Xonen wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 18:43Now, perhaps this is to some degree a matter of taste, but having been originally introduced to linguistics by Tolkien and Zompist back when the internet was young, I can't help but feel that inconsistent use of
diacritics when creating an orthography is, at best, a rookie mistake.
I'd agree if it wasn't universally done in pretty much literally every language that uses diacritics. I mean, sure, Finnish is consistent, but that's only because Finnish has the smallest phonemic inventory in Europe and likely of any language officially written using the Latin alphabet... but when you consider that Estonian, which is more consistent by writing /y/ as <ü>, is less consistent in using the weird ass letter <õ> for /ɤ/... well, I've yet to see any natural language with an orthography that's perfectly 100% consistent, especially when it comes to diacritics.
It really is just a matter of taste, though, and any orthography
could be made up for any language that was entirely consistent, but it's just not going to happen in the future because Unicode has pretty much come to dictate which letters can be used in a practical orthography; field linguists travelling to document previously undocumented languages may not care, coming up with unique practical orthographies on the spot to write notes in a physical notebook or something, but none of their unique squiggles will be included in Unicode and as such will be replaced by ones that are as soon as the people who speak the language get computers and/or smartphones.
Of course, the best solution would be for "hypothetical characters" to be included in Unicode. Unfortunately, that's never going to happen because the list of character sets to be included in Unicode that are actually used by thousands (if not millions) of people keeps growing, as well as historical orthographies and whatnot. Also, font support for shit like Z with cedilla or X with caron or whatever would not be a priority, and even if they were included in Google's Noto fonts or some other big font, most people would still see boxes for years; I mean, some of the big Latin alphabet fonts still don't include Extended-C, let alone anything more recent...
Xonen wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 18:43Well, Unicode didn't exactly support <ş> or <ı>, either, at the time the Turkish orthography was being created, but somehow, that didn't stop them from adding those to the orthography.
True... I guess if they had used Z with cedilla, then it would have been included in Unicode when Unicode became a thing, but they didn't.
sangi39 wrote: ↑12 Dec 2017 01:10
Xonen wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 18:43
Vlürch wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 13:12but considering the fact that misspellings and lack of font support for easily typable letters like İ, ı, Öö and Üü have literally gotten people killed
Yikes, what?
I think Vlürch was referring to
this unfortunate incident (and apparently it's not the only time incomplete support of <
ı> has caused issues)
Yeah, that's what I meant. I could've sworn there was something similar that happened over <ö> or <ü>, but I couldn't find anything except a bunch of sites reporting on that one over <ı>, so I was probably just having a brain fart or thinking of something with less fatal results.
Xonen wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 18:43In any case, yes, I recognize there are
plenty of reasons for staying with an orthography once it's established. My problem is with whoever it was who designed this system in the first place. Back then, they could pretty much have gone with anything they wished, and this is what we get?
Yeah, I agree. Except, like I said, I don't really have a problem with <c>; it's not that I'd like it, but there is no /t͡s/ or even /ʕ/ in Turkish to use it for, so it's basically the best option when <j> is used for /ʒ/. They could've gone with something like <ģ>, in which case everyone would be complaining that they didn't use <ķ> for /t͡ʃ/, which in my opinion would look much worse.
Xonen wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 18:43
No disagreement on this assessment, except maybe that "disgusting" is putting it a bit mildly.
Yeah, it's literally the worst orthography ever... taking cacography to a whole new level. I had no idea something so hideous could even be possible, especially for a language that already has one of the coolest-looking orthographies of all time (and definitely the best when it comes to the Cyrillic alphabet).
Pabappa wrote: ↑11 Dec 2017 22:12
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/86051
The internet agrees with you ..... everybody hates it. The ' just doesn't blend in with the rest of the letters. Apparently ''s shape requires it to have full spacing underneath. If enough people complain they might decide to make the use of the "'" optional.
Well, there's one guy on Unilang who thinks it looks cool...
All4Ɇn wrote: ↑12 Dec 2017 02:01Oh man I really hope Kazakhstan doesn't actually go through with that orthography. Any word on a website where the people on this site could send them better ones
Apparently Nazarbayev personally decided that no matter what, it's pushed through. Maybe he has a fetish for apostrophes or something, but I used to think he was the kind of leader more countries could do with, but then he pulls this shit...
Iyionaku wrote: ↑12 Dec 2017 07:57
Would you like to have some 蕊 ?
HNNNNNGGGG
I looked it up on Wiktionary, which said "See also: 蘂", which then led me to 橤. All this cool flower shit is cool, and flowers in general are interesting, which is why it makes me feel kinda sad and annoyed that any reference to flowers in English or Finnish is seen as a reference to weed or psychedelic drugs...