11 ms·

UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look

UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Although I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. I don't suppose any Mongolians are here to give their input?

sametmax 7y ago
> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.G: - cost - available resources for education and work - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Language preservation is overrated. Sure, it's nice. But compared to one day, having the entire earth speak the same language, be able to communicate and understand each other better? Small price to pay. It get why they do it. Mongolia is a very peculiar culture, and I don't think it benefits much from mondialisation. Quite the contrary. And it's a way for their society to break from a painful part of their history. But to me, it seems, at least on the long run, a step backward. Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Granted, the cyrillic alphabet is not very universal, but it is certainly more common than the traditional mongolia alphabet. Now since I don't live there, I may be missing some crucial informations. Maybe the population still massively use the old alphabet unofficially and it makes sense. Maybe the use of the cyrillic alphabet brough problems I can't see. So of course, I'm not the right peson to judge the situation. But I wanted to bring a counter point to this the enthusiastic parent comment. We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.
- hypnotist 7y ago
  >> nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used. seems it is used a lot already - they are just making it a standard.
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    Used a lot in a different country, fwiw.
- adrianN 7y ago
  The French language protection is the reason why the league of nations didn't adopt Esperanto as an official language. I'm quite grumpy about that.
  - madhadron 7y ago
    I'm not. Why would someone's conlang project be given status alongside something with millions of speakers and centuries of literature?
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Because it's easy to learn and very useful as an international language.
      - madhadron 7y ago
        Easy to learn? It has gender and number and a lot of inflection which are hardly easy for many of the world's speakers. Pidgin English appears to do a better job at what Esperanto claims to be ideal for.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - Koshkin 7y ago
        I’d say Spanish would be a much better fit. Much easier to learn than many other languages. (Another good candidate would be Malaysian.)
- lonesword 7y ago
  > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity And that's not necessarily a good thing. It is not just a language that dies, but a part of the culture also dies with the language. I do get the appeal of the world having one language, but attaining it at the cost of diversity would be a _big_ price to pay. I speak a southern Indian language called Malayalam (34 million speakers). There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live. Now if everyone in my town starts speaking only English suddenly, it would definitely affect the way they think[1], function, and would inevitable change the culture. I am not claiming that change is bad, simply arguing that preserving a language might help preserve a culture. [1] IIRC there's been some scientific literature on this. I'll look it up and edit this post when I get time
  - billfruit 7y ago
    Yes, but this is about script. Some languages like Turkish and Vietnamese are doing fine adopting the foreign Latin script as Languages. Sometimes people want/demand change in the direction of modernity too. I think during 1911 revolution in China, the people were really fed up with the system in place for centuries that they wanted it totally rid off; there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic.
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      > there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic. No, there wasn’t. As a former Esperantist (very dedicated and active at the organizational level in UEA), I remember a lot of these claims being pitched to the public about how Esperanto was so esteemed here or there in history that it was almost used officially, but if you actually looked into the facts, never was serious consideration given to using Esperanto. At best there was just one or two government officials involved in these historical events who were Esperantists themselves, but they had no influence in this regard. These are the sort of disingenuous claims about Esperanto that Marcus Sikosek sought to debunk in his book Esperanto sen mitoj, and they do more harm than good to Esperanto and they make the movement look kooky.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other Even if it was true, why would this matter? Just because you share an alphabet doesn't mean you can understand each others culture. > It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Such as? > Mongolia is a very peculiar culture What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture. > Language preservation is overrated. If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language. Think about all the art, history, culture, value that would have been lost had people like you succeeded in the past. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. Simply not true. The "death" of latin brought linguistic/cultural/etc diversity. When european nations started teaching in their own national languages and when they started worshipping in their national languages rather than latin, it created more diversity. > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. Why doesn't it benefit our species? You act like if we all used the same alphabet and spoke the same language, we'd have some kind of utopia. You act like people who speak the same language don't have wars with each other, don't brutalize each other and have cultural differences. It seems like you've bought into the globalist monoculture nonsense. Where we all think alike, talk alike, eat in the same fast food joints and live alike in cities that all look alike. For our species sakes, I hope not.
  - sametmax 7y ago
    The only reason we can even have this important debate is because the whole thread can communicate in english.
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      I can communicate in English even if it isn't my native language. That's true for many others. If anything, I see an argument for being bilingual, not for English as the only language.
  - 7y ago
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > In my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. "Language protection" has been a big thing in Finland inasmuch as the Finnish intelligentsia has historically preferred coining new words from Finnish roots instead of adopting foreign vocabulary (so tietokone for ‘computer’) and there is heavy state subsidy for local cultural productions in Finnish, but Finns nevertheless have great proficiency in English. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. What? Latin died as a native language by splitting up into a large series of dialects across Europe that were no longer mutually intelligible by the late first millennium. Europe did not gain any uniformity by that process.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    > The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. Some subject always loses out when you need to teach something extra. Education is not infinite.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jsjolen 7y ago
      Interesting! Would you like to expand on that argument?
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      If you are referring to the idea that children need to spend their precious school hours only on "useful subjects", then you ought to consider that many young people these days mainly learn English through osmosis while watching television programs etc. at home. So, whether time during their school day is spent focusing on aspects of their native language or not doesn’t make a difference for their ability to communicate internationally. As for "Efficient communication is probably the most important factor in peace", that kind of idealism doesn't hold in practice. The peoples of Yugoslavia could efficiently communicate with each other because they shared essentially the same language, but it still didn't stop them from descending into brutal warfare. Even today, peoples of two antagonistic countries can often communicate with one another in English, but they go on despising each other nevertheless.
- ken 7y ago
  > There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Strongly disagree. Who are we to decide which aspects of someone else’s culture are worth saving, and which can be thrown under the bus in the name of efficiency? Why not architecture, or dress, or food, or religion? Are you only taking issue because this one has a particular impact on computers? > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. What is our purpose, without culture? We’re not robots.
  - gspetr 7y ago
    >Why not architecture, or dress, or food All of these have a very limited use as a means of conveying information, mostly because the medium itself is static. > or religion? Funny you would mention religion. Christianity, Islam and Judaism mention the tower of Babel or something similar to it, implying that splitting the humanity into many languages was God's punishment for defiance. "6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." If we are to believe this, then returning to one language for the entire humanity would simply be a return to our most natural, original state as was meant by our creator.
- bloak 7y ago
  > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. So when Latin evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, ... we gained uniformity? I'm not convinced!
- Koshkin 7y ago
  > we have such a terrible ability to speak english Curiously, native English speakers have a terrible ability to speak French (even though they are not as protective of their language). Personally, I think that this is because these two languages, despite being “neighbors” and in some respects related, are at different extremes of some kind of phonetic spectrum. (Learning the written language, on the other hand, is a breeze and fun.)
- baud147258 7y ago
  I don't think the rumored bad English-speaking capacities of the French are coming from the protection of the French language, but rather from an inadequate teaching methods and funding.
okasaki 7y ago
> UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Why is it good?
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  Because it helps preserve the country's unique culture and history, freeing it of the influence of a state that imposed its rule on them. I know some people prefer languages to be uniform but I don't see 'everyone speaks the same language' as a good thing. As a secondary option, yeah, it would be nice if everyone spoke English or whatever becomes the choice eventually. But I want culture to flourish and this is part of makes countries stand out.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Why don't you consider mutual intelligibility across nations to be good? I love the diversity of the many languages we have, but that's not really a useful aspect of the World - greater cooperation seems to me to be a noble target for the human race and commonality of language seems to aid that. People can share their unique culture with me because they speak a language (native, domestic, or otherwise learnt) that I can understand.
    - jsjolen 7y ago
      Mutual intelligibility for the sake of information exchange is good, but we can have both. Most Europeans already have both. In the EU (the organization) it's Euro English. The person above you has not said that mutual intelligibility is bad. You want people to share their culture with you, yet you are fine with them throwing away something which acts as one of the backbones of their cultural history for the sake of an imagined increase in cooperation. And also, why does everything have to be useful? The useless things in life are often the best. Like ice cream, poetry, wasting an afternoon away, or hacking. In fact that's why I work, to enjoy the useless things in life.
      - 7y ago
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
For a recent case, look at Kazakhstan which is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin - https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-ch....
- aquadrop 7y ago
  That makes much more sense though, you're changing from something less known to more know, easier for tourists etc. Changing to a less approachable vertical system is different...
  - yiyus 7y ago
    While I agree with you, that is a very occidental point of view. I think it is important that the system they are changing to is better for Mongolian people, not tourists. If people there is more familiarized with this vertical system than left-to-right with a latin alphabet, I do not think it is fair to call it "less approachable".
    - aquadrop 7y ago
      But people there are already familiarized with left-to-right system they currently use with cyrillic symbols. And I meant not just for tourists, but in more general sense of being part of global world, especially for smaller nation.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      What if being more fluent in English leads to better economic outcomes for Mongolians, and hence more secure access to resources? I notice that in our family and friends of immigrants, the parents who were fluent in English and able to access all the resources in English, were able to provide their children better advice and their kids are more economically successful than those who didn’t have that resource.
      - jsjolen 7y ago
orbital-decay 7y ago
The history is a bit more detailed than that. The traditional script is derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, widespread at the time in the region, by a captured man when Genghis Khan defeated Naimans, so adopting it is a direct result of establishing the Mongol Empire and its colonies, Rus' being one of them. (and was necessary to run the empire, because the Mongols didn't have writing before that). Chinese Evenks still use this script since these times, for example. >I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. The software support is more concerning than that, I guess. The traditional script is being taught in schools, and is often used along with Cyrillic. The idea of returning to it is not new either. In Inner Mongolia, its use is obligatory in many cases.
lopmotr 7y ago
In a fit of nationalism, a former colonial power takes a step to sever ties with its continental neighbor. Does it still sound good when you look at it that way?
- ken 7y ago
  Sounds even better! Is there some example of colonialism which you think is worth preserving, to the destruction of their culture? Should Ireland stop being Irish, should Korea become a Japanese colony again, or should we reunite the USSR?
  - ggreer 7y ago
    If the US had stayed a colony, it would have abolished slavery 30 years earlier than it did.[1] Hong Kong would probably be better off if it had remained a British colony. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
    - boojums 7y ago
      While I agree Hong Kong would probably be more free under the British, I think Hong Kong is not a good example. They would be best off free, not a PRC colony.
  - gspetr 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Ethiopia "During the Italian rule, infrastructure to connect major cities, railways, public and private companies, and dams providing power and water were built; this along with the influx of Italian settlers and labourers, was the major cause of rapid urbanization growth. Also, the Italian government abolished slavery, a practice that existed in the country for centuries." And this wasn't even the British Empire, these were the literal fascists of Mussolini. >should we reunite the USSR? A controversial topic, to say the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio... "On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 76.4 percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union." It's not like European countries like UK and Spain do not have member regions/nations that are very happy with the will of the majority, e.g. Brexit.
cmrdporcupine 7y ago
Sounds great, can we decolonialize away from the Norman conquest and get back the old Anglo-Saxon orthography?
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English
  - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
    I'd be mostly fine with the huge bagload of loanwords if we could at least have a spelling system that made sense for our language, like we used to... 1000 years ago. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
    - adequateness 7y ago
      Do you propose adopting the shavian alphabet or just modifying spelling with the latin alphabet?
      - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
        Latin alphabet but with some accents, and the eth/thorn/yogh/wynn/ash (ð/þ/Ȝ/ƿ/æ) characters that English used to have, and Icelandic still has some of. [1] http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/ch2.html http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/ch2.html I'm sure everyone will start using it because I want them to ;-)
LatteLazy 7y ago
Yeah, instead of spending the time learning English or Chinese or useful skills, kids can now waste decades on their leaders' ~~nationalistic~~ ethnocentric fools errand...
Frost1x 7y ago
I'm a huge fan of diversity in language and culture (assuming a given culture does not oppress its people). No matter how convenient it is for me, I do not want the entire world to only speak English and follow western culture trends. I would much rather have the diversities that make the world rich. Not only that, but I can assure you, Westernized culture absolutely doesn't "have it right." We have power for historic reasons and that power, I would argue, has unrightfully supplanted alternative ways of life that may arguably be better. We need other languages, we need other cultures, we need other forms of government policy. These diversities give us references to look upon and improve our own culture in ways or fix things that just aren't quite right.
rcatcher 7y ago
> de-colonializing their culture Decolonizing from who? From Russia? Mongolia was never colonized by Russia, it was the other way around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%27#Age_of_Tatar_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%...
- frank2 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the territory now called Mongolia was conquered by White Russians in 1920. Before then it was controlled by the Chinese Republic and before that the Qing dynasty (the rulers of which were ethnically neither Chinese nor Mongolian). In response, the Red Russians assisted Mongolian communists in conquering the country. The assistance included the sending of Russian troops.

sametmax 7y ago

> Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it There are downsides to any situation. E.G: - cost - available resources for education and work - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other I'm french, and in my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Language preservation is overrated. Sure, it's nice. But compared to one day, having the entire earth speak the same language, be able to communicate and understand each other better? Small price to pay. It get why they do it. Mongolia is a very peculiar culture, and I don't think it benefits much from mondialisation. Quite the contrary. And it's a way for their society to break from a painful part of their history. But to me, it seems, at least on the long run, a step backward. Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Granted, the cyrillic alphabet is not very universal, but it is certainly more common than the traditional mongolia alphabet. Now since I don't live there, I may be missing some crucial informations. Maybe the population still massively use the old alphabet unofficially and it makes sense. Maybe the use of the cyrillic alphabet brough problems I can't see. So of course, I'm not the right peson to judge the situation. But I wanted to bring a counter point to this the enthusiastic parent comment. We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie.

hypnotist 7y ago
>> nearly six million in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese region who use the traditional script is used. seems it is used a lot already - they are just making it a standard.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  Used a lot in a different country, fwiw.
adrianN 7y ago
The French language protection is the reason why the league of nations didn't adopt Esperanto as an official language. I'm quite grumpy about that.
- madhadron 7y ago
  I'm not. Why would someone's conlang project be given status alongside something with millions of speakers and centuries of literature?
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Because it's easy to learn and very useful as an international language.
    - madhadron 7y ago
      Easy to learn? It has gender and number and a lot of inflection which are hardly easy for many of the world's speakers. Pidgin English appears to do a better job at what Esperanto claims to be ideal for.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      I’d say Spanish would be a much better fit. Much easier to learn than many other languages. (Another good candidate would be Malaysian.)
lonesword 7y ago
> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity And that's not necessarily a good thing. It is not just a language that dies, but a part of the culture also dies with the language. I do get the appeal of the world having one language, but attaining it at the cost of diversity would be a _big_ price to pay. I speak a southern Indian language called Malayalam (34 million speakers). There are some things that are simply untranslatable to English - these words/concepts are closely tied to the way we live. Now if everyone in my town starts speaking only English suddenly, it would definitely affect the way they think[1], function, and would inevitable change the culture. I am not claiming that change is bad, simply arguing that preserving a language might help preserve a culture. [1] IIRC there's been some scientific literature on this. I'll look it up and edit this post when I get time
- billfruit 7y ago
  Yes, but this is about script. Some languages like Turkish and Vietnamese are doing fine adopting the foreign Latin script as Languages. Sometimes people want/demand change in the direction of modernity too. I think during 1911 revolution in China, the people were really fed up with the system in place for centuries that they wanted it totally rid off; there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > there was very serious discussion about adopting Esperanto as the language of the new republic. No, there wasn’t. As a former Esperantist (very dedicated and active at the organizational level in UEA), I remember a lot of these claims being pitched to the public about how Esperanto was so esteemed here or there in history that it was almost used officially, but if you actually looked into the facts, never was serious consideration given to using Esperanto. At best there was just one or two government officials involved in these historical events who were Esperantists themselves, but they had no influence in this regard. These are the sort of disingenuous claims about Esperanto that Marcus Sikosek sought to debunk in his book Esperanto sen mitoj, and they do more harm than good to Esperanto and they make the movement look kooky.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> - adding one more obstacles for different cultures to be able to understand each other Even if it was true, why would this matter? Just because you share an alphabet doesn't mean you can understand each others culture. > It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english, which create way more problems than it solves. Such as? > Mongolia is a very peculiar culture What's peculiar about it? It's no more peculiar than any other culture. But I'm guessing you meant it's a unique culture. But even then, it's not. It's part of the greater nomadic central asian culture. > Language preservation is overrated. If that was true, we'd all be speaking latin. Thank god for language preservation, otherwise, we wouldn't have shakespeare, mark twain and the world's most productive language. Think about all the art, history, culture, value that would have been lost had people like you succeeded in the past. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. Simply not true. The "death" of latin brought linguistic/cultural/etc diversity. When european nations started teaching in their own national languages and when they started worshipping in their national languages rather than latin, it created more diversity. > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. Why doesn't it benefit our species? You act like if we all used the same alphabet and spoke the same language, we'd have some kind of utopia. You act like people who speak the same language don't have wars with each other, don't brutalize each other and have cultural differences. It seems like you've bought into the globalist monoculture nonsense. Where we all think alike, talk alike, eat in the same fast food joints and live alike in cities that all look alike. For our species sakes, I hope not.
- sametmax 7y ago
  The only reason we can even have this important debate is because the whole thread can communicate in english.
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    I can communicate in English even if it isn't my native language. That's true for many others. If anything, I see an argument for being bilingual, not for English as the only language.
- 7y ago
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> In my country, language protection is a big thing. It's also why we have such a terrible ability to speak english The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. "Language protection" has been a big thing in Finland inasmuch as the Finnish intelligentsia has historically preferred coining new words from Finnish roots instead of adopting foreign vocabulary (so tietokone for ‘computer’) and there is heavy state subsidy for local cultural productions in Finnish, but Finns nevertheless have great proficiency in English. > Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. What? Latin died as a native language by splitting up into a large series of dialects across Europe that were no longer mutually intelligible by the late first millennium. Europe did not gain any uniformity by that process.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  > The latter does not inevitably follow from the former. Some subject always loses out when you need to teach something extra. Education is not infinite.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsjolen 7y ago
    Interesting! Would you like to expand on that argument?
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    If you are referring to the idea that children need to spend their precious school hours only on "useful subjects", then you ought to consider that many young people these days mainly learn English through osmosis while watching television programs etc. at home. So, whether time during their school day is spent focusing on aspects of their native language or not doesn’t make a difference for their ability to communicate internationally. As for "Efficient communication is probably the most important factor in peace", that kind of idealism doesn't hold in practice. The peoples of Yugoslavia could efficiently communicate with each other because they shared essentially the same language, but it still didn't stop them from descending into brutal warfare. Even today, peoples of two antagonistic countries can often communicate with one another in English, but they go on despising each other nevertheless.
ken 7y ago
> There are enough source of diversity in humanity to not need to add it to the very structure we use to exchange information. Strongly disagree. Who are we to decide which aspects of someone else’s culture are worth saving, and which can be thrown under the bus in the name of efficiency? Why not architecture, or dress, or food, or religion? Are you only taking issue because this one has a particular impact on computers? > We tend to react in a very emotional way when it's about culture, and I'm not sure it benefits our specie. What is our purpose, without culture? We’re not robots.
- gspetr 7y ago
  >Why not architecture, or dress, or food All of these have a very limited use as a means of conveying information, mostly because the medium itself is static. > or religion? Funny you would mention religion. Christianity, Islam and Judaism mention the tower of Babel or something similar to it, implying that splitting the humanity into many languages was God's punishment for defiance. "6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." If we are to believe this, then returning to one language for the entire humanity would simply be a return to our most natural, original state as was meant by our creator.
bloak 7y ago
> Every time a language dies, like latin or summerian did, we gain uniformity. So when Latin evolved into French, Italian, Spanish, ... we gained uniformity? I'm not convinced!
Koshkin 7y ago
> we have such a terrible ability to speak english Curiously, native English speakers have a terrible ability to speak French (even though they are not as protective of their language). Personally, I think that this is because these two languages, despite being “neighbors” and in some respects related, are at different extremes of some kind of phonetic spectrum. (Learning the written language, on the other hand, is a breeze and fun.)
baud147258 7y ago
I don't think the rumored bad English-speaking capacities of the French are coming from the protection of the French language, but rather from an inadequate teaching methods and funding.

okasaki 7y ago

> UI issues aside, I think this is quite fabulous. Preserving their traditional alphabet and de-colonializing their culture is a good thing, no matter how I look at it. Why is it good?

WilTimSon 7y ago
Because it helps preserve the country's unique culture and history, freeing it of the influence of a state that imposed its rule on them. I know some people prefer languages to be uniform but I don't see 'everyone speaks the same language' as a good thing. As a secondary option, yeah, it would be nice if everyone spoke English or whatever becomes the choice eventually. But I want culture to flourish and this is part of makes countries stand out.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Why don't you consider mutual intelligibility across nations to be good? I love the diversity of the many languages we have, but that's not really a useful aspect of the World - greater cooperation seems to me to be a noble target for the human race and commonality of language seems to aid that. People can share their unique culture with me because they speak a language (native, domestic, or otherwise learnt) that I can understand.
  - jsjolen 7y ago
    Mutual intelligibility for the sake of information exchange is good, but we can have both. Most Europeans already have both. In the EU (the organization) it's Euro English. The person above you has not said that mutual intelligibility is bad. You want people to share their culture with you, yet you are fine with them throwing away something which acts as one of the backbones of their cultural history for the sake of an imagined increase in cooperation. And also, why does everything have to be useful? The useless things in life are often the best. Like ice cream, poetry, wasting an afternoon away, or hacking. In fact that's why I work, to enjoy the useless things in life.
    - 7y ago

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

For a recent case, look at Kazakhstan which is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin - https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-ch....

aquadrop 7y ago
That makes much more sense though, you're changing from something less known to more know, easier for tourists etc. Changing to a less approachable vertical system is different...
- yiyus 7y ago
  While I agree with you, that is a very occidental point of view. I think it is important that the system they are changing to is better for Mongolian people, not tourists. If people there is more familiarized with this vertical system than left-to-right with a latin alphabet, I do not think it is fair to call it "less approachable".
  - aquadrop 7y ago
    But people there are already familiarized with left-to-right system they currently use with cyrillic symbols. And I meant not just for tourists, but in more general sense of being part of global world, especially for smaller nation.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    What if being more fluent in English leads to better economic outcomes for Mongolians, and hence more secure access to resources? I notice that in our family and friends of immigrants, the parents who were fluent in English and able to access all the resources in English, were able to provide their children better advice and their kids are more economically successful than those who didn’t have that resource.
    - jsjolen 7y ago

orbital-decay 7y ago

The history is a bit more detailed than that. The traditional script is derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet, widespread at the time in the region, by a captured man when Genghis Khan defeated Naimans, so adopting it is a direct result of establishing the Mongol Empire and its colonies, Rus' being one of them. (and was necessary to run the empire, because the Mongols didn't have writing before that). Chinese Evenks still use this script since these times, for example. >I do wonder how easy it will be for the whole nation to switch from one alphabet to another when they're so drastically different. The software support is more concerning than that, I guess. The traditional script is being taught in schools, and is often used along with Cyrillic. The idea of returning to it is not new either. In Inner Mongolia, its use is obligatory in many cases.

lopmotr 7y ago

In a fit of nationalism, a former colonial power takes a step to sever ties with its continental neighbor. Does it still sound good when you look at it that way?

ken 7y ago
Sounds even better! Is there some example of colonialism which you think is worth preserving, to the destruction of their culture? Should Ireland stop being Irish, should Korea become a Japanese colony again, or should we reunite the USSR?
- ggreer 7y ago
  If the US had stayed a colony, it would have abolished slavery 30 years earlier than it did.[1] Hong Kong would probably be better off if it had remained a British colony. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
  - boojums 7y ago
    While I agree Hong Kong would probably be more free under the British, I think Hong Kong is not a good example. They would be best off free, not a PRC colony.
- gspetr 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Ethiopia "During the Italian rule, infrastructure to connect major cities, railways, public and private companies, and dams providing power and water were built; this along with the influx of Italian settlers and labourers, was the major cause of rapid urbanization growth. Also, the Italian government abolished slavery, a practice that existed in the country for centuries." And this wasn't even the British Empire, these were the literal fascists of Mussolini. >should we reunite the USSR? A controversial topic, to say the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Unio... "On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 76.4 percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union." It's not like European countries like UK and Spain do not have member regions/nations that are very happy with the will of the majority, e.g. Brexit.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

Sounds great, can we decolonialize away from the Norman conquest and get back the old Anglo-Saxon orthography?

theandrewbailey 7y ago
Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  I'd be mostly fine with the huge bagload of loanwords if we could at least have a spelling system that made sense for our language, like we used to... 1000 years ago. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform
  - adequateness 7y ago
    Do you propose adopting the shavian alphabet or just modifying spelling with the latin alphabet?
    - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
      Latin alphabet but with some accents, and the eth/thorn/yogh/wynn/ash (ð/þ/Ȝ/ƿ/æ) characters that English used to have, and Icelandic still has some of. [1] http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/ch2.html http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/ch2.html I'm sure everyone will start using it because I want them to ;-)

LatteLazy 7y ago

Yeah, instead of spending the time learning English or Chinese or useful skills, kids can now waste decades on their leaders' ~~nationalistic~~ ethnocentric fools errand...

Frost1x 7y ago

I'm a huge fan of diversity in language and culture (assuming a given culture does not oppress its people). No matter how convenient it is for me, I do not want the entire world to only speak English and follow western culture trends. I would much rather have the diversities that make the world rich. Not only that, but I can assure you, Westernized culture absolutely doesn't "have it right." We have power for historic reasons and that power, I would argue, has unrightfully supplanted alternative ways of life that may arguably be better. We need other languages, we need other cultures, we need other forms of government policy. These diversities give us references to look upon and improve our own culture in ways or fix things that just aren't quite right.

rcatcher 7y ago

> de-colonializing their culture Decolonizing from who? From Russia? Mongolia was never colonized by Russia, it was the other way around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%27#Age_of_Tatar_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%...

frank2 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, the territory now called Mongolia was conquered by White Russians in 1920. Before then it was controlled by the Chinese Republic and before that the Qing dynasty (the rulers of which were ethnically neither Chinese nor Mongolian). In response, the Red Russians assisted Mongolian communists in conquering the country. The assistance included the sending of Russian troops.