questions

[Mashmakhan]

True, but we could also say that Cyrillic is yet another way of transcribing the language.

Only if Russian were a language that hadn’t already had an alphabet for about nine hundred years. You might as well say that Cyrillic is yet another way of transcribing English.

True. Cyrillic was first, and it was designed to fit specifically with Russian. Thing is, I could create a whole new writing system that could mimic the types of sounds Cyrillic letters use, or design a writing system that represents every single sound in Russian and other Slavic languages, and we would be back to the same argument. The new writing system wouldn't have as long or as close a history with spoken Russian as Cyrillic does, and it might not even be invented by a native Russian speaker, but you could potentially use it to learn spoken Russian instead of Cyrillic. Russian does have a strong cultural connection with Cyrillic. I won't deny that. But to say it is absolutely impossible to learn Russian without Cyrillic is still a bit silly. I think we should decide whether we are arguing for a cultural or practical application of Cyrillic here.

As a thought experiment, why don't we imagine a fictional nation inhabited by Russian speakers. Imagine that their varient of Russian was perfectly identical to a dialect of Russian spoken in Russia today, but that they used a different writing system. Even if you knew Cyrillic, you would still be illiterate. Wouldn't that new script then be more important in learning to speak Russian in this fictional nation?

And now a real world example: Which written language is more important for learning Mongolian, the Turkish script it uses today, or Classical Mongolian? Or Chinese, for that matter?

I suppose you could learn Russian without learning the Cyrillic alphabet, such as some basic words and phrases, but then your knowledge of Russian would be woefully incomplete because you would be illiterate in it.

Yes. I would agree that without learning Cyrillic our knowledge of written Russian would be incomplete. Russian has been written and printed in Cyrillic for as long as Cyrillic has been around, and if you didn't know how to read Cyrillic, you may very well be practically illiterate in Russia and probably many other countries, too. But if I were an ignorant foreigner who didn't care about reading Russian and only wanted to learn to speak it, I could potentially use Roman transcription and still get along OK. Personally, I think Cyrillic is very culturally important in Russia. I think people should learn it if they are learning spoken Russian, and I think you would be lost in Russia if you didn't know it. But again I ask "is it completely mandatory when learning to speak Russian?" Regrettably, my answer is an honest "No."

[Shm Jay]

"I can speak English, but I can't read or write it."
"I can speak English, but I can only read it when it is written in Arabic script."

Would you say either of these people knows English?

[Mashmakhan]

Would you say either of these people knows English?

Definately.

"I can speak English, but I can't read or write it."

There are people in North America today - adults at that - who are in the same predicament.

"I can speak English, but I can only read it when it is written in Arabic script."

For all we know, maybe people in some Arabic-speaking countries are learning English the same way I learned spoken Russian. I heard a friend of mine who had previously taught English in China to elementary school kids. He said all you had to do in a typical lesson was to hold up pictures and say their names in English. I am not completely sure whether he avoided using Roman letters at all to teach the kids ho to spell, but if he hadn't, would you say those kids didn't know English? Even though they obviously wouldn't know it very well, it may be an insult to them to say they didn't know English at all. For all we know, you could be insulting some native Arabic speakers right now.

[Mecislau]

Mashmakhan, you didn't answer a good question mentioned earlier. I'll elaborate on it here...

Let's first look at your original statement:

Does anyone use them to indicate palatization in consonants? The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so, so I don't see why someone couldn't get away with this for a conlang as well.

Now let's turn this around.

In Russia, you will often see English transcribed in the Cyrillic alphabet. The name "John" becomes Джон, the city "London" becomes Лондон, and if you wanted to help someone learn a few English phrases, you'd write down "Хау ду ю ду?" to show them how to pronounce "How do you do?".

The same is true of English in Greece, except with the Greek script, in Egypt with Arabic script, in Israel with Hebrew script, and so on and so forth.

Now, if someone came along and asked you "What languages use Л? Or Λ? Or ل? Or ל?", would you answer "English does!"? If someone were to ask you to list out every language written using Armenian script, would English be on your list?

True. Cyrillic was first, and it was designed to fit specifically with Russian.

Incorrect. Cyrillic was as much designed for Russian as Roman script was for English (ie, it wasn't – the Russians just happen to use it). It was actually designed specifically for the 10th-century South Slavic vernacular that was then spoken in Thessaloniki.

Thing is, I could create a whole new writing system that could mimic the types of sounds Cyrillic letters use, or design a writing system that represents every single sound in Russian and other Slavic languages, and we would be back to the same argument.

No we wouldn't. You'd've created a script that Russian can be written in, not one which it is written in.

And now a real world example: Which written language is more important for learning Mongolian, the Turkish script it uses today, or Classical Mongolian? Or Chinese, for that matter?

I find it rather amusing that you say modern-day Mongolian is written in a "Turkish script" (whatever that means) when it is in fact written in Cyrillic (at least in Outer Mongolia)

[Niedokonany]

Slavic languages can be represented in both Cyrillic and Roman. Russian that is written in Roman is still Russian - the actual language doesn't change, only the writing system changes - so apostraphes are still used in this language and most likely in other Slavic languages as well.

Show me a Russian speaker who, when cyrillic input is easily available, doesn't use it. And we were going over the various Slavic languages, and no, none we could think of or find (which is all of them) uses apostrophes with any consistency.

Polish does (they are used in the inflection of certain foreign names, e.g. Rabelais, gen. Rabelais'go, Clarke, gen. Clarke'a). They are also misused probably as often as in English.

This implies that a man ought to feel insulted by such an implication, which further implies that women are inferior to men.

Can't it ever be mutual?

[Miekko]

This implies that a man ought to feel insulted by such an implication,

Not necessarily. Maybe he likes being called a lady

That aside, the only thing that anyone could really be insulted by when reading that is having their gender and/or biological sex contradicted by the statement. I didn't place any additional connotations in those sentences so whatever you take being a lady to imply is your doing, not mine. The fact that you even assumed I might imply anything derogatory in association with being female just as easily says something about yourself. Not that I am assuming it would, but playing associative blame games can backfire. Just so you know.

which further implies that women are inferior to men. This is sexist.

Hey, your words, not mine. I said nothing of the sort and never meant to imply anything more than what I just described. If what I said implies anything more to you, then that is your problem.

the only way what you said there can make any sense, from a language game perspective - and tht is what all linguistic exchanges are - is to read that as an insult, or at least a weak one. You're being fucking disingenuous about it as well, fucking hell. This is so fucking rich I can't half believe it.

True, but we could also say that Cyrillic is yet another way of transcribing the language.

idiot.

Language is for communication. In our modern world, a lot of that communication is in street signs, labels, textual instructions, notes, etc etc. If you want a reasonably complete idea of what Russian is, you need to know Cyrillic. You can have a reasonably complete idea of what Russian is without much knowledge of the Latin alphabet, the converse is not true, though.

I do realize that Cyrillic is an essential part of Russian culture, but by itself Cyrillic letters are just symbols. So are Roman letters. I could also agree that the culture comes with the language, and to that effect you are right, but it is entirely possible to learn Russian and get a glimpse of Russian culture just by noticing how the language sounds, what its specific meanings are, how the words fit together into a phrase, etc. without learning Cyrillic.

First of all, the effort of learning it is practically nil compared to learning the morphology or anything. But uh,

Also, another consequence of your stupid methodology is that you could claim *every* language ever transcribed in the IPA has a phonetic orthography!

No, not really. No language needs to be transcribed into a written form at all. We just do it to represent the language on a different medium. How we transcribe it doesn't matter. If it did, we wouldn't even have the IPA. We would instead be using tape recorders.

Duly note that I restricted it to those languages already transcribed. So, does every language that ever has been transcribed in IPA have at least one phonetic orthography?

Mashmakhan,
the problem is that you - no matter how fucking wrong you are - won't admit to being wrong. You'll twist and turn what you said until you can claim that you, in some fucked up meaningless way in fact were right. Stop it, it's fucking idiotic.

[Mecislau]

Polish does (they are used in the inflection of certain foreign names, e.g. Rabelais, gen. Rabelais'go, Clarke, gen. Clarke'a). They are also misused probably as often as in English.

The issue here was using apostrophes to mark palatalization, not apostrophes for other uses. If were were talking about apostrophes in general, then Ukrainian uses them as well (to indicate /j/ after a consonant, i.e., to block palatalization): сім'я "family", п'ятниця "Friday", etc.

[Niedokonany]

Polish does (they are used in the inflection of certain foreign names, e.g. Rabelais, gen. Rabelais'go, Clarke, gen. Clarke'a). They are also misused probably as often as in English.

The issue here was using apostrophes to mark palatalization, not apostrophes for other uses. If were were talking about apostrophes in general, then Ukrainian uses them as well (to indicate /j/ after a consonant, i.e., to block palatalization): сім'я "family", п'ятниця "Friday", etc.

I know, but the post I was citing sounded more general than that (grave accents and palatalization?).

[Mashmakhan]

Now, if someone came along and asked you "What languages use Л? Or Λ? Or ل? Or ל?", would you answer "English does!"?

Nope.

If someone were to ask you to list out every language written using Armenian script, would English be on your list?

Nope.

My point being that when transcribing spoken Russian to Roman, Russian - and many other Slavic languages - do this. At least as far as I know. Perhaps this is not always so. Maybe other instructors use other ways to indicate palatization. You can't say Russian can't be written in Roman characters, however, because I have seen it done. So, to reiterate, given that you can indicate palatization with an apostraphe in Russian and other real-life languages, I don't see why you couldn't do the same when transcribing a conlang into Roman characters.

True. Cyrillic was first, and it was designed to fit specifically with Russian.

Incorrect. Cyrillic was as much designed for Russian as Roman script was for English (ie, it wasn't – the Russians just happen to use it). It was actually designed specifically for the 10th-century South Slavic vernacular that was then spoken in Thessaloniki.

OK, so that was incorrect. A mistake on my part and what you typed here makes more sense than saying Cyrillic has had an exclusive relationship with spoken Russian since the dawn of its history. It actually goes with what I had been trying to say earlier. Cyrillic is just a writing system that has happened to exist alongside spoken Russian.

Thing is, I could create a whole new writing system that could mimic the types of sounds Cyrillic letters use, or design a writing system that represents every single sound in Russian and other Slavic languages, and we would be back to the same argument.

No we wouldn't. You'd've created a script that Russian can be written in, not one which it is written in.

That much is true, but then this is just a matter of cultural history. It is rather the same deal, actually. Both Cyrillic and the new invented script can be used to write Russian. The only difference is that one already has. The argument isn't about which script is being used to write Russian (that much should be obvious) but instead which script can be used to write Russian. My answer: Both. And any other writing system that manages to utilize all of the sounds in Russian accurately and coherently.

I find it rather amusing that you say modern-day Mongolian is written in a "Turkish script" (whatever that means) when it is in fact written in Cyrillic (at least in Outer Mongolia)

Ah sorry, my mistake. I knew it was written in Cyrillic but in all of the instances where I had seen Mongolian transcribed in an English language medium, I always saw it written or typed in the Turkish varient of Roman. Thanks for correcting me.

_________________

the only way what you said there can make any sense, from a language game perspective - and tht is what all linguistic exchanges are - is to read that as an insult, or at least a weak one. You're being fucking disingenuous about it as well, fucking hell. This is so fucking rich I can't half believe it.

Jar Jar was the one assuming too much. Call it a language game if you want to but unless I explicitly typed - either directly or indirectly - that saying "ladies first" was meant to imply something derogatory toward women, then I see no reason why I should be condemned for typing that. I happen to respect women and (unless they want me to) I don't treat them any less than I treat men. If saying "ladies first" was taken in a discriminatory and chauvinistic manner, then excuse me for saying it

If it will make you feel better, I do regret saying it. I didn't want to insult you but I was taken back by the rudeness of being called an idiot and being told to STFU, so if that is how it is going to be between us, then I am not quite ready to take it back just yet.

So, does every language that ever has been transcribed in IPA have at least one phonetic orthography?

No, but then transcribing them into IPA doesn't necessarily mean they need a written orthography. Which was my whole point. Orthographies like Cyrillic and Roman are used more often for their associated spoken languaes because they were designed to be more closely fitted to those languages only. That is the difference. But it is only a minor difference because another orthography could be invented to do exactly the same thing. Its history with the spoken language in question is irrelevent from a practical perspective - though not from a cultural perspective, but that is not what we are arguing about - as long as it can do its job properly. Think about the orthographies that were written for Inuktitut and Cree syllabaries, among other Native American writing systems that were recently designed to transcribe their respective spoken languages. These writing systems didn't have a very long history. They were just invented. Yet they fit their associated languages better than, say...the Greek or Armenian script could. Same thing with Cyrillic. It does represent spoken Russian very well, but other orthographies can do the same. From a practical perspective, orthographies are just tools. And new tools can be made just as easily.

Mashmakhan,
the problem is that you - no matter how fucking wrong you are - won't admit to being wrong. You'll twist and turn what you said until you can claim that you, in some fucked up meaningless way in fact were right. Stop it, it's fucking idiotic.

See, this is what I meant earlier. I don't give a damn about admitting when I am wrong. I even did it in my responses to Mecislau's post, and I have done so on other threads too a bunch of times. The problem seems to be that you and maybe a few other members on this board are dead-set on seeing me as a clueless idiot before you even correspond with me, and you make every effort to point it out. Then, in the chances that I happen to be right in my assertions, you get frustrated and pissed off that I don't give way. What am I supposed to do when some other board member feels like picking an argument with me? Stop expressing my ideas? That is awfully conformist for a board that proclaims itself as a "hotbed of leftists." I realize that there is a very elitist attitude amongst several of the earlier and/or more regular board members but unless you intend to express this publicly in a very open and direct way to everyone, I would ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt every once in a while and treat me like an equal member of the board. If equality does in fact mean something around here.

[Miekko]

I will drop my nagging at you after this, but ...

The argument isn't about which script is being used to write Russian (that much should be obvious) but instead which script can be used to write Russian.

vs.

The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so,

seems to be you trying to wiggle your way out again by backpedalling.

[Mashmakhan]

First, thank you for refraining from typing the sorts of things you typed in your last few posts. I appreciate that. And I don't mind prolonging the argument as long as there is no more of it.

Anyway.....

The argument isn't about which script is being used to write Russian (that much should be obvious) but instead which script can be used to write Russian.

vs.

The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so,

seems to be you trying to wiggle your way out again by backpedalling.

Oh, but that second quote was just an example of a real-life language that can consistently use apostraphes in transcription. Technically it doesn't matter very much beyond that. I was, in effect, asking that if a real-life language could use apostraphes then why couldn't an invented language do it as well? The bit in the brackets in the first quote makes both quotes consistent with one another.

[Jar Jar Binks]

You're never wrong, are you?

[Drydic]

First, thank you for refraining from typing the sorts of things you typed in your last few posts. I appreciate that. And I don't mind prolonging the argument as long as there is no more of it.

Anyway.....

The argument isn't about which script is being used to write Russian (that much should be obvious) but instead which script can be used to write Russian.

vs.

The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so,

seems to be you trying to wiggle your way out again by backpedalling.

Oh, but that second quote was just an example of a real-life language that can consistently use apostraphes in transcription. Technically it doesn't matter very much beyond that. I was, in effect, asking that if a real-life language could use apostraphes then why couldn't an invented language do it as well? The bit in the brackets in the first quote makes both quotes consistent with one another.

The problem is, the bit in the brackets is a fallacy (along with the whole 'if a language can be written in a script it is written in that script despite it only being used by a helmeted few who aren't native speakers'), which you refuse to admit.

And no your instructor is not a counterexample because she was dealing with those helmeted few, though I don't know her native/nonnative status.

[Shm Jay]

Definately..

Then you have a definition of knowing a language that is suited to ancient times, when hardly any languages were written down and few were literate. Someone today [to be clear, a foreign-language speaker] who knew how to speak English but not read or write it could not be said to know English. They may know some English, but they do not know English. They have, at best, a partial knowledge of English.

There are people in North America today - adults at that - who are in the same predicament.

Since we were talking about foreign learners of a language, you may not introduce native speakers as a proof. I have to conclude my point is correct, since you changed the subject.

I heard a friend of mine who had previously taught English in China to elementary school kids.

Again, you’re talking about people with a partial knowledge of English, i.e. children with a child’s knowledge of English. But you cannot say the children know English. They are not completely ignorant of English, and maybe they know as much as a child can be expected to know, but they only know a little English or at most some English.

[Mashmakhan]

You're never wrong, are you?

Of course I am wrong a lot of the time. Look around the Almea forum at the other two threads I have answered, as well as a few other threads I have participated in. Better yet, look at my damn profile and see the threads for yourself. I see nothing wrong with admitting when you are wrong - IF you think you are wrong - but I don't see a reason why you should have to say you are wrong when you just disagree and do whatever you can to express your disagreement. Is this really a conformist board, or one in which people are actually permitted to disagree until they are proven otherwise?

_________________

The problem is, the bit in the brackets is a fallacy

What?!? What other script can you think of that is used primarily to write Russuan? I would think that most people on this board would recognize that the script most often chosen to represent spoken Russian is Cyrillic. Why the hell would you think such an association would be a fallacy???

(along with the whole 'if a language can be written in a script it is written in that script despite it only being used by a helmeted few who aren't native speakers'), which you refuse to admit.

I argued against that, not for it. Basically, if an orthography - recently invented or not - can represent a spoken language, then it can represent the spoken language. Any written orthography that can represent the spoken language in question should be allowed to do this. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested using apostraphes for Roman. Are you sure you are disagreeing with my argument or Miekko's argument?

And no your instructor is not a counterexample because she was dealing with those helmeted few,

Thank you. I thought so too. She did what she could, though, and that is what I admire her for.

though I don't know her native/nonnative status.

She was actually born in the Ukraine. I don't know how much time she spent in Russua but I would imagine quite a bit if the college certified her for teaching the Russian language.

_________________

Definately

Then you have a definition of knowing a language that is suited to ancient times, when hardly any languages were written down and few were literate.

What? All that meant was that I could answer your questions with a reasonable amount of confidence. Look the word up before you decide to use it.

Someone today [to be clear, a foreign-language speaker]

You never specified this in your last post so I don't see how you should expect me to answer it, but OK...

who knew how to speak English but not read or write it could not be said to know English.

Like I said, maybe some instructors of spoken English just don't use written English. A.k.a. Te Roman alphabet. Could you then turn to their students, who might have varying levels of proficiency, and tell them - after all they have learned - that they still don't know English? There is no doubt this sounds awefully pedantic and unreasonable to me. I am not sure how others feel about it, though. It would be nice to gain an international response.

In the meantime, for another thought experiment, if children learning to understand English at least partially through transcriptions in their native language had been writing it in, say...Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, or even Japanese Katakana, would you still say they couldn't speak English? Of course they wouldn't be writing English because English is predominantly written today - in places where it is a native language - in the Roman script, but yet they wouldn't be speaking English? Come on...IMO that sounds absolutely rediculous.

They may know some English, but they do not know English. They have, at best, a partial knowledge of English.

If we are talking about the various aspects of Anglo-North American and British culture, then no. They wouldn't know English the way the English speak and write their own language. But again, this is a cultural connection. Not a practical connection. And we are talking about a practical connection here. It is possible for speakers of other languages to transcribe English in their native orthography. How well this carries out depends on how flexible the rules of the orthography are, what sounds they can represent, and how versatile the orthography is as a whole. A syllabic orthography can't represent English as well as a phonetic orthography can unless the syllabic orthography has more sounds in common with English. Nontheless, if an orthography can accurately represent spoken English, it shouldn't matter what kind of orthography it is. And if those people who are using it to transcribe their English can speak it well enough, I don't think it matters what orthography they use.

There are people in North America today - adults at that - who are in the same predicament.

Since we were talking about foreign learners of a language, you may not introduce native speakers as a proof. I have to conclude my point is correct, since you changed the subject.

Again, there was no indication that you meant this, and therefore no reason why I should assume as such.

I heard a friend of mine who had previously taught English in China to elementary school kids.

Again, you’re talking about people with a partial knowledge of English, i.e. children with a child’s knowledge of English.

And again, should that matter? If said children were allowed to run around in a North American city and no one had seen them actually write anything in English, would there still be a reason for the citizens of this city to think these children couldn't speak English as long as they spoke it correctly? And accents are irrelevent; I have heard some pretty wacky North American accens before.

But you cannot say the children know English.

???

Why not? Think of pre-literate people. By this logic, these same people would not be able to speak their own language just because they couldn't write it down.

They are not completely ignorant of English, and maybe they know as much as a child can be expected to know, but they only know a little English or at most some English.

And if I spoke fluent English but wasn't able to write it - maybe I am one of the few North Americans who just can't read, or maybe I come from an actual society who spoke English as one of their first languages but who didn't have a written language - then I would only know some English? Barring proficiency standards, IMO this is just downright arrogant.

[Pthagnar]

verduria has always been at war with kebri

[Pthagnar]

Like I said, maybe some instructors of spoken English just don't use written English.

Hm, I don't think you *did* say that. I think you typed it.

[Shm Jay]

Like I said, maybe some instructors of spoken English just don't use written English. A.k.a. Te Roman alphabet. Could you then turn to their students, who might have varying levels of proficiency, and tell them - after all they have learned - that they still don't know English?

Yes, because English is not an unwritten language; it is not an oral-only language; it is not a tiny language in Africa which only has been transcribed by anthropologists and is fortunate if it has a New Testament. You are treating English as if it were one of the Arabic dialects, which (I believe – I could be wrong here) are not often written down (at least in Arabic).

Print is no longer an optional add-on to English or Russian. If someone claims they know English/Russian/Chinese, the first type of question they get is "how do you say X in English/Russian/Chinese?" but the second type of question they get is "can you read this English/Russian/Chinese thing and tell me what it says?"

For all the big modern languages, and even the middle-sized ones, the knowledge of how to read the language is now expected as part of what's involved in knowing the language. If you don't know how to read the language, you don't know the language. Sometimes how to read the language is taught later, such as with Japanese or Chinese since the script is difficult, but it is still taught to anyone going beyond basic tourist Japanese or Chinese who wants a more-than-elementary knowledge of the language.

And of course, this means reading a language in its own script, not in whatever transcription a textbook may use to make learning the language easier in its elementary stages. Yes, I have seen Russian textbooks that use romanization, but that is only used in the earliest lessons and as soon as the entire alphabet is taught, it is used from that point on, except to indicate pronunciation of troublesome or irregular words.

You are treating reading a language as some sort of advanced cultural knowledge that is only taught to the most advanced learners of the language who want to know all its esoteric corners, such as, oh, how to write Chinese or Arabic calligraphy.

In the meantime, for another thought experiment, if children learning to understand English at least partially through transcriptions in their native language had been writing it in, say...Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, or even Japanese Katakana, would you still say they couldn't speak English?

I didn't say they couldn't speak English; I said they don’t know English.

As for the rest, you continue to mix up native learners of a language, who learned it naturally as children, with foreign learners of a language, who have to be taught it in some fashion (whether as children or as adults), even after I said that you could not use native learners in the argument.

[Drydic]

The problem is, the bit in the brackets is a fallacy

What?!? What other script can you think of that is used primarily to write Russuan? I would think that most people on this board would recognize that the script most often chosen to represent spoken Russian is Cyrillic. Why the hell would you think such an association would be a fallacy???

Ok I misworded that section, because you're twisting your responses so you can claim whatever the hell you want when presented with evidence to the contrary to your initial statement. I meant to castigate your claim that Russian written in latin letters is an integral part of the language, not some wacko fringe usage which 99.9% of users of the language (and 100% of native users wouldn't actually use).

By your idea of usage, it's completely legal and normal for the american government to detain some of its citizens today for their race, because it happened in a war situation over 60 years ago.

(along with the whole 'if a language can be written in a script it is written in that script despite it only being used by a helmeted few who aren't native speakers'), which you refuse to admit.

I argued against that, not for it. Basically, if an orthography - recently invented or not - can represent a spoken language, then it can represent the spoken language. Any written orthography that can represent the spoken language in question should be allowed to do this. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested using apostraphes for Roman. Are you sure you are disagreeing with my argument or Miekko's argument?

No, you argue for that, in the same paragraph.

Any written orthography that can represent the spoken language in question should be allowed to do this.

Your statement

The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so

implies, with your further clarification that you're talking about (some) romanisations of Russian, that you think apostrophes are commonly used to write in Slavic languages. So far we have slavicist transcriptions of East Slavic, and marked foreign loans in Polish. Hardly common. And if you didn't mean that they were commonly used, YOU SHOULD HAVE WORDED IT DIFFERENTLY AT THE TIME. When you're saying something that could easily be construed differently than you intend, find a different way to say it.

And no your instructor is not a counterexample because she was dealing with those helmeted few,

Thank you. I thought so too. She did what she could, though, and that is what I admire her for.[/quote]
Yeah ok, she taught a few retrograde people who couldn't (or let's be honest here, wouldn't, since cyrillic is probably the simplest part of learning Russian) learn an alphabet which is almost identical to their own. Not exactly a cure for cancer.

[Khvaragh]

You are treating English as if it were one of the Arabic dialects, which (I believe – I could be wrong here) are not often written down (at least in Arabic).

For the most part, yes. However, nowadays, there is more examples of at least *important* Arabic dialects being written down. I would call Egyptian Arabic (the Cairene dialect, definitely not the Sa`idi one) a marginally written language, to an extent. We own a book of poetry for example, which is entirely in Cairene Arabic. It's rare to find things like novels written in it though, but there is a wikipedia for it with many pages: http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9 ... 8%AB%D9%87
However, spelling is only marginally standardized (i.e. etymological qaaf is variably written or omitted, for example).

Maltese is also a good example of an Arabic dialect which is a written language (and now a separate one at that).

[Mashmakhan]

Like I said, maybe some instructors of spoken English just don't use written English. A.k.a. T[h]e Roman alphabet. Could you then turn to their students, who might have varying levels of proficiency, and tell them - after all they have learned - that they still don't know English?

Yes, because English is not an unwritten language; it is not an oral-only language;

And yet you wouldn't say the same to someone who was an illiterate native speaker...? This issue is either A) mutually relevent, B) mutually irrelevent, or C) culturally biased. You haven't typed A, you won't type B, so we are left with C.

it is not a tiny language in Africa which only has been transcribed by anthropologists and is fortunate if it has a New Testament.

The difference here being one of subjugation as much as it is one of no written language at all. We could give them a copy of the IPA and let them do whatever they want with it, but then as long as we kept using it, it wouldn't matter what they do. We know the IPA. We wouldn't know their new orthography unless they showed it to us. Which do you think is more likely to be used? And whose sake would it be for? Ours would be a practical investment. Theirs, a cultural one. While not necessarily mutually exclusive, they can - and in many cases do - work alone.

You are treating English as if it were one of the Arabic dialects, which (I believe – I could be wrong here) are not often written down (at least in Arabic).

And yet said dialect can be written in Arabic. How is this any different than illiteracy in North America or the use of English by a pre-literate society? I would imagine English is used as a lingua franca in many parts of the world without it necessarily being written down.

You are treating reading a language as some sort of advanced cultural knowledge that is only taught to the most advanced learners of the language who want to know all its esoteric corners, such as, oh, how to write Chinese or Arabic calligraphy.

Not advanced, but it is still cultural knowledge nontheless. You would need to know the written language if you went to the country where it was spoken, but you could also devise a new script to transcribe it without actually going to that country. This is still a cultural connection and by your reasoning no one would ever really "know" any non-written language at all. That is what I find arrogant. Languages that have orthographies are no different from languages that don't have orthographies. You need to learn an orthography of a given spoken language if you want to go there because the people there use it. But you don't need to go anywhere to transcribe the spoken language differently. It is just something you can do. To say that you would be physically unable to do this only because a certain language already had an orthography is just silly. Like I said earlier, this is a cultural connection. Not a practical one. You can keep repeating it if you want to but it only shortens what I need to say in response to it.

In the meantime, for another thought experiment, if children learning to understand English at least partially through transcriptions in their native language had been writing it in, say...Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, or even Japanese Katakana, would you still say they couldn't speak English?

I didn't say they couldn't speak English; I said they don’t know English.

Cultural and linguistic elitism. Not that it is a bad thing, but that is all it is. You only need to go to the country to be required to learn the orthography. That is how you know it is a cultural connection.

Orthographies are written on physical mediums and these mediums are cultural objects. If it is a book, it is a story set in the culture or with that culture's view on the story. If it is a sign post, it is telling people in the culture what to do and these differ from culture to culture. For instance, in some commonwealth country, pedestrians have the right of way. In others, the cars do. If the writing is on a film, it was probably set in the country; if it is on a household appliance, then it is advertising a cultural object; if it is on a package of food, that food will be part of the local cuisine; and so on. The orthography is part of the culture. Therefore, you would need to go to wherever that culture exists in order to read the letters. In North America we are surrounded by a culture that uses Roman letters. While seeing Cyrillic or some other foreign orthography on a North American product may be nice every once in a while, it does not sell or describe a product because the average North American can't read it. They may not even know how to speak the language the words are supposed to represent, but if they see it transcribed in Roman somewhere, they will at least know how to pronounce it. If they know how to speak the language, all the better.

The point being, they are surrounded by the Roman alphabet so if a foreign word makes its way into a North American medium, it will most likely be amidst English words in the Roman alphabet and will therefore be in Roman as well. If we used a different writing system, then it would be the same deal. If we started using a different language, we would probably still be using the Roman alphabet for that language. Real-life languages have done this before, so "knowing" a language does not necessarily mean knowing a certain orthography.

As for the rest, you continue to mix up native learners of a language, who learned it naturally as children, with foreign learners of a language, who have to be taught it in some fashion (whether as children or as adults), even after I said that you could not use native learners in the argument.

You never said native learners needed to be excluded, and you didn't provide a reason for it. It is the same deal. Native speakers still know their language no matter what their level of literacy is because they were born to speak it. Likewise, a non-native speaker can still get by without learning to read the orthography predominantly used in that culture. To summarise what I think the whole theme of your posts have been: If an illiterate native speaker can do it, than so can a non-native speaker who can't read the local orthography.

_________________

The problem is, the bit in the brackets is a fallacy

What?!? What other script can you think of that is used primarily to write Russuan? I would think that most people on this board would recognize that the script most often chosen to represent spoken Russian is Cyrillic. Why the hell would you think such an association would be a fallacy???

Ok I misworded that section, because you're twisting your responses so you can claim whatever the hell you want when presented with evidence to the contrary to your initial statement.

A parody is only useful inasmuch that it is accurate. Otherwise it isn't really a parody. I haven't twisted anything. I have tried constantly to explain why I typed what I typed in the first page of this thread so that it wouldn't look like all of this hassling wouldn't look legitimate. I don't like having to go through this whenever I type something other members disagree with, but I put up with it. And I am sorry for any discomfort it causes you, but in the name of being another member of this board, you are gonna have to put up with the aftermath.

I meant to castigate your claim that Russian written in latin letters is an integral part of the language,

You must still be castigating, then, because I never typed that either orthography is integral to learning Russian. I was trying to seperate spoken language from written language and present them as two corresponding but seperate things.

not some wacko fringe usage which 99.9% of users of the language (and 100% of native users wouldn't actually use).

I think that estimate is a bit exaggurated. Czech is written in a Roman-derived orthography even though it could probably be transcribed in Cyrillic (and probably is in some places). Same deal with Polish. Likewise, many non-Slavic languages use Cyrillic or some derivation of it. It seems likely - given the proximity of Russia with a great number of other Eurasian countries, that orthography-switching is more than a "fringe usage" because it is just easier for the people there to transcribe the Russian language in their own orthographies.

By your idea of usage, it's completely legal and normal for the american government to detain some of its citizens today for their race, because it happened in a war situation over 60 years ago.

And how is that so? Foreigners can be protected internationally by their native countries. Languages can't; they don't have the same rights that people do. I am not saying it would be right to abolish or discourage a language from being spoken because this carries implications for the people who speak them and their way of life, but a system of words in itself does not have rights. Otherwise we wouldn't see the demise of endangered languages like Australian Mati Ke. At this same time, we have seen a fair share of criminals handed over to their native countries by the U.S.A. There should probably be more, but that is the fault of the country's institutions. Not their contradictory regulations.

(along with the whole 'if a language can be written in a script it is written in that script despite it only being used by a helmeted few who aren't native speakers'), which you refuse to admit.

I argued against that, not for it. Basically, if an orthography - recently invented or not - can represent a spoken language, then it can represent the spoken language. Any written orthography that can represent the spoken language in question should be allowed to do this. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested using apostraphes for Roman. Are you sure you are disagreeing with my argument or Miekko's argument?

No, you argue for that, in the same paragraph.

Any written orthography that can represent the spoken language in question should be allowed to do this.

Um, no, I still argued against it. Maybe I mis-typed that in my last post but what I meant was: any orthography that can represent a spoken language should be given the opportunity to do so. This holds true for Cyrillic as much as it does for the Roman alphabet. Both orthographies can transcribe spoken Russian so both orthographies should be given the chance to do so. And so should any other orthography that can transcribe Russian successfully.

Your statement

The Slavic languages are real-life languages that do so

implies, with your further clarification that you're talking about (some) romanisations of Russian, that you think apostrophes are commonly used to write in Slavic languages.

Again, no, I didn't type or mean to imply that. I meant Slavic languages can use apostraphes. This does not mean they are commonly used to transcribe Slavic languages. It only means they can be used to transcribe Slavic languages. In the case with the Roman alphabet, they are commonly used because the Roman alphabet doesn't have palatal consonants. When it uses apostraphes consistently for that purpose, then there can be no mistaking that this is their intended use since there is no other reason why the Roman alphabet would need to use apostraphes.

So far we have slavicist transcriptions of East Slavic, and marked foreign loans in Polish. Hardly common.

As was typed earlier, I really don't think this is the case. Polish seems to use an orthography derived from the Roman alphabet. If there is another language that uses the Polish orthography to write foreign words, then it kind of reiterates my point about foreign orthographies being used with some amount of regularity.

And if you didn't mean that they were commonly used, YOU SHOULD HAVE WORDED IT DIFFERENTLY AT THE TIME. When you're saying something that could easily be construed differently than you intend, find a different way to say it.

Oh, well then, I apologise for causing you any sort of pain upon misinterpreting what I had intended to portray in my posts but part of trying to understand someone involves giving them the benefit of the doubt sometimes, or at least taking a figurative leap of faith before immediately assuming you know exactly what they meant to say or exactly where you think they screwed up in their meaning. I am not going to assume that I say or type everything perfectly well and that other people should understand everything I say down to the last detail but I am not going to take full and unconditional responsibility for every single confusion that arises when these misinterpretations occur. We both need to do that. If I did cause any confusion on my part, then I apologize. I can only go as far as I knowingly can, though.

And no your instructor is not a counterexample because she was dealing with those helmeted few,

Thank you. I thought so too. She did what she could, though, and that is what I admire her for.

Yeah ok, she taught a few retrograde people who couldn't (or let's be honest here, wouldn't, since cyrillic is probably the simplest part of learning Russian) learn an alphabet which is almost identical to their own. Not exactly a cure for cancer.

Like I typed earlier, I agree completely with this. However, the fact is that those students wouldn't (in your own words) learn Cyrillic, so the Roman alphabet was used instead. And no matter how much you may not want to believe this, it did work. I don't think this really mattered because the students payed to learn Russian as it was taught that way. You couldn't say or imply (and a course titled SPOKEN Russian does imply this) to your students that the language you were teaching would be transcribed in one way and then transcribe it in a completely different way. That would be cheating them, and when there is money involved, it is cause for legal action. People will sue for some pretty crazy reasons and no institution would probably want to take that risk. If students want to pay a rather large amount of money to learn a distorted portrayal of a foreign language, then more power to them. They will be in for a nasty surprise when they actually go to a country where that language is spoken. But the fact remains: the students did learn to speak Russian with a reasonable amount of proficiency for a summer introductory course, and they learned it by using the Roman alphabet. It isn't for me to say whether they really learned to speak Russian correctly or not. That was my instructor's job.

[Shm Jay]

And yet you wouldn't say the same to someone who was an illiterate native speaker...?

No, I wouldn't, because he is a native speaker. A native speaker learns his language as a small child without schooling, but does not have to be taught his language. (What he is taught in school is how to read his language and how to communicate in the language in a fashion more acceptable to the educated standard.) A foreigner, on the other hand, has to be taught all aspects of the language. The acquisition of the language as a child, whatever we may call the process and whatever is involved in it, is what makes all the difference and is why there is a seeming inconsistency or unfairness.

In short, a native speaker can be illiterate and yet know the language. A foreigner can only be said to do so if the language is unwritten in the first place; i.e., the only aspect involved in learning the language is to learn to speak it. For a native speaker, literacy in his language is an addition to his knowledge of the language, but for a foreigner it is a necessary part of his learning the language. An illiterate native is simply uneducated, while an illiterate foreigner has received faulty/incomplete education, even though both may know the same thing about the language, i.e., how to speak it.

You would need to know the written language if you went to the country where it was spoken, but you could also devise a new script to transcribe it without actually going to that country.

You could devise a new script, or adapt another script, but your made-up thing would have no connection to actually learning the language no matter how much you want to pretend it does.

[Mashmakhan]

And yet you wouldn't say the same to someone who was an illiterate native speaker...?

No, I wouldn't, because he is a native speaker. A native speaker learns his language as a small child without schooling, but does not have to be taught his language. (What he is taught in school is how to read his language and how to communicate in the language in a fashion more acceptable to the educated standard.) A foreigner, on the other hand, has to be taught all aspects of the language. The acquisition of the language as a child, whatever we may call the process and whatever is involved in it, is what makes all the difference and is why there is a seeming inconsistency or unfairness.

That still makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. You are presenting a native speaker's illiteracy as an excuse for not learning the writing system used in their culture rather than a foreign speaker's inability to read that language's writing system as a reason to learn it. Once again: If an illiterate native speaker can get by, so can a foreign speaker with no knowledge of that culture's orthography. Unless you actually manage to convince me otherwise, I am just going to keep repeating this.

In short, a native speaker can be illiterate and yet know the language.

Again, exactly what is the difference between this and a foreign speaker unable to read the orthography in question? Besides the issue of L1, that is. The only way to make these two equal is to teach the foreign speaker as much of the spoken language as is known by the native speaker. Then they are both in the same position. And yet only the native speaker "knows" the language? Still sounds like cultural elitism to me.

A foreigner can only be said to do so if the language is unwritten in the first place; i.e., the only aspect involved in learning the language is to learn to speak it.

And yet an illiterate native speaker can get by while an illiterate foreign speaker can't? From a practical perspective this sounds absurd.

But lets temporarily explore the idea of visiting a non-literate society. Both native speaker and foreign speaker can get by just through speaking because that is all they would need to do. If you were to transcribe that language with a foreign orthography like the IPA, you could learn the language by writing it down. Anyone would be able to learn the language this way and do quite well, even though the orthography would still be foreign to native speakers (and maybe to foreign speakers, too). You could do this with a different foreign orthography and foreign speakers would still learn as much of the language as they needed to.

Now we revisit the literate society. All of a sudden, it doesn't matter what other orthographies you use. Even the IPA doesn't work. It needs to be the society's own orthography. And even though the illiterate native speaker gets by without knowing their own orthography, the foreign speaker still needs to know it? The illiterate native speaker "knows" their language; a foreign speaker could potentially reach the same spoken proficiency that the illiterate native speaker is at by using the IPA or the Roman alphabet, among others. And yet the foreign speaker still does not "know" the language as well as the illiterate native speaker does.

From a cultural perspective, this makes sense because cultures are immersive, and in order to survive in it, you need to learn all the aspects of it. This includes all aspects of learning the language, which is what I think you keep trying to get at. On the other hand, from a practical perspective, as long as you are able to do something, it does not matter how you do it. I want to learn Greek, so I Romanize all the sounds in the Greek language and transcribe my Greek this way. I will not know the Greek alphabet, but I will learn to speak Greek. So I will accomplish what I want to accomplish, even though I accomplish it in a different way than a native speaker of Greek would. It could go the other way around: I could learn the Greek alphabet without learning a single phrase in the Greek language.

See, from a practical perspective a spoken language and a written language are always going to be two seperate things. Realizing this makes what I typed in the very first post in this thread much more legitimate. But I will restate it since this is the second page now: "Slavic languages like Russian can use apostraphes regularly and consistently to indicate palatization - they would require the Roman alphabet in order to do it, but they can still do it - so I see no reason why a conlang can't do this either. Has anyone ever done this before?

There. That one statement is what this whole argument is about. Think of it as you will.

For a native speaker, literacy in his language is an addition to his knowledge of the language, but for a foreigner it is a necessary part of his learning the language.

If the native speaker isn't literate, he is still at a disadvantage. Why is this more permissible than a foreign speaker learning to speak the language in their own orthography? Either you excuse illiteracy for both speakers or you deal with the illiteracy for both in the same way. Otherwise this doesn't merely look like a case of cultural elitism, it also looks very much like ethnic inequality.

An illiterate native is simply uneducated, while an illiterate foreigner has received faulty/incomplete education, even though both may know the same thing about the language, i.e., how to speak it.

What is to say that the native speaker did not recieve faulty/incomplete education too? Or for that matter, can't the foreign speaker also simply be uneducated? Are you beginning to see the difference in reasoning here?

You would need to know the written language if you went to the country where it was spoken, but you could also devise a new script to transcribe it without actually going to that country.

You could devise a new script, or adapt another script, but your made-up thing would have no connection to actually learning the language no matter how much you want to pretend it does.

If all you want to do is communicate verbally, then all you need to do in order to use the language is learn it verbally. Your proficiency would depend on what the person teaching you considers a proper education in the language, but if they can teach you how to communicate flawlessly with native speakers of the language then it doesn't matter what they used to transcribe the language with because for our purposes we wouldn't need it. It is the same deal as with learning a non-literate language; IF you don't need to learn to read it, then you can get by without it.

I am not trying to show you that you can learn one orthography by transcribing a certain spoken language in another. There are blaringly obvious reasons why this would not work. Instead, I am trying to show you that you can learn a spoken language just as well by transcribing it with one orthography as you can by transcribing it with another. It does not matter how important learning one orthography is if you never have to use it - if illiterate native speakers people can get by in their native country, then so can you - so you might as well use whatever orthography you want to. It does not matter how "complete" your education is in all the ways through which that spoken language is transmitted. Like I said before, this is about a practical connection between spoken and written language. Not a cultural connection.

I realize this may sound blatantly arrogant but you don't seem to get what I am trying to say here.

[Xephyr]

Why is it we as a society of grown-ups have had a agreed-upon, standard, sensible ways of transcribing Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic since forever... but every single time anybody even brings up the question of standards and practices when doing the same to Cyrillic, all you ever get in response is a chorus of objections over any proposed scheme, over even over the very fact that it is even being done at all? This is not the first time I've seen this kind of reaction, and it probably won't be the last either.

Also, another consequence of your stupid methodology is that you could claim *every* language ever transcribed in the IPA has a phonetic orthography!

He's not saying that some guy somewhere one time once wrote Russian in Roman, and so therefore that's a precedent. It is pretty standard practice when transcribing Russian into Roman to mark palatalization with apostrophes. The fact that the language is primarily written in Cyrillic doesn't mean there is not a standard schema of transcribing it into some other alphabet!

No, I wouldn't, because he is a native speaker. A native speaker learns his language as a small child without schooling, but does not have to be taught his language. (What he is taught in school is how to read his language and how to communicate in the language in a fashion more acceptable to the educated standard.) A foreigner, on the other hand, has to be taught all aspects of the language. The acquisition of the language as a child, whatever we may call the process and whatever is involved in it, is what makes all the difference and is why there is a seeming inconsistency or unfairness.

...What in fucking holy goddamn shitting fucking hell is this shit?

actually I think everyone but mashmakhan is being akashist
an akashist is someone who will say "russian is not written in the Latin alphabet", even if you are writing it in the latin alphabet in front of them
because things that happen in real life aren't real
they're just shadows of the platonic ideal of russian which is only written in cyrillic

[Drydic]

Yeah I just lost all will to continue this arguement, fine, you win, Latin is a coequal script for Russian, every slavic language uses apostrophes to indicate palatalistion, if someone writes a language in any script they're automatically perfectly literate in that language despite not knowing the most common script for that language, anything else I was arguing.