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The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

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Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#101
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a writing system helps with communication across cultures, even when there isn't a shared language. > One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. If almost all literate people know the latin script, there's a benefit to writing your language in it. Of course, the switching cost is high.

Latin script creates lot of confusion in mixed environments. For example, even native speakers of English language, major language of the world, have no clue how to read aloud random texts written using Latin alphabet.

Certainly, I don't expect the average English only speaker to be able to properly pronounce Gaelic, Polish, or Vietnamese words, or frankly even obscure English words by sight.

The results are likely much better than random texts using cyrillic, greek, arabic, hangul, etc.

Otoh, If they're typists, I expect they can likely type them into a search, probably sans diacritics, but that's likely good enough for searching or looking through a translation dictionary.

Greek and Cyrillic may share enough symbols that a latin script user can make due with an onscreen keyboard or a dictionary with great effort. But a completely different script would need even more effort.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#102

It's just like the new Copilot 365. Every time I try to type "Ć", Copilot pops up. I have to close the app constantly.

The same thing happened to me in school (during a test...), except I tried to type & on a hungarian keyboard, which is of course also altgr+c.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#104
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrillic is not a problem for joining the EU. But adopting Latin script would help Ukraine "move away" from Russia even more.

Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237), Russian Empire and Russian Federation are Russian. It's like to say that Britain must adopt Cyrillic to move away from USA because they both use English language. :-/

> Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237)

Only in the world where Britain is in France.

Ukraine traces its lineage to Ruthenia (Русь), not to Russia (Росія). These words are related etymologically, but so are Brittany and Britain, or Cornouaille and Cornwall. You can’t just treat Ruthenia and Russia as the same thing — just like you can’t treat Brittany and Britain as the same thing.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#105
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrillic didn't prevent Bulgaria from joining EU, why should it be a problem for Ukraine?

Cyrillic is not a problem for joining the EU. But adopting Latin script would help Ukraine "move away" from Russia even more.

> But adopting Latin script would help Ukraine "move away" from Russia even more.

That might be true, but Latin script is not a neutral option. It has its own problematic history in Ukraine.

Historically, Latin script for Ukrainian (abecadło) was associated with polonisation. While Ukrainian-Polish relationships are quite good now, this history is not easy to discard. This history still affects politics (the recent debacle with the Order of the White Eagle is a good example).

So, I don’t see Ukrainian ditching Cyrillic anytime soon.

I do, however, expect Ukrainians to eventually develop their own style of Cyrillic. I totally expect Ukrainian fonts to drift away from Russian ones. There are already steps in that direction. E.g. the font e-Ukraine Head seen on many official websites introduces Latin-like к (curiously, that’s how my great grandmother used to write к — she went to a Polish school in Western Ukraine) and ȣ-like у. I expect to see more of that. There’s a enough of interest in a distinct visual identity for Ukrainian, and there are talented designers working on it.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237), Russian Empire and Russian Federation are Russian. It's like to say that Britain must adopt Cyrillic to move away from USA because they both use English language. :-/

> Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237) Only in the world where Britain is in France. Ukraine traces its lineage to Ruthenia (Русь), not to Russia (Росія). These words are related etymologically, but so are Brittany and Britain, or Cornouaille and Cornwall. You can’t just treat Ruthenia and Russia as the same thing — just like you can’t treat Brittany and Britain as the same thing.

Quote:

> During its existence, Kievan Rus' was known as rusĭskaja zemlja, translated as the "land of Rus'",[21] or the "Rus' land" (Old East Slavic: роу́сьскаꙗ землꙗ́), with Rus' being derived from the ethnonym Роусь, Rusĭ (Medieval Greek: Ῥῶς, romanized: Rhos; Arabic: الروس, romanized: ar-Rūs), in Greek as Ῥωσία, Rhosia, in Old French as Russie, Rossie, in Latin as Rusia or Russia (with local German spelling variants Ruscia and Ruzzia), and from the 12th century also as Ruthenia or Rutenia.[22][23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#107
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They have to change a lot of things to better align with Europe, especially if they join the EU. They're already working on moving to the European train gauge, they set Christmas to December 25th, etc. but there's still a long way to go.

Ukraine is in Europe. You mean, to better align with Germany?

"to better align with the EU", or "with Western Europe", would have been better.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#108
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how surprised Americans would be to learn that there are so many "centers of Europe". After all, we all know that Colorado is in "the west", Texas in the "southwest", and, clearly, "the South" is located in the geographical southeast :D

These American peculiarities are funny too, but they are mostly historical, and from that perspective have reasonable explanation. In turn "we are not Eastern, but Central" is relatively recent PR-born madness. Somebody decided that EE often associates with questionable things like alcohol consumption somehow, so the solution is to separate yourself from other drinkers by claiming being completely different "Central"…

Also, I imagine that the expansion and reduction in size of the Soviet empire over the decades has played a part, not to mention a certain provincialism among (western) European powers in terms of what they consider to be "real" Europe.

When it was a poor backwater "somewhere over there", it wasn't part of Europe. When it was Soviet, it wasn't Europe. Now that it's a bulwark against a militaristic Russia and a convenient place to do lower-cost manufacturing: "Hello, my European compatriots!"

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237) Only in the world where Britain is in France. Ukraine traces its lineage to Ruthenia (Русь), not to Russia (Росія). These words are related etymologically, but so are Brittany and Britain, or Cornouaille and Cornwall. You can’t just treat Ruthenia and Russia as the same thing — just like you can’t treat Brittany and Britain as the same thing.

Quote: > During its existence, Kievan Rus' was known as rusĭskaja zemlja, translated as the "land of Rus'",[21] or the "Rus' land" (Old East Slavic: роу́сьскаꙗ землꙗ́), with Rus' being derived from the ethnonym Роусь, Rusĭ (Medieval Greek: Ῥῶς, romanized: Rhos; Arabic: الروس, romanized: ar-Rūs), in Greek as Ῥωσία, Rhosia, in Old French as Russie, Rossie, in Latin as Rusia or Russia (with local German spelling variant…

So what? Old French Bretaigne referred both to Britain and Brittany, Old French Russie referred to both Russia (maybe, haven't done research on this) and Ruthenia.

But we're not speaking Old French, we're speaking 21-century English. In 21-century English, Russia ≠ Ruthenia, Brittany ≠ Britain.

The quote you've provided is irrelevant.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#110

> Polish is the second most-used Slavic language, right after Russian and just before Ukrainian This is not exactly right regarding Ukrainian. While it is the official language of Ukraine, in reality... let's say that not all Ukrainian people are actually speaking it.

There are still enough people speaking Ukrainian even if we roll back the clock to 2019. Lviv = 2.5m Vinnytsia = 1.5m Ivano-Frankivsk = 1.3m Khmelnytskyi = 1.2m Rivne = 1.1m Ternopil = 1m Volyn = 1m Chernivtsi = 0.8m Zakarpattia = 0.8m (I've subtracted the Hungarians) That's 11.2 million Western Ukrainians, who are overwhelmingly Ukrophone. Even if you completely ignore the rest of the country (which definitely wasn'…

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