# Roman characters



## sdgraham

Given the nature of this web site and the forum main page, I don't think it's invasive or insensitive to require forum members to include a Roman-character version of their name in parentheses if the original is in Klingon or something if they wish to post in a forum populated by non-speakers of the original language.

< ... >


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## berndf

Could you give a reason for that suggestion? I couldn't really think of one.


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## sdgraham

berndf said:


> Could you give a reason for that suggestion? I couldn't really think of one.


Certainly, Bernd

1. When replying to a poster, many of us like to address that person by name, even if it's only a pseudonym.

2. When referring to another person's post, we also like to refer to the person in the same manner.

Cutting and pasting something totally incomprehensible, just doesn't seem to fit the spirit, in my opinion.

Note that I only suggest this for forums totally involved with Roman characters, e.g. the English-Only or Spanish-only forums.


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## berndf

If it is a foreign name from a totally different culture, transliteration doesn't make it much better. Whether I copy/paste "შევარდნაძე" (a Georgian name)) or "Angwusnasomtaqa" (a Hopi name written with Latin letters) doesn't really matter to me.


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## Sowka

Hello 

I love and admire the different scripts that humans have developed, and in my opinion the use of these different scripts in the formatting of WordReference usernames contributes to reflecting the spirit of our site.

Of course, I cannot _read_ most of the scripts. And therefore, I'm always grateful if a forero who - for instance - has a Chinese, Korean, or Arabic name gives a transcription of that name in his or her signature or profile. When I write to people, I imagine talking to them, and, like you, I normally address people by their names. So it's nice if that forero helps me imagine how I would pronounce his or her name, if only approximately. Then I'd of course use their actual username in writing and imagine the transcribed name while mentally "talking" to them.

But I don't expect it. It's simply nice to get such help.


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## miguel89

Hello,

You can always use Google Translate, choosing "detect language" in the first combo box. For example, for the Georgian name berndf wrote in #4, it offers _Shevardnadze_ as a translation, which is right. The translation could be way off at times, but then the user we're addressing will have to understand that we did the best we could.

Those who write in languages with gender face the same hurdle when the person we're addressing didn't specify their sex in the profile.


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## JeanDeSponde

sdgraham said:


> ... if the original is in Klingon or something


Are you only talking about _invented languages_ [and / or scripts], or are you referring to foreign scripts (Chinese, Hebrew etc.) as "Klingon-like...?


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## sdgraham

All non-Roman glyphs. (I didn't want to pick on any in particular)


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## JeanDeSponde

Klingons are (supposedly) non-human and aggressive — and I fail to see other cultures and writing habits as non-human or agressive...
As I fail to see why copy-pasting an unknown (to me) name would be less "in the spirit" than copy-pasting some inexact (or useless) transcription of it.
Plus, for symmetry sake this transcription should occur for every "klingon" forum one wishes to participate to.
Would you try and render _sdgraham_ in Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic should you want to post there? And how long would be your name then?
Let's keep things simple: we have a (chosen) name, let's stick to it for simplicity sake...


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## bearded

Hello

I noticed that recently some members have adopted usernames written in Chinese ideograms only, or even in cuneiform script only.
Now in the Western world most people cannot read Chinese, and - the whole world over - very few people can decipher cuneiform scripts...
If you wish to quote those users or any of their posts, you have to copy-and-paste their names each time - and a sentence like ''did you see what XXX has written?'' is now impossible to utter, since you cannot pronounce their names.

Shouldn't there be a forum rule forbidding usernames to be written is such exotic, illegible scripts?

Thank you in advance.


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## Platytude

It is "exotic" and illegible for us, not for the 1.3 billion people who speak the language. I assume respecting other languages and their writing systems is the least a multi-language forum can do. 

Writing posts in this forum requires care and patience. The time needed for copying and pasting their names should naturally be a fraction of the time we write the post. 



bearded said:


> 'did you see what XXX has written?


Is the ability to pronounce a name important in a written communication? We are already using a lot of unutterable things in this forum 😁, aren't we ?


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## bearded

Platytude said:


> not for the 1.3 billion people who speak the language.


Please consider that they mostly write their posts in English (except in the Chinese forum).
And what about the cuneiform script? Sure we have to respect other languages and their writing systems. But how many among us are Sumerian or Acadian speakers?

𐎋𐎊𐎅𐎐 𐎃𐎗𐎎​New Member​urdu


I'll formulate my question differently:  shouldn't people who have chosen English as their ''interface language'' have also a username readable for English speakers?


( Another Urdu example: the first line is the username in Aramaic script... ):
ܒܠܐܠ ܐܢܨܐܪܝ​New Member​Urdu


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## Awwal12

Such names are indeed inconvenient for most forum members, but I'm afraid little can be done about it. Let's just say restricting the scripts in nicknames to Latin (even if you add a couple of exceptions) would be rude (after all, _there's no objective necessity_), and generally not in line with Wordreference being a language forum either.


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## bearded

Awwal12 said:


> but I'm afraid little can be done about it


There could be at least a suggestion in the rules (if not an obligation) to add a transliteration in Latin script...


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## velisarius

They bother me about as much as usernames that consist largely of random numbers and letters (that is, hardly at all). I have a lousy memory, so if I can't get a hang of the username, I focus on remembering the avatar. Yours, bearded, is very helpful to me .

If the name is too taxing for me to type out, I just refer to "the OP" or to a specific post of theirs, mentioning no names.

I don't see any reason to treat other scripts as less worthy than the Latin one we happen to use in most European languages.


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## Lyrica_Soundbite

Some users have usernames like "lyricasoundbitewashere" and it's hard for me to read and make sense of that, so it takes me some time to write it down correctly. I end up copying and pasting or referring to "the OP" or "comment #2".


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## elroy

JeanDeSponde said:


> Would you try and render _sdgraham_ in Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic should you want to post there?


There is a crucial difference: we can safely assume that 99.9% of users, if not 100%, can read the Latin script.

I agree that it’s inconvenient when you can’t read the script but I don’t think it would be okay to _require_ that usernames be in Latin script.


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## Paulfromitaly

elroy said:


> I don’t think it would be okay to _require_ that usernames be in Latin script.


I agree.
It'd be somewhat arbitrary to prevent people from writing their username in their own native language, even more so on a language forum.
It's a rather different matter, however, when people choose icons (🔶➰💦💢 for example) or characters once used in dead languages that barely anyone can read or understand (𒆜𒊮𒌷  or  𐎗𐎒 𐎔𐎓𐎂𐎇𐎛).  Those are impossible to read, very hard to remember and force people to copy & paste them if they need to write them down (not a big deal if you have a mouse but a huge pain in the behind if you have to do it on your mobile phone, tablet  or laptop with a touchpad). That's a pointless and annoying waste of time.


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## Myridon

If there are several users using, say, Klingon script, their names to me will be 3 squiggles, 4 squiggles, 4 squiggles with the loop thing, four squiggles with the square thing in the middle, ....  It's not going to be easy to track which one is reading which book.


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## elroy

Paulfromitaly said:


> It'd be somewhat arbitrary to prevent people from writing their username in their own native language, even more so on a language forum.
> It's a rather different matter, however, when people choose icons (🔶➰💦💢 for example) or characters once used in dead languages that barely anyone can read or understand (𒆜𒊮𒌷 or 𐎗𐎒 𐎔𐎓𐎂𐎇𐎛).


To me, unless I can read the non-Latin script in the former case, it doesn't make a difference.  If I can't read it, I can't read it.  We have a regular contributor to the German forum whose user name is in Greek script, which is pretty close to the Latin script, as scripts go.  But I can't read it.  So when I need to refer to him or address him directly, I just copy/paste his user name, just like I would with 🔶➰💦💢 or 𒆜𒊮𒌷.


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## Delvo

What is so dire about copying & pasting?


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## alfaalfa

Ciao,


Sowka said:


> When I write to people, I imagine talking to them, and, like you, I normally address people by their names. So it's nice if that forero helps me imagine how I would pronounce his or her name, if only approximately. Then I'd of course use their actual username in writing and imagine the transcribed name while mentally "talking" to them.


This is the only (mental) issue, in my opinion.


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## JeanDeSponde

elroy said:


> JeanDeSponde said:
> 
> 
> 
> Would you try and render _sdgraham_ in Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Arabic should you want to post there?
> 
> 
> 
> There is a crucial difference: we can safely assume that 99.9% of users, if not 100%, can read the Latin script.
> 
> I agree that it’s inconvenient when you can’t read the script but I don’t think it would be okay to _require_ that usernames be in Latin script.
Click to expand...

If sdgraham was learning Korean, and then registered on a Korean forum to improve their skills, I can imagine Korean foreros complaining that "sdgraham" (roman print) is Klingonese - or that sdgraham's rendition in Korean script means nothing.
"99.9% of users, if not 100%, can read the Latin script" - so what ?...  Let's go back to Latin.
Signed : Johannes Spondii


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## symposium

Even if a name was written with Latin letters, there's no way of knowing for sure how it is pronounced, unless you're familiar with the language... If you speak English, but the name is French, or Italian, or German, or Rumanian, are you sure you knew how to pronounce it..?


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## elroy

JeanDeSponde said:


> If sdgraham was learning Korean, and then registered on a Korean forum to improve their skills, I can imagine Korean foreros complaining that "sdgraham" (roman print) is Klingonese - or that sdgraham's rendition in Korean script means nothing.
> "99.9% of users, if not 100%, can read the Latin script" - so what ?...  Let's go back to Latin.
> Signed : Johannes Spondii


Sorry, I don’t know what your point is.



symposium said:


> Even if a name was written with Latin letters, there's no way of knowing for sure how it is pronounced, unless you're familiar with the language... If you speak English, but the name is French, or Italian, or German, or Rumanian, are you sure you knew how to pronounce it..?


True, but at least you know the characters, so you can at least guess at the pronunciation.  I don’t think the issue here is whether our pronunciation is the one the member intended, but whether we can even come up with _any_ pronunciation at all based on the written form.


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## Roxxxannne

𒆜𒊮𒌷, if Sumerian, might be iššaré .


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## dojibear

JeanDeSponde said:


> copy-pasting an unknown (to me) name


Can we copy-paste names? I'll test it...where are these non-Roman names? Which forum has them? Chinese? Japanese? Arabic? Korean? All the posters there use English characters for their forum tags.

Okay, I finally found one in the "Semitic Languages" forum. And yes, I could copy-paste the name: 𐎀𐎗𐎁𐎚 𐎎𐎓𐎐3



Paulfromitaly said:


> It'd be somewhat arbitrary to prevent people from writing their username in their own native language


The example above looks like Akkadian, a script used thousands of years ago. If so, it is not someone's "native language". It is like writing your name in Klingon. Okay, I found someone in the Hebrew forum with a Hebrew username. But it seems uncommon. Most people choose forum tags in English, in the WR forums.



sdgraham said:


> if they wish to post in a forum populated by non-speakers of the original language.


This seems reasonable to me. The only problem is that each person only gets one forum name. They might have joined WR (and chosen a forum name) in one forum, and later decided to post in another forum.



sdgraham said:


> 1. When replying to a poster, many of us like to address that person by name, even if it's only a pseudonym.
> 
> 2. When referring to another person's post, we also like to refer to the person in the same manner.
> 
> Cutting and pasting something totally incomprehensible, just doesn't seem to fit the spirit, in my opinion.


I think you're about 40 years too late. I already have trouble with "he"/"she"/"they", and "age 13/58", and "Miss, Mrs. Ms., Mr., Sir, Ma'am" and "first name/last name". I rarely know how to refer to another poster properly (with no chance of offending), even if their forum tag is in English. 

And it has gotten worse in the last decade. Now some people say "my personal pronouns are ZHE and ZER and my gender is XYZZY." No politics, just not wanting to offend anyone.

Copy-paste is looking pretty good these days...


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## Paulfromitaly

dojibear said:


> The example above looks like Akkadian, a script used thousands of years ago. If so, it is not someone's "native language". It is like writing your name in Klingon.


That was exactly my point when I said


> It's a rather different matter, however, when people choose icons (🔶➰💦💢 for example) or characters once used in dead languages that barely anyone can read or understand (𒆜𒊮𒌷  or  𐎗𐎒 𐎔𐎓𐎂𐎇𐎛).





dojibear said:


> Copy-paste is looking pretty good these days


and bothersome when you have to do it 50 times a day on your mobile phone screen.


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## giginho

Hi Everyone,

I think that everyone can use his/her/its preferred script but would be very helpful if a Latin transcription would be added.

After all, this is a language forum where we try to help each other, so what's wrong in helping a friend to understand/read your name?


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## dojibear

giginho said:


> what's wrong in helping a friend


If you do it because you want to, that's great. What is wrong is *requiring *that someone else do this. Not so great.

Besides, these are not names. These are anonymous forum tags. Full disclosure: my birth certificate name is not "dojibear". It's actually Reginald Songbird Teddybear III. But that's such a common name that I chose a pseudonym. 

I just scrolled down the Chinese form and saw about 50 tagnames using English letters, and none using Chinese characters. Of course the names might not be normal names, but a guy called "dojibear" can't really complain about "annoyingpotato".

I am suggesting that this issue (non-Roman-letter tagnames) is pretty rare.


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