Would we be better off with a Universal Alphabet?

Question

In some Central Asian countries, there is a push to switch from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet to a Western Roman alphabet. They hope that this will facilitate trade and language learning between their region and the West.

The A smiliar precident is Turkey, which adopted a Roman alphabet in the 1920's (and did away with their Arabic script). Today, Turkey has excellent relations with the West, which can at least partially be attributed to langauge (alphabet) similarity.

The resistance comes mostly from nationalists, who insist that adopting a new alphabet will cause their cultural heritage to be lost (the same argument was made in Turkey in the 1920's).

What do you think? Should the world adopt a Universal Alphabet (I don't mean the IPA). Why or why not? Which alphabet should be chosen? Why?

P.S. - Just for clarification, I am not asking about a Universal Language, just a Universal Alphabet. Each country would keep their language, just use a different set of ABC's.

Answer 1

What I think is that while I understand that there may be a legitimate reason for adopting such to facilitate more efficient trade for countries that mayotherwise be out of the modern global loop I think that this trend towards monoculture is very scary and seriously needs to be kept in check.
So many languages, distinct cultural traditions and identities are being lost as such an extreme speed that no one can possibly keep track of all that we're losing. It is happening so quickly and we will never be able to get back all we have lost, some of which has taken hundreds if not thousands of years to evolve. As a species and planet, a great deal of diversity and human expression that is far more precious than joining this current unsustainable and yet pervasively seductive trade. What does a global culture look like right now? McDonadls & Walmart, souless television and whitebread religion, or rather the myth of endless consumption.
I would be very wary about promoting western influence as superior by encouraging the surrender of something as potentially core to cultural identity as alphabet, the very bones of a peoples written communication, and that is why

Answer 2

ANY "common" language could final approximately a million day earlier than dialect variations began to come up. Given a bit extra time and all the ones dialect variations could end up distinctive languages. That's simply the way in which matters paintings with language. There WAS a common language as soon as approximately one hundred-one hundred fifty thousand years in the past in Africa within the first group of genetically modern-day individuals. It lasted till part the group moved around the river. And if there have been one common language, I'd be out of a task :(

Answer 3

it should be voluntary and used for business or communicating internationally, but it is cultural imperialism to impose this on others and have them lose their language,part of their heritage and identity to satisfy someone else's need for logic and order or to comply withtheir beliefs that this language is superior ,when it in fact maybe inferior to some.there are some words that are just not translatable into other languages, and many languages of the world have been lost, this is sad in my opinion, this is not one homogenous world of generic people and we should be entitled the basic dignity to practice our diversity and the culture we were raised in should we choose to.

Answer 4

The universal language should be English, for example all major programmers speak English, there is much more variety in words to use

Answer 5

In that universal alphabet... would we have the letters å, æ, ø, á, é, í, ó, ó, ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ñ, ç, č, ć, đ, š, ž, ą, ę, ł, ń, ś, ź, ż, ý, ğ, ş, ď, ň, ř, ť, ů, ă, â, î, ţ, į, ų, ū, õ, ß, ŭ, ĝ, ŝ, ĵ, ĉ, etc.? Or you just want all of us to drop those letters and stick to only the letters used in English language?