Yes, I was going to ask Brion but I didn't see him online for the last few days.
And as regards Latin vs Cyrillic (vs Arabic), I totally agree on Ossetic, HOWEVER:
Recent growth in the Chuvash and Bashkir Wikipedias has been a sort of low-key duel between Latin and Cyrillic. It was my impression that Cyrillic was the /only/ script used now for these languages. Similarly, the Tatar Wikipedia is written entirely in Latin, while it was my impression that today Tatar is written /only/ in Cyrillic (and Arabic in China). The beginnings of the Uyghur Wikipedia have also been conflicting, since in Chinese Turkestan where most Uyghur speakers are, the official script is Arabic, but elsewhere some people use Cyrillic and some people use Latin... it looks like it may become a problem.
I may be wrong about any of these, but if my impressions are right it would seem that some or all of these Wikipedias are being written by activists in a script not used by very many people at all.
Mark
On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 17:09:40 +0300, V. Ivanov amikeco@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 00:54:23 +1100, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
A question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetic_language says that Ossetic can use Latin script as well as Cyrillic script.
...been using it in 1920s. There was a general Soviet policy of the 1920s to use Latin script in local languages, and even Russian was planned to latinization. But then Stalin came to rule, having other points of view.
Does anyone still use Latin?
Noone ever, except situations when Cyrillic keyboard is not available. When it's not available, they use "translit" -- a horrible intuitive latinization. :)
Are there important texts in Latin?
I have never seen any Latin script book in Ossetic in all my life. I only know, that they have existed.
Is there a one-to-one correspondence between the Cyrillic and Latin spellings in Ossetic, so that you change one to the other automatically?
Yes. Still human post-edition might be needed after such change.
Sl.
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