[Wikipedia-l] Mongolian, crazy Mongolian

[Mark Williamson]

Hi all

As you may or may not already know, Mongolian is one of the few
languages in the world that is written vertically _all_ the time
(Japanese, Chinese, and a few others can be written vertically, but
they can also be written horizontally).

Although Outer Mongolia (ie, the independent nation, as opposed the
Inner Mongolia which is currently administered by the People's
Republic of China) switched decades ago to the Cyrillic script for
Mongolian (due to pressure from their favourite ally and neighbour,
the USSR), since 1994 great efforts have been made to reintroduce the
Mongolian script. Many Outer Mongolians can read it, and it's being
taught in schools now.

Inner Mongolia never switched scripts: it has used Mongolian script
continuously now since its emergence.

Now, the issue here isn't which script to use as that can be worked
out later. The issue here is how we would organise a vertical website.
W3C standards spell out how to make vertical text properly using HTML.
However, this isn't supported by all browsers (Firefox, for one,
doesn't support it).

Also, since the user interface is designed for languages that are
written horizontally, it may be difficult to adapt to Mongolian. The
typical solution is to flip EVERYTHING 90 degrees counterclockwise.

A representation of what a proper implementation of Mongolian script
protocols on mn.wiki should look like can be found here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Mongolian_wikipedia_preview.png
(it's pretty neat, actually)

Mark

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