gls@odyssey.att.com (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (06/09/90)
In article <1990Jun5.112535.5788@agate.berkeley.edu>, dankg@volcano writes: > > Local difference spans from simply number of character set to > justification: Arabic and Hebrew writes from left to right. Mongolian writes > up to down. ... Whoa! Modern Mongolian uses the New Turkic Alphabet, devised by Russians and based on the Russian Alphabet. The old Mongolian script, which I think was based on Persian, did indeed run top-to-bottom. But with the current derussianization of Mongolia, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mongols switched to Roman, which is better suited for Turkic languages than Cyrillic. -:- "Emiyel uige, Verrier ende!" --advertising slogan -- Col. G. L. Sicherman gls@odyssey.att.COM
dankg@tornado.Berkeley.EDU (Dan KoGai) (06/11/90)
In article <1990Jun8.170321.7830@cbnewsh.att.com> gls@odyssey.att.com (Col. G. L. Sicherman) writes: > >Whoa! Modern Mongolian uses the New Turkic Alphabet, devised by Russians >and based on the Russian Alphabet. The old Mongolian script, which I >think was based on Persian, did indeed run top-to-bottom. But with the >current derussianization of Mongolia, I wouldn't be surprised if the >Mongols switched to Roman, which is better suited for Turkic languages >than Cyrillic. Whoa! You completely missed the point: Mongolian is just an example and they still use top->down scripts. It sounds to me just because Turks are now using alphabets enough reason to abondon entire arabic script. Plus Mongolians have little tie with Persians (the grammer is completely different, I heared). And I'm tired of this kind of romanization status quo: Even Japanese could've switched to Romaji, or phonetic spelling by roman chars. But they simply didn't do so and instead they made phonetic-to-kanji converter. After these days of living in America, I found myself much more confortable speaking, listening, and writing in English. Still, I can read Japanese much faster because it's densier. Some of the Japanese can read 200-page book within 5 minutes and this kind of thing is impossible for roman-script languages. Each language has its own virtues and we should help, not abondon, those virtues. ---------------- ____ __ __ + Dan The "setlocale" Man ||__||__| + E-mail: dankg@ocf.berkeley.edu ____| ______ + Voice: +1 415-549-6111 | |__|__| + USnail: 1730 Laloma Berkeley, CA 94709 U.S.A |___ |__|__| + |____|____ + "What's the biggest U.S. export to Japan?" \_| | + "Bullshit. It makes the best fertilizer for their rice"
djb@wjh12.harvard.edu (David J. Birnbaum) (06/11/90)
The recent discussion of the type of script used to represent Mongolian
is part of a larger issue. Standard languages change writing systems
both by modifying a single system or by replacing it with another.
There may often be a need to create an electronic text reflecting an
obsolete writing system. Replacement systems may not observe a
letter-for-letter mapping, which means that coding a single language
that uses multiple writing systems is not always simple.
Whether writing systems are current (or not) or sensible (or not),
we still need to be able to represent them.
--David
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David J. Birnbaum djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet]
djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet]
============================================================mac@ra.cs.Virginia.EDU (Alex Colvin) (06/15/90)
Mongolian "vertical" script is still in use in Inner Mongolia (China). Apparently with democritization there is renewed interest in it in Mongolia, in preference to the Cyrillic. Vertical script is derived from the Uighir (Chinese Turkestan) vertical script, in turn derived from Sogdian. It's sort of like Devanagari (Sanskrit) sideways,. Both are from North Semitic alphabets. bi oros baixgui bi oyuutan baene