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It makes it: 1. far easier to look up a word you don't know in a dictionary 2. you can make a stab at pronouncing the word 3. you can type it in on your west
by skookumchuck 9y ago
It makes it:
1. far easier to look up a word you don't know in a dictionary
2. you can make a stab at pronouncing the word
3. you can type it in on your western laptop/phone you brought with you
- emodendroket 9y agoCyrillic is also a phonetic alphabet and you can pretty easily add a Cyrillic keyboard to your phone or laptop. These arguments seem like they belong in a discussion of Chinese script or something similar.
- jsgo 9y agoa cyrillic keyboard to my laptop that I'd have to memorize what latin key it replaces. My laptop flips to French fairly regularly (machine was created with an image containing French and English keyboards) and it is frustrating as it is only easier in the sense that it is poking around for the 1 key to find e with grave or the like vs playing with keystrokes until I land on alt+0232 on numpad. Phones with touchscreen keyboards though, yeah, I could see that being reasonably okay.
- Symbiote 9y agoI tried using my phone to type words into Google Translate while in Armenia. Typing Armenian was a non-starter. I'm not dyslexic, but felt it when faced with words that looked like "արարողակարգը" (random copy-paste from Wikipedia[1]). The second language was often Russian, and typing in Cyrillic was a little better, especially once I found the alphabet is derived from Greek rather than Latin -- so р is r, and н is e, and п is p. But it was still 10 times slower than typing rough Vietnamese into my phone. But anyway, this is clearly a political change, so any reasoning in favour or opposition is irrelevant. [1] https://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%80%D5%A1%D5%B5%D5%A5%D6%80%D5%A5%D5%B6%D5%AB_%D5%A1%D5%B5%D5%A2%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%A2%D5%A5%D5%B6 https://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%80%D5%A1%D5%B5%D5%A5%D6%80... (Armenian Alphabet in Armenian).
- apaprocki 9y agoThe key is the Russian - Phonetic keyboard. It isn't the keyboard layout that is used in Russian. It maps the Cyrillic letters instead to the equivalent letters in the latin alphabet on the regular QWERTY keyboard. This lets you type what you want in Cyrillic very quickly. You only need to memorize the locations of the extra letters with no latin equivalent. (e.g. c = ц, which is reasonable, but ` = щ because there was no where else to put it)
- lmm 9y agoLearning 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.
- emodendroket 9y agoIf 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?
- skookumchuck 9y agoI'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.
- lmm 9y agoTransition costs are only paid once, and if everyone is learning together that's probably a lot less intimidating.