It seems somewhat simpler as an english-speaker to understand, or at least guess, what words mean and what they sound like in other latin-based languages. Would it be impossible for everyone to transliterate their languages into the latin alphabet, or would it make more sense for everyone to just continue how they are writing already? Surely, a majority of the people in the world write in a latin based script of some sort, right? If not, which alphabet is more prominent and would it be feasible to switch to that?
2007-10-27 05:46:35 · 5 answers · asked by justin r 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Charles C., not the majority, but the latin alphabet is the most widely used... look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet
2007-10-27 06:23:03 · update #1
Chinese is best written in Chinese characters. The poor sods have only got about 450 different sounding words - they are all monosyllabic - (and that's including the tones!) so to write it in the Latin alphabet would lead to much confusion. Turkish used to be written in Arabic script and they saw the light. Russian and Ukrainian are best written in Cyrillic as it's more phonetic for their languages than the Latin alphabet.
You comment about Latin-based languages - most of which are written in Latin letters. History plays a major part: Serbs and Croatians speak virtually the same language; but one is written in Cyrillic and the other in Latin. Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible; but one is written in Devanagari script and the other in Arabic.
Vive la différence!
2007-10-27 05:57:01 · answer #1 · answered by JJ 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Yes, majority of language now is in Latin alphabet. The problem with transliterating everything into Latin alphabet is that people are worried about globalization taking over and cultures being lost. I guess it leads to a debate over what's more important: culture preservation or globalized communication.
2007-10-27 06:01:49 · answer #2 · answered by jboy1258 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The majority do not use the Latin alphabet. Think about it. China and India alone account for about 2 1/2 billion people.
2007-10-27 06:02:05 · answer #3 · answered by Charles C 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
i speak/read/write english/arabic/urdu/bengali and in my opinion it would be too confusing to transliterate any language in the latin alphabet. as pronouciation of different languages are not always the same. eg. in Arabic there is no sound/letter 'g' as it is pronounced in 'goat'. thats standard Arabic, but the dialect changes according to where it is spoken.eg, lebanon, egypt etc
2007-10-27 12:52:40 · answer #4 · answered by deen.queen 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
languages that they speak in asia, like russian, Chinese, Japaneses, you get the idea, aren't based on latin. rome was big, but it wasn't that big. they had influences from other places.
2007-10-27 05:58:42 · answer #5 · answered by dcarcia@sbcglobal.net 6 · 0⤊ 3⤋