Ugliest language

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Levike
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby Levike » 2016-06-28, 10:54

Vlürch wrote:You know, doubled consonants followed by doubled vowels or the other way around, etc. I don't know why, but those are so annoying.

I'm on the other side, I think it's way less annoying to just write a vowel twice rather than put sticks above it as Hungarian does, too much characters. Finnish is smart.

And the original Hungarian alphabet was even worse, as it had symbols for short and long vowels.

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby suruvaippa » 2016-06-28, 15:18

Vlürch wrote:Honestly, it wouldn't even be hard to make it look cool and be practical (more practical than the current Finnish alphabet, actually; I mean, it looks like shit)


Say what? Besides Korean, I don't know of any language with a more practical orthography than Finnish.

Levike wrote:I'm on the other side, I think it's way less annoying to just write a vowel twice rather than put sticks above it as Hungarian does, too much characters.


Ugh, please. All the ő's and ű's are an eyesore. On the other hand, I adore their usage of -cs- to transcribe /tʃ/ and wish more languages did so, even if it wouldn't exactly be the most logical choice.
(en-us) native, (fi) advanced, (smi-sme) (smi-sms) (et) working on, (lt) (es) forgetting
(smi-sma) (liv) (ka) (eu) (nv) (ru) (sw) eventually...

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby Vlürch » 2016-06-28, 19:28

mōdgethanc wrote:
Vlürch wrote:Personally, I think Cyrillic isn't that bad; it can even look pretty cool, at least in the context of Kazakh and Kyrgyz.
Nope. Those languages look like shit.

I disagree.
mōdgethanc wrote:
On the other hand, imagine if Finnish was written in the Cyrillic script. It would be hideous
It would be pretty easy to make one that looks good. I would just use umlauts for the fronted vowels because the Russian system of transcribing them with /ja, jo, ju/ looks shitty.

Umlauts are gross, they look like nostrils. As for /ja, jo, ju/, that I agree with you on, which is why I'd prefer <ә ө ү>.
mōdgethanc wrote:
Honestly, it wouldn't even be hard to make it look cool and be practical (more practical than the current Finnish alphabet, actually; I mean, it looks like shit)
What? It's possible to be more practical than Finnish? I think Finnish looks great.

Seriously? Does this look great to you?

Kylmäveriset kohtuuntyöntyvät ensikertalaiset vahingoittavat pilvenpiirtäjässä pidettävien kaukoputkimiesten muistotilaisuutta, käyttäen hyväkseen vaihtolämpöisten yksisarvisten potkulautarintaisia pikkusiskoja ja heidän pikkuhousuissaan kasvavia yhdysvaltalaisia.

(Cold-blooded womb-penetrating first-timers harm the memorial service of telescope men/long-distance plumbers held in a skyscraper, using to their advantage the kick-scooter-chested little sisters of ectothermic unicorns and the United States citizens growing in their panties.)

In the Cyrillic script, it wouldn't look any better, but it would be possible to come up with a solution to that. That's true for the Latin script too, of course, and should be dealt with if there was some kind of a vote on Finland if a new orthography was wanted by the majority and then a contest or whatever where people could vote for the best replacement against the current one. Then again, I'm kind of a traitor and saying this in person would make every nationalist shit themselves, but I also think Finnish sounds like shit in a bunch of ways, and if it was possible, I'd prefer that to be changed as well. You know, like, language engineering or whatever it's called done in practice on a national level. I'd actually support a project like that, at least if it was popular among others. :para:
mōdgethanc wrote:
Personally, though, if Finnish Cyrillic was more of a thing, I'd prefer <ә ө ү> for <ä ö y> and <є ї ң ґ> for <je ji ng g>.
Ew no. Those random-ass letters that were probably created by some Soviet apparatchik look like shit.

Our aesthetic views couldn't be any different, heh. I think they're absolutely awesome, and make Ukrainian and the Turkic languages look so much better.
Levike wrote:I'm on the other side, I think it's way less annoying to just write a vowel twice rather than put sticks above it as Hungarian does, too much characters. Finnish is smart.

Holy shit, I think Hungarian looks so much better than Finnish, even if it sounds about as ugly (if not uglier; I have a hard time making up my mind regarding that because the ugly things in Finnish are only about half of the language, while Hungarian is overall uglier but is more consistent with that and as a result sounds/looks more like a more "authentic" language if that makes sense).
suruvaippa wrote:
Vlürch wrote:Honestly, it wouldn't even be hard to make it look cool and be practical (more practical than the current Finnish alphabet, actually; I mean, it looks like shit)


Say what? Besides Korean, I don't know of any language with a more practical orthography than Finnish.

It is practical, but I mean practical without looking like shit.
suruvaippa wrote:All the ő's and ű's are an eyesore

I love those, I wish there was a precomposed unicode letter for a̋, e̋ and ı̋ because the diacritic doesn't look right in just about any widely used font.

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-28, 19:32

Vlürch wrote:I love those, I wish there was a precomposed unicode letter for a̋, e̋ and ı̋ because the diacritic doesn't look right in just about any widely used font.

At least a̋, e̋, and ı̋ all look way better than when you try to put a tilde over something when writing in IPA on this forum. :)

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby mōdgethanc » 2016-06-28, 19:41

Vlürch wrote:Umlauts are gross, they look like nostrils. As for /ja, jo, ju/, that I agree with you on, which is why I'd prefer <ә ө ү>.
Gross. I guess if you want Finland to be like some shitty poor ex-Soviet country run by a hereditary dictator.
Seriously? Does this look great to you?

Kylmäveriset kohtuuntyöntyvät ensikertalaiset vahingoittavat pilvenpiirtäjässä pidettävien kaukoputkimiesten muistotilaisuutta, käyttäen hyväkseen vaihtolämpöisten yksisarvisten potkulautarintaisia pikkusiskoja ja heidän pikkuhousuissaan kasvavia yhdysvaltalaisia.
Without knowing what it means, yes, it does.
Then again, I'm kind of a traitor and saying this in person would make every nationalist shit themselves, but I also think Finnish sounds like shit in a bunch of ways, and if it was possible, I'd prefer that to be changed as well.
I get that you have a weird inferiority complex about your language, but as an Anglophone I get the last say on languages that look like shit.
Our aesthetic views couldn't be any different, heh. I think they're absolutely awesome, and make Ukrainian and the Turkic languages look so much better.
Ukrainian looks okay, but those look like shit. Cyrillic should not be used for anything that isn't Slavic. It always looks god-awful.
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby Levike » 2016-06-28, 19:54

Vlürch wrote:while Hungarian is overall uglier but is more consistent with that and as a result sounds/looks more like a more "authentic" language if that makes sense).

Kösz. :whistle:

Még jó itt az őszinteség is. / Meeg joo itt as öösinteseeg is. / I like your honesty. :mrgreen:

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby Vlürch » 2016-06-28, 20:05

vijayjohn wrote:
Vlürch wrote:I love those, I wish there was a precomposed unicode letter for a̋, e̋ and ı̋ because the diacritic doesn't look right in just about any widely used font.

At least a̋, e̋, and ı̋ all look way better than when you try to put a tilde over something when writing in IPA on this forum. :)

ä̃ ë̃ ï̃ ö̃ ü̃

wtf

pls no
mōdgethanc wrote:Gross. I guess if you want Finland to be like some shitty poor ex-Soviet country run by a hereditary dictator.

I wouldn't want that, but at least then I'd have something to complain about and I wouldn't be called a hypocrite if I try to point out to people in online arguments that them complaining about shit like, for example, being referred to by their biological sex by strangers who couldn't possibly know that they're transgender because they haven't even begun to transition is nothing compared to the shit people in Uganda or Afghanistan or whatever have to put up with, and that them having the right to legally complain about those things proves that they live in a country where freedom of speech exists, because if they lived in a country without freedom of speech, they would be arrested for complaining about those things. But given that Finland has the highest standards of living in just about every aspect in the world, whenever I complain about anything, even if it's about the horrible shit that happens in other countries to people who have no legal rights whatsoever, all the "progressivists" tell me to kill myself... :roll: I mean, I don't really want to complain about my own problems much because I don't have many problems, but given that some of those "progressivists" want to make it illegal for people to tell them that some people have more problems than them because it's somehow racist to generalise and say that people in third world countries have more problems, I'm not sure how I should feel about anything... I guess I'm gonna get banned now, but well...
mōdgethanc wrote:I get that you have a weird inferiority complex about your language, but as an Anglophone I get the last say on languages that look like shit.

Now is my chance to finally confess that I unironically think English looks cool. Inconsistent as shit, so it's pretty annoying always having to look up a new word to make sure how it's supposed to be pronounced, but it makes up for that by using the limits of its alphabet (counter?)creatively to its advantage.

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby mōdgethanc » 2016-06-28, 21:00

Vlürch wrote:I wouldn't want that, but at least then I'd have something to complain about and I wouldn't be called a hypocrite if I try to point out to people in online arguments that them complaining about shit like, for example, being referred to by their biological sex by strangers who couldn't possibly know that they're transgender because they haven't even begun to transition is nothing compared to the shit people in Uganda or Afghanistan or whatever have to put up with, and that them having the right to legally complain about those things proves that they live in a country where freedom of speech exists, because if they lived in a country without freedom of speech, they would be arrested for complaining about those things. But given that Finland has the highest standards of living in just about every aspect in the world, whenever I complain about anything, even if it's about the horrible shit that happens in other countries to people who have no legal rights whatsoever, all the "progressivists" tell me to kill myself... :roll: I mean, I don't really want to complain about my own problems much because I don't have many problems, but given that some of those "progressivists" want to make it illegal for people to tell them that some people have more problems than them because it's somehow racist to generalise and say that people in third world countries have more problems, I'm not sure how I should feel about anything... I guess I'm gonna get banned now, but well...
Cool story bro
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby kevin » 2016-06-29, 9:19

Vlürch wrote:Seriously? Does this look great to you?

Kylmäveriset kohtuuntyöntyvät ensikertalaiset vahingoittavat pilvenpiirtäjässä pidettävien kaukoputkimiesten muistotilaisuutta, käyttäen hyväkseen vaihtolämpöisten yksisarvisten potkulautarintaisia pikkusiskoja ja heidän pikkuhousuissaan kasvavia yhdysvaltalaisia.

Yes. I don't understand a word, but I enjoy the way Finnish looks.

Then again, I'm kind of a traitor and saying this in person would make every nationalist shit themselves, but I also think Finnish sounds like shit in a bunch of ways, and if it was possible, I'd prefer that to be changed as well.

Do you happen to have Dutch origins, by any chance? :P

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-29, 13:07

kevin wrote:
Then again, I'm kind of a traitor and saying this in person would make every nationalist shit themselves, but I also think Finnish sounds like shit in a bunch of ways, and if it was possible, I'd prefer that to be changed as well.

Do you happen to have Dutch origins, by any chance? :P

Or South Asian origins :P

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby hayoshan » 2016-06-29, 16:24

vijayjohn wrote:Aw, nice artwork, hayoshan. Thanks for sharing! :)

Thanks for appreciating!
mōdgethanc wrote:Turkic languages don't look great in any script, but at least Latin script makes sense for them. Arabic script looks the best for them, but makes no fucking sense at the linguistic level. Cyrillic is practical, but ugly as shit. Therefore, Latin is best.

Why does Arabic make no sense?
Vlürch wrote:Kylmäveriset kohtuuntyöntyvät ensikertalaiset vahingoittavat pilvenpiirtäjässä pidettävien kaukoputkimiesten muistotilaisuutta, käyttäen hyväkseen vaihtolämpöisten yksisarvisten potkulautarintaisia pikkusiskoja ja heidän pikkuhousuissaan kasvavia yhdysvaltalaisia.

Can you write Finnish with the Arabic alphabet?
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-29, 17:20

hayoshan wrote:
mōdgethanc wrote:Turkic languages don't look great in any script, but at least Latin script makes sense for them. Arabic script looks the best for them, but makes no fucking sense at the linguistic level. Cyrillic is practical, but ugly as shit. Therefore, Latin is best.

Why does Arabic make no sense?

Because Turkic languages tend to have vowel harmony and a lot more vowels than Arabic has and vowels are usually not marked in Arabic-based scripts

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby hayoshan » 2016-06-29, 18:00

vijayjohn wrote:
hayoshan wrote:
mōdgethanc wrote:Turkic languages don't look great in any script, but at least Latin script makes sense for them. Arabic script looks the best for them, but makes no fucking sense at the linguistic level. Cyrillic is practical, but ugly as shit. Therefore, Latin is best.

Why does Arabic make no sense?

Because Turkic languages tend to have vowel harmony and a lot more vowels than Arabic has and vowels are usually not marked in Arabic-based scripts

You are right but when writing with the Uyghur Arabic alphabet, the vowels are used. This is also how the case is in Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek, but I don't know of other languages. Really, in the north the Uyghur would not need to write vowels, they don't even use vowels in speech...
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-06-29, 20:05

hayoshan wrote:Really, in the north the Uyghur would not need to write vowels, they don't even use vowels in speech...


... what?

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-29, 20:07

IpseDixit wrote:
hayoshan wrote:Really, in the north the Uyghur would not need to write vowels, they don't even use vowels in speech...


... what?

Well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language#Dialects:
Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south.

IpseDixit

Re: Ugliest language

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-06-29, 20:12

vijayjohn wrote:Well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language#Dialects:
Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south.


But vowel reduction is different from not using vowels, isn't it?

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby beispiel » 2016-06-29, 20:15

IpseDixit wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language#Dialects:
Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south.


But vowel reduction is different from not using vowels, isn't it?


It is. Vowel reduction is simply pronouncing some of the vowels less clearly.

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-06-29, 20:15

IpseDixit wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Well, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_language#Dialects:
Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south.


But vowel reduction is different from not using vowels, isn't it?

Yes, but I'm guessing that's all hayoshan really meant anyway. :)

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Re: Ugliest language

Postby mōdgethanc » 2016-06-30, 5:05

Yeah, you can make up a bunch of unwieldy and ugly vowel letters, or just use the Latin alphabet which already has them. I don't think the Turkish alphabet is pretty, but it works, dammit.
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Re: Ugliest language

Postby OldBoring » 2016-06-30, 5:53

I have the impression that all the languages that use the Perso-Arabic script do so because of Islam. Inshallah! Allahu Akhbar!

While not all languages predominantly Muslim people use the Perso-Arabic script, like Turkish, Malay, Indonesian, Bangladeshi Bengali, etc. (But some used to be written with Arabic script)


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