Re: More orthographic miscellanea (was: Chinese Romanization)

Isaac A. Penzev scripsit:

> As for RF, the situation is different. It is ***forbidden by the federal
> law*** to use any other alphabet than based on Cyrillics, for the
> languages that have any official status in Russian Federation. Kazan
> Tatars want to change to Turkish-based Latinics, but Moscow does not
> permit to do it officially. The same is with Karelan - being written
> in Latinics, it demands official status (for now they use Finnish and
> Russian as official langauges of Republic of Karelia), bu it cannot
> be given until they change to Cyrillics.
I don't understand this.  If only Cyrillic-script languages can be
official, how can Finnish be official?  Is it simply because it has
official status in Finland and is written in Latin script there?
But Tatar has official status in China and is written in Latin
script there, so it seems that the law is being inconsistently
applied.

> They all seem nice and convenient (even a bit strange but etymologicly safe
> Azeri), tho often totally incompatible with each other. I think it was done
> for hardening mutual understanding between Turkic ethnoi.
Actually, I suspect that it was just a product of committees working
independently and without coordination.  (Note:  "harden" in English is
not a general causative, but applies only to the literal sense of "hard" =
"firm"; it cannot be applied in the sense "make [something] difficult".)

--
Income tax, if I may be pardoned for saying so,         John Cowan
is a tax on income.  --Lord Macnaghten (1901)           cowan@ccil.org

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