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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

#271

Post by qwerty456127 »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #256

Why wouldn't Kazakhstan use pure 26-letter Latin alphabet? There is a big advantage in using the same keyboard that English language uses.

Using pure 26-letter Latin alphabet means using multi-letter combinations to represent particular sounds and/or using same letters to represent very different sounds in different contexts. Both things feel very ugly. I am not really familiar with non-european alphabets but Č (Czech, Croatian, Latvian) looks much better and easier to read than CH (English), CZ (Polish), TCH (French) or TSCH (German, I'm not even sure I've spelled it correctly, it may happen to be even longer and more weird in German). And you can fit more in a twit this way :-) When I was a student speed-writing huge amounts of text on lectures I went even further, e.g. using Ŋ in place of NG in Eŋliš :-)

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

#272

Post by eCa »

FRex wrote: post #167
blattimwind wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic German uses a thirty letter alphabet, but no one says so.

Are you really telling us Slavs that we are wrong in what we (and our governments, educational systems and language authorities) consider a letter in our native languages and should stop saying our alphabets have however many letters we say they do for decades now because Germans happen to use different logic when counting their letters..? I mean.. really? I'm so astonished by that logic I don't even know what to tel…

> Are you really telling us Slavs[...]

Absolutely not. My argument was that Kazakh is far from unique in having ”extra letters”, which my native language’s alphabet also has.

On a personal level I far prefer latin-alphabet Slavic languages since it makes it easier to approximate an understandable pronunciation.

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

#274

Post by skookumchuck »

emodendroket wrote: post #159
lmm wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning to read/write Cyrillic is still a substantial, intimidating step. I felt a lot more comfortable in Turkey and Romania than in Bulgaria, just because the Latin alphabet meant I could at least read printed signs aloud and people could tell me what sign to look for.

If learning to write in a new script is a substantial and intimidating step, doesn't it make more sense to put it on visitors than on your entire citizenry?

I'm reminded of when Sweden shut the country down for a day to switch driving on the left side of the road to the right.

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

#275

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

What a pointless waste of time and money. Funny that they link halfway to another pointless waste of everybody’s time and money, Sweden’s switch to right-hand traffic, instead of actually addressing the problem of steering wheels being on the wrong side, which could have been solved simply by mandating new cars have the wheel on the appropriate side which would have cost the taxpayer practically nothing.

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

#276

Post by TomK32 »

efrafa wrote: post #252
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With factors of 2,3 and 4 its actually easier to deal with English than metric. A third of a meter? Good luck.

How is calculating 1/3 of 100cm an issue? Im living on California for 2 years and imperial system still make no sense to me :)

Has California become and island already?

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

#277

Post by neoromantique »

mantas wrote: post #263
vbezhenar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might imagine that someone would refuse to speak Russian to underline his anti-Russian position, but I never met such a person.

Come to Baltic states. Some people went as far as refusing to speak Russian during Soviet times. Now many young people don't speak Russian and don't even try to because of anti-Russian position. Personally I don't respond in Russian if I'm sure the person was born or lived here for decades. If they look like tourists, I try to help with few Russian words I know or ask if they speak English... Old good pointing at the…

Congrats, you are part of the problem.

-Fellow soon-to-be Ex-Lithuanian.

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

#278

Post by TomK32 »

badminton1 wrote: post #40

Turkey went through a similar process. Reasons included a desire to increase literacy rate and a creating a new national identity. This doesn't really apply to Kazakhstan, a country that already has a good literacy rate.

Well, Turkish didn't have it's own native script, merely adopted and adapted the arabic script which wasn't a good match https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_alphabet

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

#279

Post by kbenson »

azangru wrote: post #191
pc2g4d wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. I can only imagine it makes Kazakh even more daunting. I don't think Cyrillic letters pervade American culture in quite the same way that Latin letters pervade Russian culture, so it's not quite the same.

> The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. It may be a barrier, sure, but it is a microscopic barrier (33 letters, mostly Greek-based, many in common with the Latin alphabet) compared to the complexity of a language (any language) itself. Would you say that Americans would more readily pick up Danish? Or Finnish? Or Latvian? Or Polish? Just as a side note: I once had to take a cours…

> Would you say that Americans would more readily pick up Danish? Or Finnish? Or Latvian? Or Polish?

I would say that Americans (and people in general) are more likely to attempt taking up those languages, if given a fairly equal choice between them and others that also require learning a new alphabet. For the same reason (although on a lesser scale) that they might shy away from Chinese or Japanese.

It's one more hurdle.

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

#280

Post by fusiongyro »

eCa wrote: post #272
FRex wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really telling us Slavs that we are wrong in what we (and our governments, educational systems and language authorities) consider a letter in our native languages and should stop saying our alphabets have however many letters we say they do for decades now because Germans happen to use different logic when counting their letters..? I mean.. really? I'm so astonished by that logic I don't even know what to tel…

> Are you really telling us Slavs[...] Absolutely not. My argument was that Kazakh is far from unique in having ”extra letters”, which my native language’s alphabet also has. On a personal level I far prefer latin-alphabet Slavic languages since it makes it easier to approximate an understandable pronunciation.

Is that a feature of the orthography or does that simply tell us something about your personal background?
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