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Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

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Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#181

Post by rozab »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #172
rozab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Arabic numerals originated in right-to-left languages, where they were written and read starting from the least significant digit on the right. It was when the numbers were imported into left-to-right scripts that the order of digits was reproduced as-is, but read backwards.

Yeah I figured that was the case for arabic but in hebrew the most significant digit seems to be said first

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#182

Post by function_seven »

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #172
rozab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Arabic numerals originated in right-to-left languages, where they were written and read starting from the least significant digit on the right. It was when the numbers were imported into left-to-right scripts that the order of digits was reproduced as-is, but read backwards.

Wait, so 1,672 in arabic script would have appeared the same way, but would have been read as (something like) "two seventy six hundred and a thousand"?

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#184

Post by gspetr »

ken wrote: post #152
lopmotr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a fit of nationalism, a former colonial power takes a step to sever ties with its continental neighbor. Does it still sound good when you look at it that way?

Sounds even better! Is there some example of colonialism which you think is worth preserving, to the destruction of their culture? Should Ireland stop being Irish, should Korea become a Japanese colony again, or should we reunite the USSR?

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

"During the Italian rule, infrastructure to connect major cities, railways, public and private companies, and dams providing power and water were built; this along with the influx of Italian settlers and labourers, was the major cause of rapid urbanization growth. Also, the Italian government abolished slavery, a practice that existed in the country for centuries."

And this wasn't even the British Empire, these were the literal fascists of Mussolini.

>should we reunite the USSR?

A controversial topic, to say the least.

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

"On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 76.4 percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union."

It's not like European countries like UK and Spain do not have member regions/nations that are very happy with the will of the majority, e.g. Brexit.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#185

Post by crazygringo »

bmn__ wrote: post #142
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…

> There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English I've often seen this claim, for all kinds of languages, sometimes even between two standard varieties of a single language. For a particular reason, I like to dig deeper. Invariably, the people making this claim are not very educated in linguistics, so it's not wonder this statement comes out wrong. And it is wrong. I challenge them to disprove me with…

Obviously it's not literally "untranslatable" meaning "unexplainable".

But it's about how certain concepts are easy to say in one language -- they fit like a glove -- and hard to say in another. So if they're hard to say, you wind up not saying them, and it changes what people communicate, which changes the culture.

In Brazilian Portuguese you can say "ai que saudades!" or "que malandragem!" which, poorly translated mean respectively, "I missed you!" and "What scoundrel-ness!"

But those translations miss the entire connotation and strength and context -- they're just plain inaccurate. And yes you can take an entire paragraph to explain the nuances of what they actually mean... but not in normal conversation.

Even when I'd speak in English with Brazilian friends, sometimes to explain a certain social situation we had to revert to Portuguese words, because there just aren't English words that fit the frames people understand Brazilian social situations in.

So the main claim that losing language means losing culture still stands 100%.

"Untranslatable" obviously doesn't mean the concept can't be explained if you're given a few sentences or paragraphs. It means there isn't an equivalent word or phrase that can be employed in normal everyday usage.

You can also think of it when translating movie subtitles, which I've done a little of in the past -- you only have a "normal" amount of on-screen space to fit your translation in. Some words just don't have anything you can translate to in the reasonable space. They're untranslatable.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#186

Post by jsjolen »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #123
yiyus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What if being more fluent in English leads to better economic outcomes for Mongolians, and hence more secure access to resources? I notice that in our family and friends of immigrants, the parents who were fluent in English and able to access all the resources in English, were able to provide their children better advice and their kids are more economically successful than those who didn’t have that resource.

1. They can do both, learning a separate script that's as simple as the Latin one is not a huge investment.

2. You're talking about people who immigrate to an English speaking country, correct? Good advice for people living in Mongolia surely is available in Mongolian.

Mongolians today learn English, at least the guy who went to Sweden to work as a chef that I talked to a couple of years ago did.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#187

Post by Frost1x »

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?

I'm a huge fan of diversity in language and culture (assuming a given culture does not oppress its people).

No matter how convenient it is for me, I do not want the entire world to only speak English and follow western culture trends. I would much rather have the diversities that make the world rich.

Not only that, but I can assure you, Westernized culture absolutely doesn't "have it right." We have power for historic reasons and that power, I would argue, has unrightfully supplanted alternative ways of life that may arguably be better. We need other languages, we need other cultures, we need other forms of government policy. These diversities give us references to look upon and improve our own culture in ways or fix things that just aren't quite right.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#188

Post by JoeAltmaier »

crazygringo wrote: post #185
bmn__ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English I've often seen this claim, for all kinds of languages, sometimes even between two standard varieties of a single language. For a particular reason, I like to dig deeper. Invariably, the people making this claim are not very educated in linguistics, so it's not wonder this statement comes out wrong. And it is wrong. I challenge them to disprove me with…

Obviously it's not literally "untranslatable" meaning "unexplainable". But it's about how certain concepts are easy to say in one language -- they fit like a glove -- and hard to say in another. So if they're hard to say, you wind up not saying them, and it changes what people communicate, which changes the culture. In Brazilian Portuguese you can say "ai que saudades!" or "que malandragem!" which, poorly translated…

Agreed.

Brings up another thing: when folks 'translate' a piece into English and substitute English phrases for the original author's idion. Frustrates me no end. I may have wanted (always want) to learn something about the culture the piece was written in/for. Such bastard translations wall me off from even guessing what the author said or meant. Just some watered-down elevator-music meaning, because the translator thought I was not smart enough to understand the original.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#189

Post by koenigdavidmj »

KMag wrote: post #169
mytailorisrich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is derived from the Aramaic alphabet like the Arabic alphabet. The fun fact is that all alphabets in the world ultimately derive from the Phoenician alphabet as it spread West, North East, and South East.

Well, major alphabets currently in wide use, excluding Korean, Japanese, and maybe a few others. Hebrew: Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, ... Greek: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, ... Also, there's evidence that the Phoenician alphabet evolved from the Demotic alphabet, which was basically a late cursive script evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

A clearer statement is that writing was only invented/discovered in isolation three times that we know of--by the Mayans, the Chinese, and somewhere in the middle east.

Re: Mongolia to restore traditional alphabet

#190

Post by madhadron »

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…

Esperanto, no, but there were several attempts at an alphabet. They all foundered because "Chinese" is actually a language family as diverse as the Romance languages, but that use Mandarin in ideograms as their writing system.
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