Serbian alphabet has 30 characters, each representing one sound. It is, thus, as phonetic as it gets. There is no spelling whatsoever, question "how do you pronounce/spell your last name" doesn't exist.
That's for cyrillic alphabet and for those who write according to the orthography of the language. But, the language can be written using latin alphabet, which still maps 1:1 to the cyrillic, well, almost. Three sounds are represented with digraphs, namely nj, lj and dž - and of course, there are a few oddball cases where these should represent two sounds each. However, that is not the problem.
The problem is the current tendency, brought by several factors (mostly economic and political, or cultural ones as a consequence) to write engrbian, i.e. an anglicized variant of serbian. Common words, including old and domesticated loan words, are written in english. Even names from other slavic, asian or mid-eastern languages are written in their english transcription, not the traditional one. That's one of the traits of the current recolonization of the rest of the world (including Germany, believe it or not - after a couple of decades I watched german TV and was shocked with the amount of accumulated english in the common TV speech).
Many took the habit from earlier version of their OSes (on their PCs, mobile phones, game machines), where localization always comes later, and the localized keyboard layouts come when most of the current users have an ingrained habit to type the old way, i.e. using american keyboard layout, and english character set. Which means that out of 30 characters, six are out: š, ć, đ, č, ž and dž. They are spelled as sh, ch, dj, ch, z, dz or just s, c, dj, c, z, dz. Allegedly, the meaning is not lost, we communicate like this for years.
Well, you be the judge. I've applied the same routine to English language, by replacing six character combinations with their simplified versions. The text is randomly chosen from about third link to somewhere legal, starting from "termini usluge" ("the notions of favor", as Google translates "terms of service" into engrbian). So, we need six character combinations to replace with a single character, two of which should be to the same character. Here:
- ch, ck become c
- th becomes t
- ph becomes p
- sh becomes s
- wh becomes w
And here's the experimental exercise de style:
That's for cyrillic alphabet and for those who write according to the orthography of the language. But, the language can be written using latin alphabet, which still maps 1:1 to the cyrillic, well, almost. Three sounds are represented with digraphs, namely nj, lj and dž - and of course, there are a few oddball cases where these should represent two sounds each. However, that is not the problem.
The problem is the current tendency, brought by several factors (mostly economic and political, or cultural ones as a consequence) to write engrbian, i.e. an anglicized variant of serbian. Common words, including old and domesticated loan words, are written in english. Even names from other slavic, asian or mid-eastern languages are written in their english transcription, not the traditional one. That's one of the traits of the current recolonization of the rest of the world (including Germany, believe it or not - after a couple of decades I watched german TV and was shocked with the amount of accumulated english in the common TV speech).
Many took the habit from earlier version of their OSes (on their PCs, mobile phones, game machines), where localization always comes later, and the localized keyboard layouts come when most of the current users have an ingrained habit to type the old way, i.e. using american keyboard layout, and english character set. Which means that out of 30 characters, six are out: š, ć, đ, č, ž and dž. They are spelled as sh, ch, dj, ch, z, dz or just s, c, dj, c, z, dz. Allegedly, the meaning is not lost, we communicate like this for years.
Well, you be the judge. I've applied the same routine to English language, by replacing six character combinations with their simplified versions. The text is randomly chosen from about third link to somewhere legal, starting from "termini usluge" ("the notions of favor", as Google translates "terms of service" into engrbian). So, we need six character combinations to replace with a single character, two of which should be to the same character. Here:
- ch, ck become c
- th becomes t
- ph becomes p
- sh becomes s
- wh becomes w
And here's the experimental exercise de style:
Only material tat originated wit te autor can support a copyright. Items from te public domain wic appear in a work, as well as work borrowed from oters, cannot be te subject of an infringement claim. Also, certain stoc material might not be copyrightable, suc as footage tat indicates a location like te standard sots of San Francisco in Star Trek IV: Te Voyage Home. Also exempted are stoc caracters like te noisy punk rocer wo gets te Vulcan deat grip in Star Trek IV.Can we conclude that reduction of alphabet doesn't hurt at all? We can! So, Engrbian is a de facto new language, wic brings us a wole new liberty in te way we write tem funny ponemes. After all, you understood every word of it. Unambiguously.
Te requirement tat works be in a fixed medium leaves out certain forms of expression, most notably coreograpy and oral performances suc as speeces. For instance, if I perform a Klingon deat wail in a local park, my performance is not copyrightable. However, if I film te performance, ten te film is copyrightable.
Single words and sort prases are generally not protected by copyright, even wen te name has been "coined" or newly-created by te mark owner. Logos tat include original design elements can be protected under copyright or under trademark. Oterwise, words, prases and titles may be protected only by trademark, however.
0 back and forths:
Post a Comment