My bugbear at the moment is that 90% of the population seems to have forgotten that "led" is the past tense of the verb "to lead", and has defected to heavy metal with "lead".
I'm with you. I wrote a book on the Mongols for WW, ages and ages ago, and so this spelling "problem" has a place close to my heart.
The problem, as I'm sure you know, stems from the fact that there are no extant examples of the Mongols' written language (I forget whether they even had one -- I think they did not). Everything writable they had, like The Secret History of the Mongols, was transliterated either into Turkic or Chinese for posterity.
I think you may be confusing "written language" with "script". Mongolian written in Chinese script is still written Mongolian, not written Chinese. Writing has only been invented a few times (perhaps as few as two) in human history, so almost all existing scripts are modifications of older ones. Classical Mongolian was most often written in a form of the Old Uyghur alphabet (itself a modification of the Sogdian adaptation of Aramaic script); some forms of modern Mongolian still are.
Strictly speaking, "transliteration" refers to the substitution of one letter for another and can only occur between two alphabets. The Secret history of the Mongols was transcribed into Chinese script, but from a written and not an oral version. Since it's a transcription, not a translation, it still counts as "written Mongolian".
Hardly a Republican-only failing; my community college History teacher was in a wheelchair due to "those damn Democrats" failing to wage the Vietnam War in a coherent fashion, and I've heard a number of stories about how awful that one was...
So I'd say that one can justify being a Republican in the same way one justifies being any number of other things: the fruitbats will always be with us, they're usually the fringe of what they claim to totally represent, and frequently need to be pounded with very large sticks.
I will leave the exact definition of fruitbattiness to the individual in question, to allow maximum polite plausible deniability. O;>
In the meantime, I applaud the pointing and mocking of the inability to spell. Poor spellers will always be among us as well (I love my spell-checker!), but at least a certain insistence on education may stave off the worst of the bread-and-circuses mentality.
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Also, will we ever be graced again by OotB?
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Grrr.
Cambias
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(not much insight here, just me giggling)
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The problem, as I'm sure you know, stems from the fact that there are no extant examples of the Mongols' written language (I forget whether they even had one -- I think they did not). Everything writable they had, like The Secret History of the Mongols, was transliterated either into Turkic or Chinese for posterity.
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Strictly speaking, "transliteration" refers to the substitution of one letter for another and can only occur between two alphabets. The Secret history of the Mongols was transcribed into Chinese script, but from a written and not an oral version. Since it's a transcription, not a translation, it still counts as "written Mongolian".
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So I'd say that one can justify being a Republican in the same way one justifies being any number of other things: the fruitbats will always be with us, they're usually the fringe of what they claim to totally represent, and frequently need to be pounded with very large sticks.
I will leave the exact definition of fruitbattiness to the individual in question, to allow maximum polite plausible deniability. O;>
In the meantime, I applaud the pointing and mocking of the inability to spell. Poor spellers will always be among us as well (I love my spell-checker!), but at least a certain insistence on education may stave off the worst of the bread-and-circuses mentality.
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