Re: USAGE: Chinese Romanization (was: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase)

Tamás Racskó jazdy:

>   The real Slav usage is Cyrillic, indeed. Before WWII, nearly
> almost nations under the Soviet domination were forced to use
> Cyrillic orthography instead of their previous Latin traditions;
> even Rumanians living in Soviet Moldova.
Just a side note: Romanian was written with Cyrillic letters till 1859.
Latin orthography was introduced after independent Romanian state came to
existence, as a symbol of Westernization and being a "Romance" country. So
in 1930s Moldovan Romanians simply returned to their native orthography
(that I personally find very aesthetic).

>   Turks has a long connection with Venice.
[skip]
>   Therefore Turkish system is a balkanized amalgam of various
> Romance conventions plus German for un-Romance front round vowels.
Hehe. One more side note: the Turkish alphabet is an adaptation (sic!) of
Azeri "New Alphabet" ("Yenalif"), that was designed in 1920s by Soviet
linguists. The lgs are pretty close, you know, so it was not a problem to
borrow the whole alphabet, throwing away three letters denoting specific
Azeri sounds!

-- Yitzik
(from ex-USSR, and proud of that)

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