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What writing systems do you feel comfortable transliterating with?

Also, I want to learn a Brahmic script, but one that is relatively simple, for my first abugida. Any suggestions?

I can uncomfortably use:

:إ كن ونكمفرتبلي يوز
:אי כן ונכומפרתבלי יוז
Ай ункомфэртабли юз:
Αι καν υνκωμφερταβλι ιυζ:
아이 캔 언컴펠텁리 윳.

Roman (obv), hiragana, katakana, maybe about 30-40 kanji that I could put to active use, and the Greek alphabet.

I can also manage Russian fairly easily, and I know all the letters for Korean but can't remember which way round some of them are meant to be (u versus o, for example), and I would need some practice before I'd be comfortable reading it. I've been to neither of these places, though.

I also probably know about half of the Arabic alphabet and Devanagari, and about 4 letters of Hebrew, so I wouldn't quite count any of those towards my total.

At the moment that's it...

I find it interesting that you've transliterated the <o> in uncomfortably as /e/ in all your languages, though, and the <u> as /u/. Normally languages without a schwa read English letters as they are spelt, and /ʌ/ comes out as /a/, so uncomfortably would be pronounced /ankomfortabli/ in a language with 5 vowels. In Korean I would expect it to be transliterated with /ʌ/, which is normally pronounced as a schwa anyway. In Japanese, アンコンフォータブリー, /ankonfoːtaburiː/.

Besides the Roman alphabet, I know the Greek alphabet, Georgian alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, some Thai and Khmer, a lot of Arabic, and a bit of Armenian.
I only speak languages that use the roman alphabet though.

sucaeyl wrote:What writing systems do you feel comfortable transliterating with?

Also, I want to learn a Brahmic script, but one that is relatively simple, for my first abugida. Any suggestions?

I can uncomfortably use:

:إ كن ونكمفرتبلي يوز
:אי כן ונכומפרתבלי יוז
Ай ункомфэртабли юз:
Αι καν υνκωμφερταβλι ιυζ:
아이 캔 언컴펠텁리 윳.

You need an א for words beginning in vowels; you can't use a ו or a י for an initial vowel (except for ו before some consonants when used as a conjunction in formal or archaic Hebrew). Also, your kaphs and tavs should be qufs and ṭets.

I can use Hebrew (ktiv ‘ivri and ktiv ašuri), Arabic (kind of), Hiragana and Katakana, Greek and Cyrillic.

I obviously know the Latin one really well, but other than that:

-several hundred Chinese characters (simplified), and can recognize maybe one half to two thirds of the traditional ones that are different (from the simplified ones I know)
-Getting really good with Hangeul...I can read everything, even if it's a little choppy. Still working on getting all the allophony down, though
-Can read Cyrillic (as used in Russian)
-All the base values of the Greek alphabet, not good with the digraphs

At one point, I could read all the hiragana symbols, but not so much anymore. I can still recognize a couple of them, but not many.

sucaeyl wrote: 아이 캔 언컴펠텁리 윳.

펠 would be better without the ㄹ I think (as in non-"rhotic") and "use" would be better as 유스 because ㅅ is pronounced [t] syllable finally

finlay wrote:I find it interesting that you've transliterated the <o> in uncomfortably as /e/ in all your languages, though, and the <u> as /u/. Normally languages without a schwa read English letters as they are spelt, and /ʌ/ comes out as /a/, so uncomfortably would be pronounced /ankomfortabli/ in a language with 5 vowels. In Korean I would expect it to be transliterated with /ʌ/, which is normally pronounced as a schwa anyway. In Japanese, アンコンフォータブリー, /ankonfoːtaburiː/.

I think I transliterated the second <o> as /e/ because, to my non-native ear, the /ɜ/ and /ɝ/ of English sound most like /er/.
I agree about the schwa transcription, expect that Hangeul has a letter better suited to schwa than <어> /ʌ/. It is <으> /ɯ/.

Ančiri wrote:You need an א for words beginning in vowels; you can't use a ו or a י for an initial vowel (except for ו before some consonants when used as a conjunction in formal or archaic Hebrew). Also, your kaphs and tavs should be qufs and ṭets.

So should a hypothetical word /im/ be <אים> rather than <ים>? Also, I was hesitating to use quf ant ṭet because of their historical emphatic values. Should I disregard that?

Chibi wrote:펠 would be better without the ㄹ I think (as in non-"rhotic") and "use" would be better as 유스 because ㅅ is pronounced [t] syllable finally

I like not using ㄹ, but I would then I would change 페 to 프, seeing as // sounds a little closer, at least to me, to //. I have to disagree on the last point though: Doesn't one often have to disregard the allophony of the language from which a script comes when doing transliterations? I think it's safer to use unambiguous or historic values in this case, even if it may cause some confusion to native speakers. I could be wrong, though.

I know the Cyrillic script fairly well and can read katakana and hiragana for the most part. I probably couldn't write in either script from memory and need to look up characters from time to time, though.

I can (very badly) read Cyrillic. And by "read", I mean, "can understand half the letters sort of".

sucaeyl wrote: I have to disagree on the last point though: Doesn't one often have to disregard the allophony of the language from which a script comes when doing transliterations? I think it's safer to use unambiguous or historic values in this case, even if it may cause some confusion to native speakers. I could be wrong, though.

I dunno, I'm getting my info from "Korean: An Essential Grammar":

"When Koreans hear an [s] sound in a syllable-final position, they assume an underlying vowel following it to make that sound pronounced as an [s] and not as a [t]. For example, the following foreign words will have a vowel following them:

키스 /k'issu/ [k'issu] 'kiss'
한스 /hansu/ [hansu] 'Hans'" (pg. 34)

Meanwhile, loanwords that DO end in [t] are often Hangulified with a syllable final ㅅ. The examples the book uses are 컷 (haircut) and 힛 (hit)*. So I think in this particular case, 유스 is better than 윳

*Note that these DO turn to [s] when followed by a syllable that begins with a vowel.

sucaeyl wrote:

Ančiri wrote:You need an א for words beginning in vowels; you can't use a ו or a י for an initial vowel (except for ו before some consonants when used as a conjunction in formal or archaic Hebrew). Also, your kaphs and tavs should be qufs and ṭets.

So should a hypothetical word /im/ be <אים> rather than <ים>? Also, I was hesitating to use quf ant ṭet because of their historical emphatic values. Should I disregard that?

Yes, it can only be אים, as ים can only be a word starting with a consonantal y (in fact, it spells the word yam, meaning "sea"). And yes, ק and ט are used to transliterate plain /k/ and /t/ from other languages, not despite their emphatic-ness, but rather because of it. That's pretty much been the tradition since forever. In Greek in particular, κ and τ are transliterated ק and ט, whereas χ and θ are mostly כ and ת. Examples: Talmudic אפיקורוס (’eppîqôrôs, meaning "heretic," from Greek Ἐπίκουρος "Epicurus"), אוכלוסייה (’ukhlûsiyyâ, "population" from Greek ὀχλοσ- "mob"), תרמומטר (termômeṭer, "thermometer").

I can read/write comfortably in Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, a few hundred Hanzi, Hiragana and Hangeul. I can read most of Armenian, Syriac and Tibetan, about half of Georgian, and only a few letters of Devanagari, Katakana, Burmese and Thai.

sucaeyl wrote::إ كن ونكمفرتبلي يوز

Same things for this as what Ančiri said about the Hebrew. And it should be اي, because إ is /ʔi/. And the Greek should be more like Αϊ κεν ανκάμφταμπλι ιούζ; what you wrote says /e kan inkomfertavli iiz/.

Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, and a slowly-withering knowledge of Hebrew. I used to know Arabic and Devanagari but've forgotten all but a few letters.

Latin is fine completely of course and Greek and Hangeul I know all of. I think I did know Devanagari off by heart at one point as well. Similar story with the Japanese kana. I never started any kanji though. And Cyrillic I know most of as well. I've not paid too much attention to any other than the Latin lately though. I should probably refresh my memory.

I can read and write the Latin alphabet, Greek (ancient/modern), Cyrillic, Arabic, Hiragana, some Katakana, ~100 Kanji, a bit of Hangul (pretty much the same as finlay here) and Hebrew. That's it, I think.

The only kana symbols i haven't recognized are the ones for nu, ぬ and ヌ, because they seem to be the least common by far - n can end a word on its own without an epenthetic consonant. But i'm getting better with kana just by being here - at first i wasn't 100% on which was which of クケタ, for example. Now i do actually actively recognize them.

finlay wrote:The only kana symbols i haven't recognized are the ones for nu, ぬ and ヌ, because they seem to be the least common by far - n can end a word on its own without an epenthetic consonant. But i'm getting better with kana just by being here - at first i wasn't 100% on which was which of クケタ, for example. Now i do actually actively recognize them.

Yeah, same with me. I know Hiragana pretty well by now, and the biggest issue is that it can take me a few seconds with the hiragana for nu, ne and me, but I never really practiced katakana, I just figured it out by reading, so I still have lots of trouble with some letters.

I feel comfortable with Japanese, although I have a hard time remembering kanji when writing by hand nowadays. Some years ago I had around 1200 in my active memory, but that number has been reduced to maybe a couple of hundreds since I left Japan. I can read Greek and Cyrillic but not write fluently, or at all with the latter. I've mostly learnt Greek through studying maths, and learnt Cyrillic during a trip to St. Petersburg.

Roman alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Greek alphabet, and a bunch of Devanagari (though I always forget the aspirated and retroflex series). I was fluent in Tengwar at one point early in my conlanging career as well :P

finlay wrote:and I know all the letters for Korean but can't remember which way round some of them are meant to be (u versus o, for example)

Didn't see this before:

o faces up because it comes first in the Latin alphabet...that's what I used to remember it, maybe that might help?

(er- not as if its direction depends on the Latin alphabet, just a mnemonic to remember it by)

Edit: just thought of another that could've been useful: o for over, u for under, in reference to the direction the stroke faces.

Latin script is a given. Years ago I'd have been comfortable with hiragana but as I haven't used it since high school I'm more than a bit rusty. At the time I recognized maybe seventy kanji but that's like saying at the time I recognized uppercase A.

I can write in Devanagari, Cyrillic, Latin and I recognise a smattering of Hanzi and I've taught myself how to read Hangul on two seperate occasions because it's so easy but I forget through neglecting to use it (because I don't know Korean. Not a word of it)

Because I can write Devanagari I can also, given a few minutes to familiarise myself with the minor differences, write in Gujurati Lipi, Gurmukhi and maybe Bangla Lipi

GrinningManiac wrote:Because I can write Devanagari I can also, given a few minutes to familiarise myself with the minor differences, write in Gujurati Lipi, Gurmukhi and maybe Bangla Lipi

Would you say that Devanagari is the simplest, or at least the most useful, of the Brahmic scripts?

Chibi wrote:

finlay wrote:and I know all the letters for Korean but can't remember which way round some of them are meant to be (u versus o, for example)

Didn't see this before:

o faces up because it comes first in the Latin alphabet...that's what I used to remember it, maybe that might help?

(er- not as if its direction depends on the Latin alphabet, just a mnemonic to remember it by)

Edit: just thought of another that could've been useful: o for over, u for under, in reference to the direction the stroke faces.

That second one is probably more useful. I've been remembering it by thinking through from the fact that I know a/o/ɛ make a triplet and e/ʌ/u make a triplet, although then I forget whether a's right-facing stalk (which I only know because ɛ looks like H) corresponds to an up or a down, so it's actually not that useful!

Obviously, I'm not in Korea, so I don't have to know it by any means, but I've seen a few transl(iter)ations on the train and stuff, so it can be fun to try and decipher them. It does throw up some weird results sometimes, though: my local station Kami-Shakujii is transliterated on some of the signs as 가미샤쿠지이 – with different transliterations of the two /k/s in the Japanese. Presumably this is because Korean romanization is a bit of a mess. (I would argue that 카미샤크지이 is a better transliteration...)

I also don't know word one of Korean, either, so knowing the script isn't especially useful for me... (I think "thank you" might be kamsahamnida, and gwaenchanha is "I'm OK", I think – I know that one from a film title... but those aren't word one, strictly speaking...)

finlay wrote:Obviously, I'm not in Korea, so I don't have to know it by any means, but I've seen a few transl(iter)ations on the train and stuff, so it can be fun to try and decipher them. It does throw up some weird results sometimes, though: my local station Kami-Shakujii is transliterated on some of the signs as 가미샤쿠지이 – with different transliterations of the two /k/s in the Japanese. Presumably this is because Korean romanization is a bit of a mess. (I would argue that 카미샤크지이 is a better transliteration...)

Probably because ㄱ becomes voiced intervocalically, so if they had used 구 rather than 쿠 it would be more similar to "Shagujii" than "Shakujii"...I guess it doesn't make a huge difference, but they wanted to be consistent or something. If I was doing the transliterating, I probably would have done what you did (카 at the beginning...but then again, I'm just a beginner, so...)

(going back to the representing allophones thing...)

I'm familiar with Latin script in several varieties, Cyrillic (Russian, Bulgarian, and Serbo-Croatian), and Modern Greek. I've actively needed to use Latin script and Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic in my travels.

With some work, I can also reason through some of the kanji, katakana, and hiragana.