How compatible is Russian with Devanagari alphabet?

>>75148282
watt?

>>75148282
Devanagari is not an alphabet but an abugida

>>75149386
This

>>75149386

And how compatible is it?

>>75149644
My answer will be very long so I will divide it

It's a different system, among phonetical writing systems one can distinguish:

1. ABJADS - these systems mostly denote only consonants, the Phoenician writing belonged here, also the Hebrew and the Arabic writing, these writings fit very well Semitic languages that don't have Indo-European-like inflections, but they have alternations, you basically create new meanings by putting various vowels between consonants that constitute roots:
eg. Arabic:
lesson= DaRS
I learn=aDRuS

you see that the consonants D-R-S constitute a root related to the idea of learning

>>75150790
2. ALPHABETICAL writings

When our Indo-European ancestors met those Semitic writing systems (in this case the Greeks met Phoenicians), they realised that our languages have different structure, alternations are rare, but we have our kind of inflection when we add various prefixes and suffixes to more or less stable roots built from both consonants and vowels
in Polish
cat=KOT
of cat=KOTa
for cat=KOTu
etc etc

So the Greeks started write down both consonants and vowels

File: Nowy obraz mapy bitowej.jpg (24KB, 270x512px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 270x512px

>>75151007
3. ABUGIDAS

the ancient Hindu used Indo-European languages (influenced by local Dravidan languages, but this is another story I won't start here), so the ancient Hindu civilization had the same problem - they had to clearly denote both consonants and vowels, but they started using a differen system than the ancient Greeks or Romans. Imagine that you always add to each consonant the vowel "a", imagine that it's implyied by default, so when you want to write "baba" you simply need to write "BB", then if you want to add other vowel to that consonant "b", you simply put some sign before, under, over or after "b", see my to tier picture.

>>75151541
One can achieve the same effect just rotating that letter "B", imagine that norma "B" = "ba", a reversed "B" = "be" etc etc. This is the way some Eskimo writings based on Indian abjads were created by European/Canadian linguists

Anyway - the Cirillic alpahbet puts all consonants and vowels in a "linear" way, just like our Latin alphabets, while abugidas either put some small signn denoting vowels before, after, under or over a consonant (the vowel "a" in default in Devanagari, so you don't need to put it), or you can simply rotate that consonant like in other systems similar top devanagari. Generally speaking abugidas are very common in those areas that were influenced by the Hindu civilization, they also wotk very well with Dravidan languages that are agglunative, just like Hungarian or Finnish (in those languages you create new meaning by adding various prefixes or sufixes, like in Indo-European languages, BUT usually those affixeh have only one grammatical function - we Slavs add affixes that combine many functions, like Russian:
by cars= mashinami, mashina is " a car" and the ending "mi" informs you not only about the plural number, but also about the case, the gender etc., while in agglutinative languages each of those functions would be (theoretically) singnalised by one syllable, something like:
mashina+PLU+CAS+GEN

>>75152050
There are also other phonetical systems like Japanese syllabaries (Ka, Ke, Ku, Ki,- yeach syllable has an individual sign, you don't add nothing nor rotate, but remember that this is only a theoretical generalisation)

There are also syllabographical systems like Korean Hangul, but it would require another long story.

>>75148282
Actually very compatible since both Slavic and Indic languages have many consonant clusters.

>>75152155
Honestly thanks for your input. I found it really interesting

>>75153698
Unfortunately there were too many typos and ungrammatical sentences. There are also many other interesting aspects, like for example - Amharic is a Semitic language, but its writing system is not an abjad, like in Phoenician/Hebrew/Arabic, but an abugida, that is structurally similar to those Indian writing systems (of course they are not related genetically, symply Ethopians had some similar idea).

Another aspect - many peple think that Chinese characters are simply an ideographic writing system, but actually circa 70% of Chinese characters have some (sometimes very vague) "hints" how to read them, like the left part of a charecter indicated the meaning, while the right part vaguely indicates the pronunciation (sometimes it may be reversed or sometimes the meaning may be indicated by the upper side etc.).

>>75150790
>>75151007
>>75151541
>>75152050
>>75152155

thanks a lot for detailed posts, man

I guess what complicates this system is syllables that have more than one consonant next to each other.

For example the english word Slash (although sh is one phoneme)

>>75155651
>I guess what complicates this system is syllables that have more than one consonant next to each other.
Well, here is a catch - sometimes in Devanagari when two consonants stand side by side they merge creating a ligature, something like the Latin "et" became "&", but - if I remember correctly - Devanagari has about 1200 ligatures. Eg. स (sa) merged with म (ma) may give not सम (sama), but स्म (sma). Still, it's not that hard, because you can easily spot those components constituting this ligature.

>>75156488
You seem to have a pretty good understanding of Devanagari script. Where'd you learn it from?

>>75154359
Chinese is interesting, because while there is no standard pronunciation there are still roots and radicals, in the same way that ligatures fuse letter there are combination Hanzi.

>>75156598
I bought several textbooks plus one Roseta Stone-like program, unfortunately I don't have too much time to learn it sistematicaly. Also the phonetics is quite hard for me, I mean those palatal consonants.
>>75156875
Yea, unfortunately I only know about 1500 characters (simplified), so I'm barely able to read some articles in newspapers

Is this system more efficient as in, compresses text significantly so that a book in this script uses less pages?

>>75148282
Probably quite compatible since Indo-Iranian and Slavonic languages are very similar phonetically as well as lexically and gramatically

>ashocyaan anvashocastvam pragyaavaadaamksha bhaashase
>gataasuun agataasuumksha naanushocanti panditaah
>vrshniinaam vaasudevo'smi paandavaanaam dhancayah
>muniinaamapyaham vyaasah kaviinaamushanaa kavih

what did he mean by this?

>>75158834
chinese

>>75158834
Technically speaking it should be more compressed since some vowels are above or under the verse, but it's only my guess.