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As a Polish-American guy, it’s a bit painful to use the Latin alphabet with Slavic languages. It works, but at the cost of your name being unintelligible to any
by keiferski 2y ago
As a Polish-American guy, it’s a bit painful to use the Latin alphabet with Slavic languages. It works, but at the cost of your name being unintelligible to anyone west of Vienna.
Cyrillic is much more suited for Slavic languages, but of course there is so much historical baggage there that it’ll never happen. Cyrillic is a civilization-level thing tied to a lot of cultural elements, not merely a different set of symbols.
What will be interesting to see is if Bulgaria, Serbia, and Ukraine continue to use Cyrillic or gradually switch to Latin.
- farmdve 2y agoWell, Bulgaria has a lot of borrowed words now, but I don't see even a hint of switching to the Latin alphabet. Not even a hint.
- keiferski 2y agoI mean in the longer term. Bulgaria has a lot of population issues and seems somewhat torn between the West and the Russian spheres, so I don’t think it’s inconceivable that in 50 years (after generations grow up online familiar with computer-based Latin alphabets) they formally switch to using it. Serbia would probably switch first, though. When I was there a half decade ago, Latin and Cyrillic were used interchangeably. But it’s my understanding that Latin is much more popular amongst the young.
- gostsamo 2y agoThis is part of the national identity. No chance in hell.
- keiferski 2y agoBulgaria’s population is set to halve by 2100, so again, considering the importance of Latin-based languages globally, integration into the EU, etc. I don’t think it’s that inconceivable. Maybe just not likely soon because of the historical connection to Cyrillic. Again, I didn’t say it will happen, just that it seems conceivable to me.
- gostsamo 2y agoMaybe reflect on what made you think that a nation would just scratch more than a thousand years of culture so that it is easier for facebook engineers to encode their web page. Have no other comment, really.
- keiferski 2y agoThere are plenty of other examples of countries switching to a new alphabet, even when it would cut people off from their history. Turkish being a prime example. It has nothing to do with making life easier for Facebook engineers and I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. It has everything to do with what real people do in their daily lives, and what government institutions mandate. These sarcastic replies are so tiresome and intellectually uncurious.
- gostsamo 2y agoWhen met with extreme obliviousness, sarcasm is the only escape of the mind. Turkey switched lots of things as a deliberate act of cutting off with its past, including form of government, constitution, and legitimacy model, and after losing wars and territories for centuries. The fact that you disregard the context to arrive at the desired conclusion might have something to do with the intellectual difficulties you find yourself in.
- keiferski 2y agoYou can’t seem to leave any comment without adding some sort of sarcastic rude put down, which really isn’t in the nature of this site, nor is it conducive for having an interesting discussion about the future of language. Learn some manners and try again, this time with actual arguments.
- farmdve 2y agoOk, and just because a few countries did it, in what way implies that Bulgaria will? Your arguments have no basis other than "Country A did it, so Bulgaria is also more likely to do it".
- bogosmith 2y agoI remember back around 20 years ago someone on this radio station https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%BD_%D0%B8_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B0 https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE... was expressing support of the idea of switching to the Latin alphabet as a natural step in the integration of the country in Europe/ new digital age/ or something along those lines. His conclusion seemed to be that "society wasn't mature enough".
- bluetomcat 2y agoThere’s a new wave of nationalism emerging in Bulgaria. Any interference with the national identity would be seen as blasphemy, done by foreign agents paid by the “embassy”.
- keiferski 2y agoThat’s why I said in 50 years. 50 years ago, before Solidarity in Poland, before Reagan, etc. - the Soviet Union seemed like it would last centuries. It’s a long time. And although I have only visited Bulgaria and not lived there, I do live in a neighboring country and see how much Western culture / EU culture dominates the local youth culture. On the institutional level, it would likely take the efforts of an Ataturk-like figure that wants to tie Bulgaria more to the West.
- bluetomcat 2y agoIn the longer term, too many unpredictable factors can collide, so anything is possible. Particularly in Bulgaria, the youth is dominated by western culture only at the surface level. It’s in their consumption patterns, the outfit and the slang. Apart from that, it’s not a western culture by a long shot. The competitive individualism is not there. The family is expected to give a good and steady start to their children, at the cost of the comfort of the parents. The national symbols like the alphabet are encoded and institutionalised through the educational system. For example, all schools are marching through cities on the 24th of May, to celebrate the alphabet and enlightenment (просвета) in general.
- dustark 2y agoIt doesn't seem like you know what you're talking about. Have you ever been to Bulgaria, or are you just fantasizing? People in Bulgaria are already familiar with the 'computer-based Latin alphabet' and speak English decently well (at least anyone under 40). Also, I'm not sure what the population issue has to do with what alphabet they use. People will magically switch to the Latin alphabet because... there are fewer of them? By that same logic, should we expect Japan and South Korea to start using Latin characters too ?
- keiferski 2y agoLet me state this again, because people really seem to have a difficult time understanding my comment: I said it was plausible that Bulgaria could switch to the Latin alphabet in a long time. The word plausible implies that it could happen, but is not guaranteed, or even likely. It is conceivable, it is a possible future. It doesn’t mean I think it will absolutely happen. The reasons I think this switch is plausible are: - the growing adoption of Western and EU Latin-based culture amongst the youth. The government and institutional power structures in Bulgaria are still largely populated by people who are over 35 years old. In 50 years, this won’t be the case, and the people filling the jobs will have been influenced by Latin-alphabet culture for decades. - The population decline of the country is going to present serious issues. Some of the solutions to it will probably be closer integration to the EU, which almost entirely uses the Latin alphabet. Also factor in the Bulgarian diaspora which is growing up in Latin-language places elsewhere in the EU. - The current geopolitical situation, wherein future Bulgarians may (again, plausibly) want to distance themselves from the Russian-dominated Orthodoxy world, of which the Cyrillic alphabet is still a fairly strong connection. Also consider that Orthodoxy itself is in decline, and so having this connection might not be that important to the Bulgarians of 2074. I foresee a similar thing amongst the youth in Poland and Catholicism.
- dustark 2y agoNo one is having difficulty understanding your comment. It's just very clear to someone who lives in Bulgaria that you don't have first-hand knowledge of what you're talking about, and your speculations about what might happen 50 years from now are not grounded in reality. No one in Bulgaria uses the Latin alphabet to write in Bulgarian, and there's no indication that this will change. As the French say, 'avec des 'si' on mettrait Paris en bouteille'.
- MilanTodorovic 2y agoIn Serbia, Latin is "popular" because it is the default in all computers and phones. Most don't bother switching or don't know how. In the old days, when sending an SMS had a price, using cyrillic letters was expensive as hell. You could barely write one third of an SMS for the same price. And that adds up pretty quickly! On a side note, as someone who has to use multiple keyborad layouts each day, it is annoying.
- keiferski 2y agoAnd in a few generations, you don’t think this usage of computers and phones is going to have a serious impact on how Cyrillic is used? People are going to use Latin on phones and computers all day long but still use Cyrillic just as much?
- MilanTodorovic 2y agoIt most certainly will have a big impact. It will take a few more decades, but at some point everybody will simply switch. Both formes are equal in the eyes of the consitution, but Cyrillic is prefered by official insitutions, except if you deal with a lot of foreign affairs. Then it is more practical to simply use Latin all the way.
- vsnf 2y ago> What will be interesting to see is if Bulgaria, Serbia, and Ukraine continue to use Cyrillic or gradually switch to Latin. Turkmenistan of all places is currently undergoing a gradual switch to Latin, which has happened in fits and starts with various mandates to do so, and then to stop doing so. But the culture seems pretty undeniably to be trending to romanization.
- sampa 2y agobut they have a Turkic family language there, not a Slavic one
- vsnf 2y agoRight, but like a sibling poster pointed out, they've been using Cyrillic, so the migration is similar, at least.
- kgeist 2y agoNot quite - several Slavic languages have so called contrastive palatalization, i.e. almost all consonants come in palatalized/non-palatalized pairs, and they're hard to express using unmodified Latin alphabet. Some Slavic languages lost most of the contrastive palatalization (say, Serbian), and Turkic languages never had it to begin with, so they're easier to switch. In Europe, Polish and Irish are two examples of a language with extensive contrastive palatalization which uses the Latin alphabet, and they're probably among the least readable/elegant writing systems in Europe.
- culebron21 2y agoTurkic languages do have constrastive palatalization system, going together with "soft" & "hard" vowels. (Example from German: a, e, o, u would be "hard", ä, ö and ü would be "soft" vowels for Kazakh speaker) In Kazakh, kerek (need) is palatized completely, while in kara (black) consonants are not. In "shanyrak" (yurt roof top window) consonants aren't palatized and "k" is fricative, in shelek (bucket) "k" is palatized and non-fricative. Since palatized consonants go together with "soft" vowels, one may omit this distinction in writing. But the difference is still there. N.B. Some Turkic languages have lost this feature.
- holoduke 2y agoUkraine switching to Latin? I have never heard that before. It would be very annoying. Latin alfabet is not suited for eastern slavic languages. My Latin Russian is already so rusty. There are 10 different ways to write certain letters in latin. In Cyrillic just one.
- keiferski 2y agoLinguistically it would be pretty annoying, I agree. Although perhaps not dramatically different from the romanization of Slovak or Polish. The point is more that there are many obvious political reasons why a future Ukraine might go down this path.
- andrewl-hn 2y agoUkrainian written in Latin really highlights the fact that it has more common words with Polish than with Russian. In general, the two languages look remarkably similar and sound close to each other, too. Some Ukrainian writers used Latin script for their works in 19 century, so at least there’s a precedent.
- holoduke 2y ago99.9% of the Ukrainians never ever would have a latin version or their language. Maybe some extremists from Kiev. Sponsored by the west probably.
- usrnm 2y ago> In Cyrillic just one That's not true. Depends on the language, of course, but at least in Russian there are definitely more than one way to express many sounds using different letters. For example, there is no difference in pronunciation between "ёлка" and "йолка", although only one of them is accepted as correct
- agapon 2y agoThere have been several Latin based scripts proposed for Ukrainian over many decades. So, if you haven't heard, you just haven't been interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet
- horsh1 2y agoWhy Latin? At the moment of EU dissolution, there will be an easy choice of switching to Arabic vs staying with Cyrillic.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoWrite it in Greek?
- postepowanieadm 2y ago> It works, but at the cost of your name being unintelligible to anyone west of Vienna. Same thing would still be true with cyrylic I believe.
- keiferski 2y agoOne interesting consequence of the Latin-Cyrillic split in America is that Cyrillic names got transliterated into English-understandable ones, whereas Polish Latin names often didn’t. With the result that the originally-Cyrillic names are actually easier to understand in daily life. Compare for example, Kuznetsov (fairly easy to say in English) vs. Kwiatkowski (ported directly from Polish.)
- postepowanieadm 2y agoIt's a different issue not related with alphabet only with American tradition regarding Surnames. Same issue exists for example with Polish and Lithuanian both using latin alphabet.
- Koshkin 2y agoBut compare: The Polish "chrząszcz" vs. the Cyrillic "xрущ" vs. its usual transliteration into English as "khrusch".
- BerislavLopac 2y agoIt's a shame that Glagolitic hasn't caught up and remained relevant like Cyrillic did. On the upside, at least now we have our own historically accurate fantasy script. ;)|
- larodi 2y agoThis switch in other Slavic countries, you must understand, is thanks (caused by) the adoption of Catholicism. So nothing to do with what people decided, really, it was a political/church decision. I doubt Bulgarians would ever toss the Cyrillic away, as it gives so much identity to the country and the people there.
- TheMatten 2y agoI don't think it's really about Latin vs Cyrillic. Cyrillic is indeed very natural even for Slavic languages that only use Latin (modulo language-specific tweaks), but same results can be achieved with diacritics in Latin - take a look at Czech, Slovak and Serbo-Croatian alphabets. On the other hand, Polish alphabet really feels painful to an outsider, but that seems to be more about how it uses Latin, not about Latin itself.
- Koshkin 2y ago> diacritics Tiếng Việt hay Việt ngữ là một ngôn ngữ thuộc...
- broken-kebab 2y ago>bit painful to use the Latin alphabet with Slavic languages. It works, but at the cost of your name being unintelligible to anyone west of Vienna. I'm not sure what you mean. Using Cyrillic would make it more unintelligible.
- mmaniac 2y agoIt's interesting to observe how foreign writing systems fit the needs of the languages they are were designed to record. Korean Hangeul is the gold standard here. Letter shapes represent their articulation and harmony and modify in regular ways to represent related pronunciations. You find similar observations in the writing systems for Arabic, Hindi, and Chinese. In the case of Cyrillic, it's that vowels come in soft and hard pairs. Perhaps it's bias, but the Latin alphabet seems unopinionated by comparison. It has a good spread of characters for consonants and vowels and is amenable to diacritics or even novel characters. The only thing it's seriously lacking is a good way to transcribe tones. Chinese characters are great for writing a language with a near-1:1 morpheme:syllable correspondence, but its adaptation to write Japanese was famously clumsy.