Ukraïnśka Latynka | Hacker News Reader

Ukraïnśka Latynka

github.com

34 pointsapp4soft31 comments

I understand why this is being done. I selfishly hope it doesn’t take off; I find Cyrillic much easier to read than any Latin transliterations, likely simply due to my brain expending extra resources to recall the Slavic languages’ much more consistent phonetic pronunciation rules instead of the various English alternative pronunciations for said string of Latin characters.

Some southern and all western Slavic languages use (extended) Latin characters. Even without Cyrillic, they do not need Engliš alternatives. I speak Czech and Slovak - Cyrillic is like Chinese for me.

I know - I also speak Czech/Slovak. They were harder for me to learn than Russian specifically due to the extra mental load of having to manage another set of pronunciations for Latin letters. This is solely due to English being my first language.

I see. Probably I have problem with English pronunciation for same reason (even if we ignore the vowel shift).

edit: but now when I'm thinking about it bit more how is it with non-Slavic letters like ø, ü, å? As I have mentioned the vowel shift maybe even 'g', 'r', 'j'?

And on the other hand Slovak have ľ and ô - which is ignored in my region and we just pronounce it as 'l' and 'o'.

Same for me - it takes a time to decipher Cyrillic script for someone who uses Latin alphabet, while I'm able to read and understand Czech, Slovak and to some degree read south Slavic group languages.

I've witness a scene last March where social services clerk tried to help Ukrainian mother get some social benefit - they were able to understand each other in speech but not in the written words. At the end of conversation she suggested that it would be better if woman would translate her documents into Polish by a sworn translator. The clerk was in 50s and she probably still could remember something from spoken Russian - which was at some point a language taught in Polish schools during PPR times.

As for the Latynka - it's of course up to Ukrainians but personally I believe that would be a good political move to separate themselves from Russia even more. Kazakhstan did change writing system few years ago [1] and I'm pretty sure that one of the former SSR of Soviet Union also reverted to Latin script while being previously forced to use Cyrillic script

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_language#Writing_system

This will never happen, but I wish we could go the other direction and write Polish and Czech/Slovak in Cyrillic. They would be so much easier to read! SZCZ is only one letter!

Щ!

Maybe for Polish, which sounds bit like east Slavic, but I am not sure if Czech/Slovak even use combination šč that much.

Polish works fine with the latin alphabet. It has some spelling oddities (like ż and rz sounding the same, but with different spelling due to grammar and historical reasons), but such quirks could be fixed within latin alphabet — if there was a will to change anything at all.

Poland has been under Russian occupation for a big chunk of its history, so politically Cyrillic has no chances.

Hi, the author of the tool here.

The tool was created five years ago, when there were no Ukrainian national standard to represent Ukrainian language unambiguously in Latin letters (known as romanization, and applies to all languages).

Most commonly you need romanization of person and place names, and the currently in use standard for this is not faithful to Cyrillic source. In my view, we can't have proper name romanization without romanization of the language as a whole, and wide adoption of that romanization. The simplest criteria to choose such a system is the ease of reading pages of transliterated texts.

Thus I made a tool where you can compare historical and modern attempts at such romanization systems, or create your own and join the discussion.

Since then, there is now new Ukrainian national standard ДСТУ 9112:2021, which adequately represents Ukrainian Cyrillic (to new learners: here j is used for palatalized consonants: Zelensjkyj u Ljvovi). The search is over, and this standard will be gradually adopted in the coming years. Expect another campaign KyïvNotKyivNotKiev (Kyïv = Kyjiv).

This tool remains useful in many ways. I personally have it enabled on many sites.

Would Ukrainian be better off dropping Cyrillic for Latin? If we had started with Latin, then sure, Ukraine historically is tightly connected with the rest of the Europe, and it would have been easier having only Latin. But we have Cyrillic history, and to counter that there is no enough reasons to switch.

As others mentioned, the tool does not handle Russian Cyrillic. Well true, because it was created exclusively for the Ukrainian Cyrillic, not any Cyrillic.

Thank you for your patience and support.

https://paiv.github.io/latynka/

In Ukrainian language words spell exactly how they are pronounced (unlike Russian, btw). It's very convenient. Every Ukrainian letter always corresponds to the same respective sound. You know exactly how to correctly pronounce any word, even if you see it for the first time.

I'm not sure if any of the proposed latinization variants would retain this feature.

> I'm not sure if any of the proposed latinization variants would retain this feature.

Maybe Slovene alphabet? (Slovak went with Russophilic y/i in 19. century).

Is this an official variant, if it exists at all? I assume one can come up with different ways of transforming Cyrillic alphabet into Latin one.

In latest version it is possible to choose official ("ДСТУ 9112:2021") or any other exists variants[0] — in extension option (click on extension icon on browser toolbar):

> Switch Latinization system in the popup window.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet

[1] https://paiv.github.io/latynka/en/

There are lots of them, you can choose in the settings: https://paiv.github.io/latynka/en/

Note that rules are different for different languages, even among those using Cyrillic. E.g. letter "г" is "h" in Ukrainian, but "g" in Russian. "И" in Russian is "i", which is a letter on its own in Ukrainian, while Ukrainian "И" is transliterated to "y".

FTR, SSOU 9112:2021 (ukr. "DSTU 9112:2021", transl. "DSTU 9112:2021") is a an actual official State Standard of Ukraine for official transliteration:

> From 01.04.2022, the national standard DSTU 9112: 2021 comes into force: «Cyrillic-Latin transliteration and Latin-Cyrillic retransliteration of Ukrainian texts. Writing rules». The standard was proposed and developed by specialists of the State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine and the Technical Committee 144 “Information and Documentation”.[0]

According it there are two variants inside this standard (see comparison[1]):

1. ДСТУ 9112:2021, Система А (system A) — letters represented with "Basic Latin" and some characters with diacritical marks from "Latin-1 Supplement", "Latin Extended-A" Unicode Blocks):

1.1. Київ, Україна - Kyїv, Ukraїna

2. ДСТУ 9112:2021, Система Б (system B) — all letters represented using only "Basic Latin" Unicode Block:

2.1. Київ, Україна - Kyjiv, Ukrajina

[0] https://dntb.gov.ua/news/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%86%D1%96%D0%BE%D0%B...

[1] https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%A1%D0%A2%D0%A3_9112:...

Thanks, much appreciated.

You should also bear in mind that English isn't quite that simple either. That г is a Greek gamma around here and hence "G". (it isn't really) Now it's funny you mention И -> y etc.

German and English and Dutch are often called Germanic languages. For example kirchegaard -> has an obvious route if you squint to: "church yard". Often y -> g or d -> g. So day becomes tag. The German word for (Eng) day is tag. "Guten tag" ... gooden dag/gudden tag and other spellings is middle english for "good day".

There is a town in England called Weybury. There is a town in Germany called Wegberg. G -> Y. Almost certainly that is bollocks but it makes a nice story. The burg and bury bit is probably right - a fortified town. Wey -> Weg is probably wrong even though way and weg (that means way in German too),

This will need a proper linguist to interject.

It is standardized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet and useful for beginner learners and naming places for foreigners

Official Ukrainian should be written in Cyrillic, it's unimaginable that it would ever change like the ongoing effort in Kazakhstan https://cabar.asia/en/latin-alphabet-for-kazakhstan-turkific...

I'd be grateful if someone would explain what this really means to us Roman alphabet users.

An npm trove on Github isn't ringing any bells. A sad Google translate doesn't work either.

Please explain.

This is a converter from Ukraine's cyrillic alphabet to a latinized spellings. It would only really be useful for translating proper names I think.

The romanized text is super easy for me to understand as a Polish person, for what it's worth.

Fun fact, a lot of older people in Poland had studied Russian in school and can read Ukrainian. They don't necessary know the correct pronunciation but can easily get a gist from texts even though Polish is West Slavic language, Ukrainian has a lot of loan words from Polish.

I think it's actually a political protest. Ukrainian more-or-less shares an alphabet with Russian. A number of former Soviet countries that in the past shared an alphabet with Russian have been abandoning Cyrillic and moving to the Latin alphabet. This software makes it possible for Ukrainians to transliterate text easily to Latin. I think people might want to do that because they are just so mad at Russia.

Of course, the Cyrillic alphabet was not invented for Russia, it was invented for all the Slavic languages. The reason Czech/Slovak/Polish use the Latin alphabet is because they are Catholic countries and the Pope at the time REQUIRED Catholic countries to use the Latin alphabet. This is the reason why Czech/Slovak/Polish are so hard to read to Western Europeans - they use the Latin alphabet in a very idiosyncratic way, with all sorts of di/tri/quadgraphs and diacritic marks to represent sounds that are very simply represented in Cyrillic.

I think Ukrainian is too connected with Cyrillic to switch to Latin, especially because of the religious and cultural roots - the Ukrainian orthodox church, like other Slavic orthodox churches, uses the Cyrillic alphabet natively. The Cyrillic alphabet does not belong to Russia. It was invented before Russia even existed. So I doubt Ukrainian will move away from Cyrillic like they are trying in Kazakhstan. But this software package makes it easier to see what it would feel like to move Ukrainian to Latin.

> A number of former Soviet countries switched ..

with what total population, and what total publication history ? .. personally I support diverse languages to survive ..

Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and most recently Kazakhstan have switched their namesake languages from Cyrillic to Latin alphabets. Some of these languages have been written in Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic over the years, but there's definitely a movement away from Cyrillic after the Soviet Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_language#Writing_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmen_language#Writing_syste... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_language#Writing_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijani_language#Writing_s...

> The reason Czech/Slovak/Polish use the Latin alphabet is because they are Catholic countries

Codified Slovak was created by Lutheran priests. But yes other Latin scripts like Czech/Polish/Hungarian/German were already used there.

This issue was non existent before Feb 24 but now becomes really relevant. The Cyrillic script has weird origins (the first known chronicler in it was some Novgorod priest Upir Оfeigr; his first name sounds like "vampire"). The official story about Cyril and Methodius is an example of empire propaganda. Their Glagolitic alphabet has no relation to Cyrillic. So, no real value to keep the Cyrillic script other than imperialist sphere of influence considerations. Even the Serbs switched.

I think that a Latin variant of Ukrainian language must avoid diacritics. They are completely foreign and will annoy people which hurdles future wide adoption. I like a variant called Farbetka [1]. It is close to something I would like to see being widely used.

[1] facebook.com/notes/farbetka/фарбетка-позиційна-українська-латиниця-без-діакритики/534910516989409/

"The Cyrillic script has weird origins" Not really. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by DISCIPLES of the two Byzantine brothers[6] Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius ( byzantine scholars from Thessaliniki), who had previously created the Glagolitic script. The Cyrillic script is named IN HONOR of Saint Cyril (by the disciples who created it and translated the first important works) in the 890s (9th century) as a more suitable script for books in Old Bulgarian (later called for political correctness "Old Church Slavonic"). This was primarily done in the Preslav Literary School (in northeastern Bulgaria). The credit goes to the seven most prominent disciples of the two saints, but primarily to st Clement of Ohrid & st Naum of Preslav (aka Kliment Ohridski & Naum Preslavski).

(Christian emissaries later brought it from Bulgaria to Kiyv not long after as I recall. And as we all know, at that time Moscow did not exist... Sometime later Bulgaria fell under the Ottoman Empire for five centuries and did not stand a chance... Yet what had reached the Kievian Rus lived on... as you know... Yes, a Russian tsar threw out a bunch of letters at some point…)

(So much of Eastern Europe’s history has been… “edited” after WWII… I know.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preslav_Literary_School

>Modern scholars believe

Believe indeed. The origins are murky and it is not clear who was first in formulating the variant on which the modern Cyrillic script based. The script of Upir Оfeigr is surprisingly close to what in use today. There is an ongoing discussion to what exactly he refers as the Cyrillic original (most think that he rewrote from the Glagolitic original).

"The Cyrillic script has weird origins"

I heard the story goes that a drunk monk mixed latin and greek letters and thereby created the new alphabet.

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