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Cyrillic versus Latin script | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 17 of 66 03 June 2008 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not so sure about the idea that more is better with alphabets. The old script used in Slaveno-Serbian (precursor to modern literary Serbian) was a relative mess as some sounds were represented by two symbols each - quite confusing. It was only after a lot of hair-pulling between the Serbian clergy and Karadzic's followers that the flowery, but bloated Slaveno-Serbian script was replaced by Karadzic's modified (simplified) Cyrillic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6776 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 66 03 June 2008 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, orthography can be a mess regardless of the script, of course. And I wouldn't say more is better myself (otherwise Chinese and languages like that would be the winners in the best script category). But in my opinion, one-to-one correspondence between sounds of the language and the symbols in the script would be the ideal situation - even if it never seems to work that way in practice. Latin script has 26 letters, I think and Cyrillic - at least the Russian one - has 33. So for languages with 33 or more different sounds, I think Cyrillic would be superior (other things being equal). But both scripts would be inferior to an alphabet with 40 letters if, say, a language had 50 sounds. This is just my opinion, though. Edited by Russianbear on 03 June 2008 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 19 of 66 03 June 2008 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree that the Cyrillic script is much more powerful, but only for writing Slavonic languages. More is better only if it required by the phonology of a given language. Germanic and Romance languages really don't have much use for ъ, ю, я and so forth. They are better served by the Latin script ( plus some cool diáçritîcs. :) Edited by Sennin on 03 June 2008 at 3:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 20 of 66 03 June 2008 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
English Latin has 26, Russian Cyrillic has 33. The terms Latin and Cyrillic are a bit vague since each language devises a script as it sees fit. Dinka uses an alphabet of 33 symbols that's heavily based on Latin, while Abkhaz uses a modified Cyrillic alphabet of 62 symbols. I'm really starting to believe that this thread reflects more personal preferences and is affected by their background in the script of the native language over anything else. The people whose native alphabet is based on Cyrillic favour Cyrillic, whose those whose native alphabet is based on Latin favour Latin. One-to-one correspondence between sounds of a language and its symbols indeed is what counts. By that measure "Cyrillic" and "Latin" can be equally good or equally bad. I always feel that English could use a few more letters or some diacritical marks (not to mention a slight loosening of the etymological and morpho-phonemic principles) to make spelling a bit more representative of its phonology. Likewise, I feel that Russian wouldn't be tarnished if it also loosened some of its etymological and morpho-phonemic principles and regularly added diacritical marks to mark stress. The bottom line is that creators of different alphabets haven't quite gone whole-heartedly to the idea of correspondence, but they sometimes seem rather close in my view with setups as in BCS/Serbo-Croatian (although they don't mark vowel length or stress location) and Esperanto ("-kz" and "-ŭ-" are irregular though). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6776 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 66 03 June 2008 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I won't speak for all Germanic or Romance languages, but I know that English orthography would be much easier if it had a few more symbols. ъ, ю and я could still be useful even in the "Russian" way of using them in words like "youth" or "young", but, perhaps even more so, some other use could be found. There are certainly enough vowel sounds in English, so a couple more letters for vowels wouldn't hurt. And who is to say they would need to be used in roughly the same way as in Russian or Bulgarian. The symbols used for vowels in Russian could just as well be used for the 2 "th" sounds in English or something. So, if one isn't set on the idea the alphabet would have to closely follow the Russian or Bulgarian phonetics, ways could be found to use all letters. Even between Bulgarian and Russian, "ъ" has a very different function. English could use a few more letters for vowels and a few more consonants, so Cyrillic would technically offer more flexibility, as it has more letters. Edited by Russianbear on 03 June 2008 at 3:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 66 03 June 2008 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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English could also create diagraphs (like Hungarian, Polish and Esperanto) or add diacritical marks (like French or Vietnamese) to existing letters (how about a few of: á, à, ä, å, â to denote the different ways to pronounce "a"?) in order to "iron out" its orthography. I can't really see English speakers warming to the idea of using Cyrillic symbols to augment their alphabet, any more than I can see Russian speakers, for example using Latin symbols in an imagined attempt to "iron out" Russian orthography.
As a side note, I remember reading that the Serbian clergy initially threw a fit over Karadzic's modified Cyrillic alphabet because he used "J". It then believed that he was acting as a Catholic, traitor, Habsburg spy or all of the preceding because of his addition of "J" to a Cyrillic alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 23 of 66 03 June 2008 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Let's go to war and iron it out once and for all ^_^. Доста робство и тиранство, всички на оружие ;p Edited by Sennin on 03 June 2008 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6776 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 66 03 June 2008 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Chung, I am not saying English should adopt Cyrillic or anything like that. Like you said, it would make more sense to go the way Polish did and add diagraphs and whatever. And even that would just be wishful thinking and nothing that would be expected to happen anytime soon. But I do think that Cyrillic would be better for (most) Slavic languages, and even for a language like English, other things being equal. And you are right, any substantial reform in orthography would make native speakers unhappy. People have suffered so much learning the spelling of all the words, any spelling reform would make them feel they wasted time in school :) Edited by Russianbear on 03 June 2008 at 4:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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