Intercompatibility between abugidas

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Woods
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Intercompatibility between abugidas

Postby Woods » 2021-07-17, 0:34

I've noticed some of them are very similar, for example Devanagari and Gujarati, but probably even something as far as Burmese wouldn't be impossible to figure out for someone who is familiar with one of the scrips and could see similarities?

My question is are speakers of some of those languages able to read the other ones?

And do people who can write in one of the scripts adopt a new one when they learn a similar language or do they sometimes keep their native script when they write another language?

Like if someone speaks for example Gujarati and learns Hindi or another related language, can they write that language in the Gujarati script?


There's a very nice picture on Wikipedia with several of those scripts side-by-side:

(bigger picture when you click on the link below)

Image

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Phrase_sanskrit.svg

If you speak one of these languages, which other ones would you be able to read? And would you change your writing if it uses another script which is different but similar?


I wrote one more question about the way Devanagari works in the Hindi/Urdu forum.

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Re: Intercompatibility between abugidas

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-01-24, 15:06

Woods wrote:I've noticed some of them are very similar, for example Devanagari and Gujarati, but probably even something as far as Burmese wouldn't be impossible to figure out for someone who is familiar with one of the scrips and could see similarities?

Correct.
My question is are speakers of some of those languages able to read the other ones?

Some of us can read multiple scripts because we learned them by ourselves.
And do people who can write in one of the scripts adopt a new one when they learn a similar language or do they sometimes keep their native script when they write another language?

Yes. :P
Like if someone speaks for example Gujarati and learns Hindi or another related language, can they write that language in the Gujarati script?

It happens sometimes, but you can't go very far with it.
If you speak one of these languages, which other ones would you be able to read? And would you change your writing if it uses another script which is different but similar?

It doesn't really work like that. If you're learning another Indian language, you're likely to learn the script with it just like you would for any other language. However, if you can read Kannada script, then you're likely to also be able to read Telugu script and vice versa because the differences between them are relatively trivial.

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Re: Intercompatibility between abugidas

Postby Woods » 2022-01-25, 1:53

You know, I highly appreciate that you basically told me I'm an arrogant asshole (I'm adding the word "asshole" myself to make up for you respecting forum rules), and yet you're here answering another post of mine at the same time. I think that's fair game. And I mean it. I'm really tired of people taking everything personally and going to Internet forums for drama and intrigues.

That being said, it's an old post. I've put my short interest in Nepali away from my near sight, because by looking a little bit into every language, I learn virtually nothing. If I have any time for studying languages at all, I should rather work on things like Finnish, German, Chinese.


vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:And do people who can write in one of the scripts adopt a new one when they learn a similar language or do they sometimes keep their native script when they write another language?

Yes. :P

This one is unclear though - you're answering a "yes" to an either-or question.


vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:would you change your writing if it uses another script which is different but similar?

It doesn't really work like that. If you're learning another Indian language, you're likely to learn the script with it just like you would for any other language. However, if you can read Kannada script, then you're likely to also be able to read Telugu script and vice versa because the differences between them are relatively trivial.

Yeah, that's where my question comes from - since some of those scripts look pretty similar, I am kind of thinking of it like handwriting - mine for example looks more different from my friend's speaking the same language than Devanagari looks from Bangla. And yet we both understand each other's scripts. So I am thinking, if I was for example a native speaker of Nepali, and I learnt Bangla, what would be the extent to which I would modify my writing - not at all, if it would be understood as it is, or just a little bit - until it is understood, or completely - and I would adopt very different letter shapes and style to match the way this language is visualised by other speakers. Maybe you could answer what you would do if you learnt a language using a script not too different from Malayalam for example (I am not sure if there are other major languages which use scripts similar enough?)

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Re: Intercompatibility between abugidas

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-01-25, 19:33

Woods wrote:That being said, it's an old post. I've put my short interest in Nepali away from my near sight, because by looking a little bit into every language, I learn virtually nothing. If I have any time for studying languages at all, I should rather work on things like Finnish, German, Chinese.

Fair enough
vijayjohn wrote:
Woods wrote:And do people who can write in one of the scripts adopt a new one when they learn a similar language or do they sometimes keep their native script when they write another language?

Yes. :P

This one is unclear though - you're answering a "yes" to an either-or question.

What I mean is both of those things happen. Some people learning a different language learn the script; some don't.
would you change your writing if it uses another script which is different but similar?

It doesn't really work like that. If you're learning another Indian language, you're likely to learn the script with it just like you would for any other language. However, if you can read Kannada script, then you're likely to also be able to read Telugu script and vice versa because the differences between them are relatively trivial.

Yeah, that's where my question comes from - since some of those scripts look pretty similar, I am kind of thinking of it like handwriting - mine for example looks more different from my friend's speaking the same language than Devanagari looks from Bangla. And yet we both understand each other's scripts. So I am thinking, if I was for example a native speaker of Nepali, and I learnt Bangla, what would be the extent to which I would modify my writing - not at all, if it would be understood as it is, or just a little bit - until it is understood, or completely - and I would adopt very different letter shapes and style to match the way this language is visualised by other speakers. Maybe you could answer what you would do if you learnt a language using a script not too different from Malayalam for example (I am not sure if there are other major languages which use scripts similar enough?)

The approach people usually take is to say something like "oh, this script I don't know looks like this other script that I do know, except for this difference and that difference" etc. Hindi and English are both required subjects in most Indian (secondary/high) schools, so if people can read Devanagari, they can probably read Roman script as well; if they're not from a Hindi-speaking region, then they presumably know how to write their own language in addition to both of these. I know all of these scripts except for the Sinhala, Balinese, Javanese, and Sundanese scripts, but I learned Devanagari before I learned Bengali script, so I actually can directly relate to your example of a Nepali-speaker learning Bangla. Something like half the letters look roughly the same, so it's mostly a matter of just learning the other half.

Tamil script is very closely related to Malayalam script, and a lot of the differences are due to a difference in writing medium. Tamil script was often used for writing inscriptions on stone IIRC, but books in South Asia were traditionally written on palm leaves, and if you draw a straight line on a palm leaf, it breaks. This is why Malayalam script looks in some ways like a curvier equivalent of Tamil script.


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