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Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

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Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#201

Post by shard »

btilly wrote: post #86
singingboyo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that for languages that didn't get adapted into english, the 'similar word' effect is essentially missing - it really only works for romance languages and maybe the odd germanic word. However, if I had a dictionary or something, that article would be much easier to translate than, say, Japanese (or Mandarin, or really any language where writing involves a large number of symbols). I'm not sure that that appli…

I studied Russian enough to know that you are wrong. Technical words, recent inventions, sports and brand names tend to be straightforward transliterations. Plus more are borrowed. Take Russian words like диносавр, Макдоналдс, киоск, and гамбургер. You probably have no idea what they mean, but the direct transliterations are dinosavr, Makdonalds, kiosk, and gamburger are a little easier to guess? Not every word by an…

I don't know the exact details for Russian, but it's not so easy in Korean, even though about a quarter of the words are of English origin. First the transliteration sounds could be quite off, as it could be based on the spelling rather than pronunciation (e.g. quinine is ki-ni-neh). Second, for short words you're not really sure whether it's native Korean words or not. Third, the meaning could be different than what you expect (e.g. cunning means cheating, like on an exam, and glamour means a voluptuous body).

From this experience I would be weary of any words that sound similar to English in a foreign language.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#202

Post by vatueil »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #185
vatueil wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a Latin alphabet might help Kazakhstan interface with the West. However, I think the more direct reason is that a Latin alphabet would facilitate links with Turkey and other Turkish speakers who use Latin alphabets. Either way the move away from Cyrillic may loosen ties to Russia, but the fact that Turkey uses a Latin alphabet is a stronger motivation than any hopes of building bridges with the West. The latter…

> I think the more direct reason is that a Latin alphabet would facilitate links with Turkey and other Turkish speakers who use Latin alphabets. Perhaps, but Kazakhstan intentionally decided not to make its new Latin alphabet mirror the Turkish alphabet. In the 1920s several Turkic nations took Turkey’s alphabet as a model, but then were condemned by the Stalinist regime for being too pan-Turkic, with tragic conseque…

True. At least the latest update removes the weird apostrophes.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#203

Post by titanix2 »

qaq wrote: post #140
vbezhenar wrote: post #17

I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…

Are there many recent examples of France asserting that since a region has a fairly decent density of French speaking people and people of French descent it's totally ok to annex the territory or in a milder case move in troops and create a self proclaimed "independent" state.

No, but the local languages where repressed and even forbidden for a long time by the republic ("It’s forbidden to spit and spoke X language" policy at schools) in ordrer to increase or create the national unity.

I’m very sad that from the two languages known by my grand parents generation (alsatian and a dialect of dutch) I only know a few words because these languages were destroyed by the state.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#204

Post by ahakki »

heliodor wrote: post #182
eCa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of latin-alphabet languages have letters that don’t exist in English. Czech, for example, has 42 letters[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_orthography

Well, the measuring stick is not English. Is it Latin? Which version? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet Or is it all modern non-Cyrillic letters used in Europe that don't have diacritics? In any case, diacritics are a positive. They're used to make a language as phonetic as possible, which is a net positive. As anyone can attest, learning to pronounce English words (or French, for that matter) is a lot…

Learing to pronounce French words is rather easy. English is a huge mess.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#205

Post by skissane »

emodendroket wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I speak English only. That's the problem right there. Speaking only one language is super limiting.

If you are going to pick just one, English is a pretty good choice, because there are few places you can go where absolutely nobody speaks it.

As an English speaker, one problem with learning another language is that there isn't an obvious choice of which other language to learn. Whereas, if you are from a non-English speaking background, then English seems the most obvious choice of language to learn in today's world.

I think that is worse here in Australia than in some other parts of the English-speaking world. I mean, in Canada, the obvious choice is French; in parts of the US it is probably Spanish. There is no obvious choice in Australia.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#206

Post by ahakki »

vbezhenar wrote: post #128
rasz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Russia send Kazakh people to gulags for speaking/teaching own language like it did in Poland, Ukraine and many other places? Might have something to do with resentment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

I don't think that anyone was prosecuted strictly because of speaking/teaching language. But there were Kazakh intelligence (who probably promoted language among other national agendas) prosecuted for opposing soviet regime. Again, I don't think that language itself has anything with it. That said, yes, USSR forced other nations to adapt Russian language and it's understandable that those nations didn't like it. But…

> But it was almost a century ago

The USSR colapsed less than 30 years ago.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#207

Post by qaq »

titanix2 wrote: post #203
qaq wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there many recent examples of France asserting that since a region has a fairly decent density of French speaking people and people of French descent it's totally ok to annex the territory or in a milder case move in troops and create a self proclaimed "independent" state.

No, but the local languages where repressed and even forbidden for a long time by the republic ("It’s forbidden to spit and spoke X language" policy at schools) in ordrer to increase or create the national unity. I’m very sad that from the two languages known by my grand parents generation (alsatian and a dialect of dutch) I only know a few words because these languages were destroyed by the state.

No doubt all empires deploy similar tactics, but in respect to the topic at hand I doubt Canada believes there is a credible threat of France using french as an excuse to annex parts of Canada. While Kazakhstan have seen Russia execute this strategy multiple times in very recent years.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#208

Post by shmerl »

pvg wrote: post #123
shmerl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev...

That article doesn't really say that.

It focuses on Kazakh. For general topic, see:

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/ussr/soviet...

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#209

Post by usrusr »

LifeLiverTransp wrote: post #50
adventured wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When overwhelming majority of people speak Russian and Russia is the most important trade partner, I think that it's only logical to have Russian as one of the official languages in the country It makes perfect sense if you want to move away from Russia to dramatically broaden your national potential over time. Russia has a very modest economy versus its population size. Canada and South Korea have overtaken it, an…

Those dreams of glorious pasts are usually very self-defeating (lots of costly police actions in former colonys) with no visibile reward - and thus not half as dangerous as internalized past injustices. Nazi Germany, Japan, and alot of other countrys got drunk on the injustices of the past and used them to justify atrocities in neighbouring countrys. If it were not for the nukes, alot of those nationalist movements w…

But whenever dreams of former glory set the agenda, they are promoted as an injustice of the past: "history cheated us out of an empire, let's take back what we are owed". ww2 Japan seems to be the rare exception (unless I am missing some former expansion phase and contraction cycle)

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#210

Post by kolpa »

klez wrote: post #96
spacenick88 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost covers German except for ä, ö, ü and ß all of which have a very easy transliteration ae, oe, ue and ss. Similarly it almost covers Italian, French (accents can be dropped), Spanish and a couple more

That you can do transliterations doesn't make it a good idea. > French (accents can be dropped) What? No! See for example https://french.stackexchange.com/a/24410

English has non-homophobic homonyms too. We just carry on regardless.
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