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by toast0 34 days ago
Sharing a writing system helps with communication across cultures, even when there isn't a shared language.

> One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays.

If almost all literate people know the latin script, there's a benefit to writing your language in it. Of course, the switching cost is high.

2 comments

Latin script creates lot of confusion in mixed environments. For example, even native speakers of English language, major language of the world, have no clue how to read aloud random texts written using Latin alphabet.
Certainly, I don't expect the average English only speaker to be able to properly pronounce Gaelic, Polish, or Vietnamese words, or frankly even obscure English words by sight.

The results are likely much better than random texts using cyrillic, greek, arabic, hangul, etc.

Otoh, If they're typists, I expect they can likely type them into a search, probably sans diacritics, but that's likely good enough for searching or looking through a translation dictionary.

Greek and Cyrillic may share enough symbols that a latin script user can make due with an onscreen keyboard or a dictionary with great effort. But a completely different script would need even more effort.

Language in the scope of a cultural phenomenon is something way beyond just cost or efficiency in communication

thats way wi dont rayt English veri efishent ither