
h91wka wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Creating a fully phonetic writing system that is also consistent is an impossible task. Look at Czech or Korean. Nothing is 100% perfect but these are pretty close to. > For example, different dialects can interchange "o" and "a" sounds, how this should be solved in a "proper" phonetic system? Use å ;-)

I am a native Russian speaker and a former Korean language major. I would estimate that the modern Korean writing system has roughly the same amount of exceptions and non-phonetic spellings as the Russian one.

For example, the letter ㅎ (h) is not pronounced in a lot of cases. Some other consonants are reduced depending on their position in the syllable, etc.

The illusion that Korean is "pronounced as written" is created by the fact that Koreans are extremely happy when you learn to speak their language at all. I as a Russian speaker would also rather hear you pronounce Russian words as they are written than not try to learn Russian at all :) But as soon as you start working on sounding as close to native as possible, that illusion of simplicity quickly breaks down.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#119

Post by rozab »

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/

Fascinating, thank you. It's interesting how the Arabic numerals in the dates are flipped 90°, as opposed to in some right to left scripts where they are just reproduced as is. I've always thought this would hinder the flow of the reading, but I suppose small numbers (for most people) are instantly recognised rather than being parsed left to right.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#120

Post by pbhjpbhj »

867-5309 wrote: post #108
h91wka wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, in Swedish å does not have any ambiguity and is always read as "o" (as in "ocean"). My point is that different people pronounce things as they are used to, reflecting it in a writing system leads to complexity and inconsistency.

> As far as I know, in Swedish å does not have any ambiguity and is always read as "o" (as in "ocean"). perhaps in Geordie dialect! it's actually closer to the "o" in "thought"

Aside, I wonder how long UK dialects will survive: my kids often come out with US Americanisms - of both word choice [garbage] and pronounciation - because of the media they consume.
Post reply on HN