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For Hungarian, people stuck with an English layout usually just leave off the diacritical marks (áéíóöőúüű -> aeiooouuu). While this theoretically leaves some o

For Hungarian, people stuck with an English layout usually just leave off the diacritical marks (áéíóöőúüű -> aeiooouuu). While this theoretically leaves some of the meaning ambiguous, and pedants can craft examples that may be ambiguous even with context, it works well enough in practice. Switching to English is way overblown a reaction. Two Hungarians chatting in English (unless there are non-Hungarian speakers involved) seems extremely weird to me. It may be partially that English is really foreign for us, while it's pretty close linguistically to Swedish, both being Germanic.

Vinnl 7y ago
> It may be partially that English is really foreign for us, while it's pretty close linguistically to Swedish, both being Germanic. That wouldn't explain it, because we do the same in Dutch: just leave off the diacritics. Diacritics are pretty rare in Dutch, though.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  Yeah in swedish leaving them off isn't working. The diacritics aren't for accentuation, they are distinct letters. An ö is as different from o as u and e are.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    Same in Hungarian. One funny example is "főkábel" (fő+kábel, main cable) vs. "fókabél" (fóka+bél, seal intestine). Still, the intended meaning is almost always easy to guess. Hungarian is also redundant enough that you can even replace all vowels with just one and still be understandable. Most of the meaning is carried by the consonants. E.g. "Szia én vagyok Péter, hogy vagy?" -> Szii, in vigyik Pitir, higy vigy. (sounds obviously wrong, but very understandable) Retaining the vowels but collapsing all consonants to one would be more destructive to the meaning.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Uh, what do you mean? Leaving them off and letting the reader guess the intended word works pretty well in practice and is what many organisations in Sweden resorted to when getting a domain name (ex: riksgälden, åhlens, företagarna).
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
    And 1337-speak was never readable to anyone in English, since numb3rs ar3 d1st1nc7 fr0m l3773r5.
  - krageon 7y ago
    It works fine in practice, even if pedantic people will always correct you when you use a instead of å.
alkonaut 7y ago
Hungarian is really foreign to EVERYONE :) Me switching to english is in the context of work, not chatting with peers in my free time. At work in tech everyone* (few exceptions) communicates in english (emails, bug reports etc) also between Swedish colleagues, so it's very natural. I wouldn't send a text message to my wife in English if I happened to struggle with the diacritics on the device I'm on.
amyjess 7y ago
> Switching to English is way overblown a reaction. Two Hungarians chatting in English (unless there are non-Hungarian speakers involved) seems extremely weird to me. It may be partially that English is really foreign for us, while it's pretty close linguistically to Swedish, both being Germanic. For what it's worth, I have a Swedish friend who almost always posts in English, even when he's talking to his family and other people he knows in real life. He'll switch to Swedish occasionally (and Facebook's autotranslation is very understandable), but 90% of the time he uses English.

Vinnl 7y ago

> It may be partially that English is really foreign for us, while it's pretty close linguistically to Swedish, both being Germanic. That wouldn't explain it, because we do the same in Dutch: just leave off the diacritics. Diacritics are pretty rare in Dutch, though.

alkonaut 7y ago
Yeah in swedish leaving them off isn't working. The diacritics aren't for accentuation, they are distinct letters. An ö is as different from o as u and e are.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  Same in Hungarian. One funny example is "főkábel" (fő+kábel, main cable) vs. "fókabél" (fóka+bél, seal intestine). Still, the intended meaning is almost always easy to guess. Hungarian is also redundant enough that you can even replace all vowels with just one and still be understandable. Most of the meaning is carried by the consonants. E.g. "Szia én vagyok Péter, hogy vagy?" -> Szii, in vigyik Pitir, higy vigy. (sounds obviously wrong, but very understandable) Retaining the vowels but collapsing all consonants to one would be more destructive to the meaning.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Uh, what do you mean? Leaving them off and letting the reader guess the intended word works pretty well in practice and is what many organisations in Sweden resorted to when getting a domain name (ex: riksgälden, åhlens, företagarna).
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
  And 1337-speak was never readable to anyone in English, since numb3rs ar3 d1st1nc7 fr0m l3773r5.
- krageon 7y ago
  It works fine in practice, even if pedantic people will always correct you when you use a instead of å.

alkonaut 7y ago

Hungarian is really foreign to EVERYONE :) Me switching to english is in the context of work, not chatting with peers in my free time. At work in tech everyone* (few exceptions) communicates in english (emails, bug reports etc) also between Swedish colleagues, so it's very natural. I wouldn't send a text message to my wife in English if I happened to struggle with the diacritics on the device I'm on.

amyjess 7y ago

> Switching to English is way overblown a reaction. Two Hungarians chatting in English (unless there are non-Hungarian speakers involved) seems extremely weird to me. It may be partially that English is really foreign for us, while it's pretty close linguistically to Swedish, both being Germanic. For what it's worth, I have a Swedish friend who almost always posts in English, even when he's talking to his family and other people he knows in real life. He'll switch to Swedish occasionally (and Facebook's autotranslation is very understandable), but 90% of the time he uses English.