Romanize Non-English Languages Or They Will Die

[Mark Wolfe]

Samui04 wrote:

Any language not using western alphabet is dead, apart chinese, they are too many.....

First off, which "Chinese" are you referring to? Mandarin? Cantonese? Shanghainese? There are many dozens. And what is special about Chinese? Japanese has a non-alphabetic alphabet.

[NHJ]

was it worth opening a topic?

[Mark Wolfe]

was it worth opening a topic?

It was so worth it that I (accidentally) opened it twice, which a handy Mod will fix.

Considering the level of topics here, sure, it's got wheels. Particularly if you have studied non-English languages that do and do not use an alphabet.

But if this isn't your cup of tea, there is always the MOLE REMOVAL thread.

[koheesti]

I'm just working on memory here but I think Serbo-Croatian is written in Latin letters in Croatia and Cyrillic letter in Serbia. With the split up of Yugoslavia I don't know where it stands.

[ozsamurai]

Romanization of languages, is such a dumb idea...

1) Pronunciation of many foreign words can never be achieved within the letters we have

2) Words would end up with the same spelling whereas the meanings are different by use of different characters in their native form.

3) Inflection and tones can not be represented.

4) Cultural identity and heritage would be lost.

and ohhhh so many more...

Nan datte! baka ja nai?

Oz

[samui04]

Samui04 wrote:

Any language not using western alphabet is dead, apart chinese, they are too many.....

First off, which "Chinese" are you referring to? Mandarin? Cantonese? Shanghainese? There are many dozens. And what is special about Chinese? Japanese has a non-alphabetic alphabet.

Mark, only 60 million people speak my language, italian. Too few, the language will not survive another century.

Italian language is written in western alphabet and very similar to spanish, that will survive (next language on USA ).

If you have a language written with totaly strange symbols like Thai the chance of surviving are vry slim.

Obviously i'm speaking long term....

As any good SciFi movie have showed in the far future the normal people will use chinese worldwide (japanese is a variant)....

[samui04]

But if this isn't your cup of tea, there is always the MOLE REMOVAL thread.

Gee, i looked up MOLE on 2 dictionary.

Very interesting, because it is a nice animal and a spy, both in english and in italian.

Very deep common roots

[Mark Wolfe]

samui04:

As any good SciFi movie have showed in the far future the normal people will use chinese worldwide (japanese is a variant)....

You keep writing about "speaking." While Chinese writing is mostly unified (Traditional like is used in Taiwan, and Simplified like is used in mainland China), the spoken language is hugely varied. I am not a linguistic Sinologist, but I believe that most of these are mutually unintelligible. Although Mandarin (the "people's language" on the mainland; the "national language" in Taiwan), is the official language of the land, you'd be surprised how many in China can't understand it either at all or enough to have a conversation.

It seems to me that the only modern language that really fits samui04's template is Vietnamese. For most of its life, the language was written using Chinese characters and their adaptations for this purpose. Only in the 17th century, thanks to those wishing to save the natives from the fires of hel_l, did the language become Romanized, after a fashion.

Ozsamurai is wrong on at least two counts. One being that, "Pronunciation of many foreign words can never be achieved within the letters we have."

You are confusing the letters with the standard (if varying) pronunciation of those letters and their sounds in English. Without getting into the debate over the proper or "best" Romanization of Chinese, the "unusual" sounds in the language are represented by certain English alphabetics BUT with different pronunciations, which is something you have to memorize from the outset. An initial "C" in Chinese is pronounced more like "ts" and this is something you have to memorize. Many languages have specific sounds that are not found in English and would have to be learned -- but could be represented by an English alphabetic symbol.

"Words would end up with the same spelling whereas the meanings are different by use of different characters in their native form."

Perhaps, but that is not problem in English itself. Run means something in baseball, in your stocking and getting from point A to B, to name a few. Context solves this "problem."

"Inflection and tones can not be represented." This is completely false, and Vietnamese is a perfect example. It uses the alphabet (from the French) and adds marks to indicate long and short vowels and tones. When I was in Ho Chi Minh City studying the language, I was quite amazed that I could take their system and apply it to Mandarin as a Romanization with very accurate results. Personally, I thought it so superior to Pinyin or Wade-Giles that I had a minor epiphany and thought I should spread the good news to everyone. If anyone out there can read Vietnamese and speak Mandarin, and apply the Vietnamese Romanization to the Mandarin pronunciation, you will see what I mean.

"Cultural identity and heritage would be lost."

We are talking about writing, not speaking. We are not debating changing the language, just the way you write it down. I don't see how that can result in the loss of cultural identity or heritage.

And as for Chinese being the language of the world in the far distant future, remember that all those Sci-fi movies are in English...the language of the world. It's already the common language for business and travel. This discussion may be mute in 5,000 years since everyone will be able to speak English (but may retain some original, local tongues, like in the Philippines).

[PeaceBlondie]

How many Asian languages use unique non-Roman alphabets?

[doggie888888]

How many Asian languages use unique non-Roman alphabets?

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian languages (Tamil, Hindi, Urdu etc), Thai, Singhalese and whatever the Burmese/Laotian/Cambodians use. Native Malays use to use Jawi (arabic based script) but that's almost gone now. There must be more I am sure.

[koheesti]

There's something like 6,900 languages and dialects in the world so there's a lot of work to be done.

http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp

[samui04]

You are confusing the letters with the standard (if varying) pronunciation of those letters and their sounds in English. Without getting into the debate over the proper or "best" Romanization of Chinese, the "unusual" sounds in the language are represented by certain English alphabetics BUT with different pronunciations, which is something you have to memorize from the outset. An initial "C" in Chinese is pronounced more like "ts" and this is something you have to memorize. Many languages have specific sounds that are not found in English and would have to be learned -- but could be represented by an English alphabetic symbol.

That is mainly an english problem, in italian we read what we write always in the same way

And I can assure you that in Tokyo nobody speak english but i was able to find my way to the hotel thanxs to a young girl that wrote me the name of the underground stations where to change in western standard, yes, it is simplified language but they use it to write on a computer.

The pronounciation is exactly like italian or any similar language, amazing.

Same situation in Taipei, where they rewrite the english name of the road every couple of years becouse the sound is not correct... (in english, it will never be, they should use italian ).

Anyway the lack of typewriter and keyboards for chinese/japanese has saved our back for at least 25 years, now it is too late, a chinese can write faster than me with an english keyboard .

Edited May 7, 2009 by samui04

[Birdman]

It looks like sooner or later there will be more than ABC

[Gatorade]

Sorry for the dumb question but what on earth does all this have to do with the Samui/K.P. Forum?

[Birdman]

Sorry for the dumb question but what on earth does all this have to do with the Samui/K.P. Forum?

There is another thread about Thai language courses on Samui. Samui04 said, that any language not using western alphabet is dead, apart Chinese, meaning or perhaps not meaning, that therefore to learn writing and reading in Thai is no more necessary. Mark Wolf prolonged and challenged that idea and the last post before mine was yours.

[Mark Wolfe]

Same situation in Taipei, where they rewrite the english name of the road every couple of years becouse the sound is not correct.

This is incorrect. It's a question of who has the power to convert the "official usage" to use which Romanization system for Mandarin in Taiwan. Neither of the the systems are perfect representations of the correct pronunciations.

Hanyu Pinyin to be standard system in 2009

ROMANIZATION: While government agencies will be required to use the China-developed system, individuals will be given a choice, an official said

By Shih Hsiu-Chuan

STAFF REPORTER

Thursday, Sep 18, 2008, Page 2

The government plans to make Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) the standard system of Romanization nationwide starting on Jan. 1, an official with the Ministry of Education said yesterday.

Government agencies will be compelled to adopt Hanyu Pinyin, a Chinese Romanization system developed by the People’s Republic of China, Chen Hsuch-yu (陳雪玉), executive-secretary and senior inspector of the ministry’s National Languages Committee (NLC), said in a telephone interview.

While the public will be widely encouraged to use the system, individual preferences on which Romanization system to use will be respected when it comes to personal matters such as the spelling of their surnames, Chen said.

To facilitate the change, “we will refer the Guidelines of Using Chinese Phonetic Spelling (中文譯音使用原則) to the Executive Yuan for review within a month,” Chen said.

The guidelines, enacted by the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government in 2002, stipulate that the official Romanization system for Chinese in the country is Tongyong Pinyin (通用拼音), but its use is not mandatory.

This leads me to something I said earlier, that even with Romanization, you need to know how certain sounds are pronounced -- even though you are using ABCs. An initial "c" in mainland China using Pinyin is pronounced something like "ts". If you didn't have this crib, you'd mispronounce that every time.

The fact is, and what Samui04 was driving at was that (I think) was that languages ought to be Romanized such that everyone could just look at the script and read it -- without having to study the exceptions. That, I think, is impossible.

Hanyu vs. Tongyong

And yes, this isn't pure Samui/KP/KT subject matter, but everyone native here does speak a non-Romanized language. And speaking of which, why on earth confuse people with "ph" in Thai? If you don't know any better, and most outside the country -- English speakers -- would assume "ph" to be pronounced "f" as in "photo."

So Phuket is a rather funny place name...I don't know the history, but why on earth add "h" when it is not pronounced and only leads to confusion?

Edited May 14, 2009 by Mark Wolfe

[PhilHarries]

Romanization of languages, is such a dumb idea...

1) Pronunciation of many foreign words can never be achieved within the letters we have

2) Words would end up with the same spelling whereas the meanings are different by use of different characters in their native form.

3) Inflection and tones can not be represented.

4) Cultural identity and heritage would be lost.

and ohhhh so many more...

Nan datte! baka ja nai?

Oz

They managed in in Tiếng Việt.

[Heng]

samui04:

As any good SciFi movie have showed in the far future the normal people will use chinese worldwide (japanese is a variant)....

You keep writing about "speaking." While Chinese writing is mostly unified (Traditional like is used in Taiwan, and Simplified like is used in mainland China), the spoken language is hugely varied. I am not a linguistic Sinologist, but I believe that most of these are mutually unintelligible. Although Mandarin (the "people's language" on the mainland; the "national language" in Taiwan), is the official language of the land, you'd be surprised how many in China can't understand it either at all or enough to have a conversation.

What usually happens is that we'll write down what we are looking for/what our intentions are/what kind of business we are attempting to establish, etc. After that, it's mostly numbers if no mutual language can be found... but more often than not Mandarin, Cantonese, or Teochiu or Hokkien (the latter two tend to communicate rather easily) will be common as these are the languages most common to overseas Chinese. It's particularly convenient since there are Chinese outposts in most countries on the planet. So it's about as much of a hassle as finding a pen or pencil and piece of paper.

Edited May 14, 2009 by Heng

[koheesti]

That is mainly an english problem, in italian we read what we write always in the same way

And I can assure you that in Tokyo nobody speak english but i was able to find my way to the hotel thanxs to a young girl that wrote me the name of the underground stations where to change in western standard, yes, it is simplified language but they use it to write on a computer.

The pronounciation is exactly like italian or any similar language, amazing.

Same situation in Taipei, where they rewrite the english name of the road every couple of years becouse the sound is not correct... (in english, it will never be, they should use italian ).

Anyway the lack of typewriter and keyboards for chinese/japanese has saved our back for at least 25 years, now it is too late, a chinese can write faster than me with an english keyboard .

It's a translitation issue. For example, the Cyrillic (as used in Russian) letter "ч" is commonly spelled CH- (Chekhov, from the English), TCH-(Tchaikovsky, from the German), or CZ- (Czech, from the Polish or Czech) and in English all three transliteratons are accepted even though they don't consitently follow one system. My guess is it's that way based on where the name became popularized.

As for Italian, don't you use, Č- as in Čechov? Do you use the same letter with all of the examples above? If so, sounds like English might be too accomodating. That probably doesn't hurt in making it so popular the world over.

[Mark Wolfe]

Transliteration, you mean...

On the side of possibilities, is there no way to adequately represent all the sounds (fairly closely) in non-English languages with English pronunciation using the ABC? Meaning without pronunciation cribs?

[Rooo]

What does this have to do with Samui forum?

I think I'll move it to General.

[Gatorade]

What does this have to do with Samui forum?

I think I'll move it to General.

Good idea Rooo.

[bertlamar]

next we will hear that all music will die, since people only want to listen to the most popular Britney Spears drivel or whatever.

with a certain charm and challenge, people still learn Latin at school, even though no one actually speaks it. There are countless reasons why some things, concepts and ideas are more easily explained in certain languages than others, not to mention the enjoyment of speaking other languages; the same as learning other types of music other than top 40s pop.

There certainly are a lot of languages that will die out shortly; a sad consequence of globalisation but fairly inevitable. Of the 6000+ languages spoken a huge number are spoken by hundreds rather than millions...those will go.

I doubt that transliteration in english is going to be the major factor in saving (or not saving) languages. To suggest that Russian or hebrew or Arabic will die simply because they don't use english letters is questionable.

As for the idea that you CAN Romanise Thai, no doubt there is some way to do it, but I have not yet EVER seen a system that is easier than simply spending a month to learn the alphabet and the rules, then using that to understand how to say things - tones, vowel lengths, letters not in English, origin of words - it takes an excessively complex english based system to get around that.

Apparently the Korean writing system is dead simple, certainly Japanese hirongana and katakana are very simple as well. If either of those languages dies out, I doubt it would be due to the writing system. Kanji....possibly, but there are historical reasons and prestigious reasons why it is still used extensively, even though a character system is more difficult than an alphabet system in many respects.

With regards to language in english issues and transliteration; all possible to get around, but if there is a workable system for it then I simply have never seen it:

vowel length: how to make a sound o or oo

tones: mid low, falling, high, rising (needed for basically every single word, and would have to be manually applied if romanised, as the inate rules of a high class letter followed by short vowel followed by mid class letter followed by long vowel would not be immediately obvious, and so would have to be spelt out, e.g. Chalerm, sanur (introduce), etc

The letters that don't exist: dt and bp

The origin of words; knowing that Srinakarindra is said Sri-Nakarin

Entirely possible to come up with SOME system, but then of course, since there already is a romanised system of Thai that is widely misused, it would still leave someone with no idea how to say some words - hence making it easier to simply read the Thai language written below.