[dustark]

It doesn't seem like you know what you're talking about. Have you ever been to Bulgaria, or are you just fantasizing? People in Bulgaria are already familiar with the 'computer-based Latin alphabet' and speak English decently well (at least anyone under 40). Also, I'm not sure what the population issue has to do with what alphabet they use. People will magically switch to the Latin alphabet because... there are fewer of them? By that same logic, should we expect Japan and South Korea to start using Latin characters too ?

[keiferski]

Let me state this again, because people really seem to have a difficult time understanding my comment:

I said it was plausible that Bulgaria could switch to the Latin alphabet in a long time. The word plausible implies that it could happen, but is not guaranteed, or even likely. It is conceivable, it is a possible future. It doesn’t mean I think it will absolutely happen.

The reasons I think this switch is plausible are:

- the growing adoption of Western and EU Latin-based culture amongst the youth. The government and institutional power structures in Bulgaria are still largely populated by people who are over 35 years old. In 50 years, this won’t be the case, and the people filling the jobs will have been influenced by Latin-alphabet culture for decades.

- The population decline of the country is going to present serious issues. Some of the solutions to it will probably be closer integration to the EU, which almost entirely uses the Latin alphabet. Also factor in the Bulgarian diaspora which is growing up in Latin-language places elsewhere in the EU.

- The current geopolitical situation, wherein future Bulgarians may (again, plausibly) want to distance themselves from the Russian-dominated Orthodoxy world, of which the Cyrillic alphabet is still a fairly strong connection. Also consider that Orthodoxy itself is in decline, and so having this connection might not be that important to the Bulgarians of 2074. I foresee a similar thing amongst the youth in Poland and Catholicism.

[dustark]

No one is having difficulty understanding your comment. It's just very clear to someone who lives in Bulgaria that you don't have first-hand knowledge of what you're talking about, and your speculations about what might happen 50 years from now are not grounded in reality. No one in Bulgaria uses the Latin alphabet to write in Bulgarian, and there's no indication that this will change. As the French say, 'avec des 'si' on mettrait Paris en bouteille'.

[keiferski]

I’d be glad to hear your responses to my three points and why I am so far off.

[farmdve]

He did and so did I, you are just selectively ignoring them and gaslighting us.

[bluetomcat]

As someone who is familiar with the political and social atmosphere in the country, I'll give it a try.

The growing adoption of "Latin-based culture" is not interfering with the usage of Bulgarian. Bilinguality is the norm for the newer generations. More than a decade ago in the pre-Unicode world, writing emails and communication in Bulgarian with Latin letters was acceptable because of encoding issues. Nowadays, it is no longer the norm, is frowned upon and is even ridiculed.

There is a considerable part of the intellectual elite that is pro-Western and seeks further integration with the west. They are perfectly fine with the alphabet and switching it is not on their agenda. These are, for example, professors, philosophers and linguists from Sofia university.

[keiferski]

Thanks for an actual reply, I appreciate it. I agree it’s unlikely for a switch (and my original comment expressed nothing more than saying it was plausible) but I do wonder if younger generations will be more Latinized. The bilingual approach is an interesting one and seems quite likely to continue, I agree.

[horsh1]

50 years is a long time.

Between the existence of Austria-Hungary empire, when the Latin alphabet was very relevant for all the Balkans, and the end of WW2, when the Cyrillic became much more relevant for them is just 1945-1918=27 years.