Why Do So Many Languages Use The Latin Alphabet?

[@NameExplain]

Favourite letter of the alphabet?

[@RadekLazok]

My favorite letter is in latin script but no in English its ž

[@the80hdgaming]

The ampersand

[@boubayaga_]

þ and ß are bangers!

[@omatic_opulis9876]

Œ

[@FoggyD]

Ħ or ı

[@alexrobi1176]

One thing about sharing an alphabet is it makes learning to read a foreign language much easier.

[@StuTubed]

Until you have to remember that a W in English doesn't make the same sound in German, or that a Z in English doesn't make the sound you'd expect it to in Spanish, to name a few examples.

[@pifci]

@@StuTubed Still much easier than learning a new alphabet or a different type of script.

[@pifci]

@@xRafael507 I wasn't comparing the difficulty between learning a new script and the rest of the language. I was comparing the difficulty between learning new pronunciation rules of the latin script and learning a new script. So I agree that it's trivial and the differences in pronunciation within the same script are not a big deal.

[@pifci]

@@xRafael507 There are cases where having the same script can be a problem, so I am generalizing a bit and I don't think you were wrong. For example, I come from a Slavic country that uses the Latin script and one of the reasons why we mispronounce english words is the misleading spelling, like silent letters but also habits from our own language. If English used a different script, perhaps it would be harder to learn it, but it could potentially improve our pronunciation.

[@DustinLaGriza]

agreed. Travel around Europe, and even if you don't speak the language, you can often make good guesses about what a sign says. Now travel around India where most states have their own script and the sign could be directly transliterated words from English and you'd have no idea because to you it's just a bunch of squiggles.

[@kalzium8857]

I would also mention the printing press. It helped to standardize the latin alphabet.

[@quinnroberts3158]

And the fact that Latin letters are simple enough that they're very easy to teach to children, and legible in a huge variety of fonts.

[@vulpo]

And that the Latin alphabet was much more suitable to movable type than many other competing writing systems like Arabic.

[@evolancer211]

Cause the Romans came, saw, and conquered

[@willyzemlya]

Cause the Europeans came, saw and conquered

[@wnkbp4897]

​@@willyzemlyaYeah, we learnt a lot from Roman civilisation, except how to be civil... 😒

[@willyzemlya]

@@wnkbp4897 You nailed it

[@svon1]

its also helpful that the Latin Alphabet is based on the sound of letters, while most scripts use either Syllable-based-Letters or Hieroglyphs like Chines symbols where every single word has its own letter, which is highly complicated and hard to master

[@Gubbe51]

No. Because they created an advanced civilization and literature, which has laid a base of the European culture.

[@robertlandrum1971]

One thing that will keep the Latin Alphabet going into the foreseeable future is the computer keyboard ⌨️. As long as we need a keyboard interface in order to enter the Internet, the Latin Alphabet will be the most efficient alphabet to use.

[@Zethlynn]

Shame, it's kinda a terrible alphabet kinda why most languages use diacritics

[@agme8045]

@@Zethlynnwhat’s wrong with diacritics? Every language adapts the alphabet to fit their language, diacritics are just a way to do that. Usually they are used to differentiate similar pronunciations of a letter/syllable, to know whether a letter is silent or not, or they just become new letters with their own unique sound.

[@Zethlynn]

@@agme8045 I love diacritics because they make Latin script useable, I see it as a handicap to fix a flawed system. Cyrillic is much better as a script especially since the base number of vowels is 10 and you can add more different letters that aren't as common

[@sreeshpoudyal807]

​@@Zethlynn But what's the difference between having letters with diatricts versus adding completely new letters? As long as the new glyphs are visually distinct, it doesn't matter if it's a new letter or an old one with a diatrict.

[@Zethlynn]

@@sreeshpoudyal807 functionality? You're absolutely correct, I more so thinking about as a Latin writing community how much we disagree about what diacritics do, same problem with digraph and trigraphs. É in Spanish is stress, in Dutch it's just to distinguish different words (but the capital form doesn't exist in dutch) and in Hungarian the sound is completely different. This is mitigated with having a completely new character

[@PeloquinDavid]

The Cyrillic script (named after a Greek Orthodox missionary to the Slavic peoples) is over 1000 years old and was very much based on the Greek alphabet. But because of the much larger range of sounds used in Slavic languages, it had to add a whole lot of new letters (sometimes different ones in the various Slavic languages that still use the script). Something similar happened (though over a 1000 years earlier) in the West. The Latin alphabet too was based on Greek - much more than the (also Greek-derived) Etruscan script) but had FEWER sounds than Greek and so didn't really use a lot of the Greek letters. It wasn't until later (the Middle Ages or even the post-printing early Modern era) that we got to even the current set of 26 letters used in English. But the relatively few letters that were required to transcribe the sounds of Latin were also too few to transcribe the sounds of even most of its daughter Romance languages (hence all those accents and other diacritics). Reproducing the sounds of Germanic, Slavic and Celtic languages required combining multiple letters to represent dipthongs and other vowel sounds not used in Latin as well as multiletter consonant combinations (often using the otherwise underused "H" in forming "th", "sh" and "ch" sounds or all those combinations involving "Z" in Polish, say).

[@zoecass]

the latin alphabet comes from greek through etruscan, not directly from greek

[@TheStadtpark]

Why would you want every language to use their own Alphabet? XD That's TOO MANY! Too Complicated to pick up and learn! It's enough we have all these diacritics around!

[@arnulfo267]

Because European colonization bad.

[@ronfleetwood944]

I am a linguistic student and Im also Kahtnuht'ana Dena'ina, we are located up in Alaska. and the languae is part of the Na-Dene family tree and I would love to work on a Na-Dene script as I am learning Dena'ina language. I know we have pictographs up here on coastal rocks.

[@sagmilling]

Check out the Dene script used in parts of Ontario and Québec. It is similar to the Inuit script still used in Nunavut.

[@abradolflincler726]

Are those people a type of Eskimo, or are they unique peoples?

[@penguinlim]

​@@abradolflincler726generally that term as a descriptor isn't used anymore, but no. the Dena'ina are an Athabaskan group of people. only the Inuit and Yupik are part of that classification

[@CortexNewsService]

I think Cree has its own script as well.

[@abradolflincler726]

@@penguinlim What is used, Ice Injun?

[@TootlinGeoff]

Correction. It was Western Christianity that used the Latin script. Eastern Christianity used Greek or Cyrillic script.

[@sheaux]

I thought you would've talked about how Turkish and Vietnamese chose to use the Latin alphabet.

[@narutouusi-maki8483]

Up until 2013 the letters Q, W and X were illegal in Turkey

[@Mahfoudh94]

as for Turkish, they used to be using Arabic script, but when the Ottomans fell, extreme right rised and Ataturk (the dictator of that time) anounced secularism and wanted to get Turkey as far from Islam as possible, so he banned Arabic and its script and got modified Latin instead.

[@actualgetawaycar]

​@Based_Gigachad_001a writing system isnt an inherent part of language, any language can use any script (with some adaptations). Islam is inherently linked to Arabic, so wanting to change away from the Arabic script which was being used at the time for Turkish and use the Latin alphabet instead makes sense if your goal is cutting potential ties to Islam

[@Mahfoudh94]

@Based_Gigachad_001 even Patrick mentioned it in the video: the Latin script spread because of Christianity. it happens that the Islamic Quran (holy book) and Prohet were both Arabic. Farsi (Iranic/Persian language) is written in Arabic script even though it is Indo-European and closer to french and Italian than Arabic, yet Persia converted to Islam (although not the same as the rest of Islamic world but it is Islam)

[@ArdaSReal]

​@@Mahfoudh94not just that, literacy was always low, in part because the arabic script wasnt suitable for the turkish language, it obviously wasnt made for a turkic language and thus a customized latin script was much better fitting linguistically and increased literacy. Of course it also aligned with the west and those the "modern" world

[@darreljones8645]

This video explains why I think Christian missionaries' greatest gift to the world isn't the gift of Christianity; it's the gift of literacy.

[@Fyrbolt200]

teaching millions of people to read so that they can read the Bible is still teaching millions of people to read!

[@royarievilo1580]

Christianity is also a gift,it’s bc of Christianity that we are not sacrificing little babies to pagan gods

[@user-tf2oh3cu7l]

ignorant af ​@@royarievilo1580

[@ArdaSReal]

Good side effect ig

[@mirzaahmed6589]

​@@royarievilo1580 lol, you don't need Christianity for that. Atheists don't sacrifice babies either.

[@williswameyo5737]

In Kenya 🇰🇪: Latin Alphabet came to us thru European colonization. Swahili had initially an Arabic script and most indigenous languages in Kenya were spoken orally, had no written form

[@Mateus-ir3vv]

What kind of alphabet do you prefer? 🤔

[@williswameyo5737]

@@Mateus-ir3vv we are still okay with the Latin Alphabet, it is here to stay

[@JeremyWS]

I think it's kind of neat that a lot of languages use the Latin alphabet. It makes learning foreign languages somewhat easier, when you don't have to learn a new script / alphabet. I also think it'd be cool if English used diacritics. There have been proposals to apply diacritics to English, but none have really stuck. Mostly, because they aren't all trying to apply diacritics without a full-on spelling reform. Applying diacritics without a full-on spelling reform would be the easiest, because then you would just have to learn rules on when to use diacritics in a word vs. having to learn whole new spelling of words and rules on when to use diacritics. Still cool to use the Latin alphabet. Make sense?

[@midloran]

It's not that effective tbh, it's just a bit easier

[@jhutt8002]

Yes. Technically. However, since most spelling these days is done via keys, applying those diacritics while writing would be quite a pain. We nordics don't actually have diacritics. Ä, Ö and Å are separate letters, and we have separate keys for them. But if you have actual diacritics, you need two keypresses per each of those letters.

[@eleandrocustodio]

A few adds: The latin script comes from the greek which comes from phoenician. The role of the printing press was not mentioned. I mean the latin alphabet is evenly spaced, making it perfect for printing. Arabic need to be changed to benefit from the press. Last but not least, the computers played an important role as well. Even chinese and japanese have a latinicized version. Sources: voices of my head.

[@Jánooshh]

1. Because Rome 2. Because England Saved you 11 minutes

[@gallardogd560]

You’re forgetting the impact of the Portuguese, Spanish, and French colonial empires? They started before England did, and while the brits were raiding the world for spices, the Portuguese had long reached Japan and began trading with them, and the Spanish had been plundering the Americas for gold and setting up colonies. All the while all of them had missionaries spreading Catholicism.

[@cardenova]

1. Roman expansion 2. Christianity (Greek/Hebrew text) 3. Carolingian reforms 4. Iberian-Dutch-British-French colonialism 5. Invention of printing press (Germany) 6. Spread of computers (US) 7. It’s a relatively simple & easy to write system, albeit flawed nonetheless.

[@mattthorne8419]

The only reason the world would move to having different scripts would be because of a global apocalypse

[@hoangkimviet8545]

Easy answer: European colonialism.

[@mckinneym.2743]

Yup

[@xandercruz900]

Thank goodness they did. Using the same alphabet likely saved a ton of languages from oblivion.

[@arnulfo267]

Thank God for straight white men.

[@jonchius]

Colonialism, although some people want to badmouth it, brought literacy to many languages!

[@Just_a_solider]

@@jonchius Thats not ture

[@27DiZee]

"The script of Rome" - great phrase. A+. Great script writing! Keep up the good work

[@bethmichaud3209]

So glad to be Subscribed to this channel !

[@maxcelcat]

Hey, not sure if it was Navajo, but one native American language group actually adopted/adapted the Latin alphabet themselves. A member of the tribe wanted to record history and produce a newspaper, and since there wasn't an existing written form, they adapted the Latin script. Within a few years the tribe became largely literate!

[@xxxkueckxxx]

Was this when the US forced every single native child (that they were aware of) into reeducation camps, where they didn’t see their parents until 18, or they saw them again at all. This went on until the 70s.

[@TVAVStudios]

TLDR: "How did the Latin sript spread aross Europe?" "Imperialism." "How did the Latin script spread across the world?" "More imperialism."

[@LauranCHB]

The Winners.

[@TheTwitch1000]

@@LauranCHBvae victis

[@stephengray1344]

Not what the video says at all. A correct TLDR would be: How did the Latin script spread across Europe? "Bible translation". How did the Latin script spread across the world? "More Bible translation".

[@Furienna]

It is a good thing though that you acknowledged that the Latin alphabet doesn’t look the same for all languages. Like for example, Swedish actually has as many as three letters that you won't see in the Romance languages or even in English: Å, Ä and Ö. They are fixed parts of our alphabet though even though they all come after Z in the alphabetical order. But you can find a unique letter even in one of the Romance languages: ñ in Spanish.

[@jul1440]

My native language, Keresan, uses the Latin Alphabet, including accents and ñ's, because prior to Spanish colonization, we did not write our language or even snap that writing down language was a thing.

[@edwardblair4096]

Written forms of language face the problem that spoken forms drift over time, often branching out into regional dialects and separate languages. The two goals of written language: to have a form that faithfully replicates the sounds of the spoken language, and to provide a permanent record that can be understood decades or centuries into the future, are in direct conflict with each other. The process of "standardized" word spellings (or the standardized form of Chinese writing) provides for long-term comprehension, at the expense of not being strictly a record of the sounds used to make the words.

[@PkfireMvp]

Thank you! I've been wanting to know this for a while. Even though I did think it was because of the Romans, I had no idea about all the other influences

[@lukepower3546]

i wish this video would touch more on the use of the latin alphabet in southeast asian countries like indonesia, vietnam, and the philippines. I know it's a product of colonization but it would be nice to learn why they didn't go back or what they used before, etc.

[@matertua2272]

Another thing to add: Cyrillic was actually based off of the Greek script, with them sort of inventing new letters for sounds that existed in Slavic languages, but not Greek itself. This makes a lot of sense because Greece was the centre of the Byzantine (or more accurately eastern Roman) empire, which encompassed many Slavic-majority places, and also observed Orthodox Christianity, thus why large parts of Eastern Europe are majority-Orthodox to this day!

[@sonofmenoetius]

Honestly, if a single alphabet should dominate the world, I feel Latin alphabet is a great choice. I'm Indian and many languages here are confusing scripts even for us Indians. Chinese is ridiculous imo. Russian is good, but there are many weird sounds like the kh, shch, the soft marker etc. And other scripts (mainly Asian scripts) are too perfect for their own languages (eg. Arabic script fits no other language other than Arabic n Persian, thai script relies too much on the thai language etc). This is by no means a professional opinion, but I feel the Latin script includes a lot of sounds that are the most common across the world's languages (k, b, p, m, n, along with aeiou are almost universal) so languages that had to adopt the Latin alphabet didn't really have much of a problem.

[@teaser6089]

Indeed and the latin script acomedates different sounds by adding symbols ontop or below latin letters so it's very flexible.

[@sonofmenoetius]

@@teaser6089 this too. From my experience many languages are very rigid writing systems (my mother tongue, Tamil, has two different ways of writing the letter r and n. People will STARE if you write it wrong.) That way, English is so very flexible spelling wise. Ai kud eevun rite laik dis and you wud no egsaktlee wut aim saing.

[@oDAKE]

There really isn't a perfect writing system, as languages can be very different. The Cyrillic Script, which you called Russian has more letters, thus covers more possible sounds, the same way old English had Þ for example. And the letters in Cyrillic can be modified in order to change their sound as well, like the diacritical signs of Latin. Ш and Щ, Ь and Ъ. The Soft Marker is not a problem, it may be a problem for new learners, but it's the same way ' can be a problem for English learners, while there is no problem for fluent speakers. Next, Arabic, as any other script can be used for other languages than Arabic and Persian. For example, it was historically used in Kazakh, and I would say it was a better fit than Cyrillic for Kazakh. I think there are other languages that use the Arabic Script but you get the point. By the way, English itself has to use letter combinations for lots of its sounds (sh, ch, etc.)

[@sonofmenoetius]

@@oDAKE I think it's more about more USABLE sounds than more POSSIBLE sounds. According to that logic, if I created a language which had every single consonant and vowel in the IPA chart, that language would be 'perfect'. English covers all the main ones, and i agree with you on the sh and ch. Only problem with ch is that it can be pronounced k, kh, tsh, sh, or a x. It's best we leave ch ambiguous

[@sonofmenoetius]

@@rogerotavio3678 bro its a nightmare for us Indians, what ru talking about 😭

[@DaisyG33]

I appreciate the shared alphabet of so many different languages because I learn a few of those languages more easily.

[@sanneoi6323]

Vietnam also had a Sinitic script before the French forced them to abandon it for Latin script. Romanian actually used the Cyrillic script for a while, and it's more recently (19th century) that it returned to Latin.

[@irasponsibly]

The chữ Quốc ngữ are centuries older than French colonisation of Vietnam, and the old Chữ Nôm script Vietnamese used before that was a vestige of Chinese colonialism, not a pure expression of Vietnamese by any means.

[@sanneoi6323]

@@irasponsibly then design your own script stop using a coloniser script from halfway across the world

[@g_br]

@@sanneoi6323 No. Keep Latin.

[@sanneoi6323]

@@g_br absolutely not. It's too ugly, is a remnant of colonialism, and is hard to manage homophones with.

[@百合仙子]

There are languages in Latin script in China too, e.g. the Zhuang languages. They were created quite recently when Latin scripts had been everywhere across the world.

[@sreeshpoudyal807]

Even Chinese itself uses the Latin script for digitization since they needed a phonetic script

[@bryonwhite6359]

@@sreeshpoudyal807it should be noted there are other phonetic scripts such as Zhuyin. And for typing theres also fangcie If the communists did not push the nationalists to taiwan its possible zhuyin would be domininant instead of ponyin

[@百合仙子]

@@sreeshpoudyal807 yes, every modern language has Latin transliterations. I don't count that as languages though. Pinyin is not only for phonetic purpose, but also for use internationally, e.g. as domain names on the Internet.

[@sreeshpoudyal807]

@@百合仙子 pinyin is quite different from romanization, romanization is necessary for globalization but Chinese need pinyin for digital inputs and other basic services

[@sreeshpoudyal807]

@@bryonwhite6359 True, but Latinization was always a big talking point, even before the communists.

[@fredklier]

I don't think there will be different alphabets in the future, quite the opposite. Because of technology, it is way easier to use the Latin alphabet as a phonetic one like I see some Egyptians do with Arab. He said they use in the time phones didn't have options for the input, so they just use the Latin letter as phonemes and get use to that. Even after they have the option to input Arab script they sometimes don't do, So he tells.

[@milasudril]

The latin alphabet * Is probably the most efficient to write with pen and paper * Hasn't too many symbols, so it is easy to use for printed books, mechanical typewriters. Likewise, it is easy to create digital encodings. * Is not an exact model of the phonetics of any language (for that we have IPA), but as long as you know the language of the text, it is a good compromise between the number of symbols and expressiveness. Where necessary, many languages some times (not always "stegen" should definitely not be pronounced the same as "stegen") adds diacritical symbols. * The balanced complexity in glyph shape makes it easy to do typography. Thus, if I spoke an oral-only language, I might as well pick the latin script for simplicity.

[@LearnRunes]

4:55 Thanks for mentioning that runes are the original script of English.

[@gloomy_gus]

Honestly, there are some languages that desperately need a unique alphabet. Looking at Latin-alphabet Celtic and East Asian languages in particular.

[@Charles_The_Texan_youtuber382]

Colonialism but it’s also easier to learn and implement and in many area with diverse cultures like India or Africa where writing system are deeply intertwined and connected with religious and ethnic identities the Latin script serves as a neutral writing system all groups can use.

[@gargamel3478]

Because this is the best script. Ave Latina.

[@modmaker7617]

It really isn't

[@gargamel3478]

@@modmaker7617 Hic est. Ave Roma, Ave Cæsar, Ave Latina!

[@teaser6089]

@@modmaker7617 It quite literely is the best script.

[@mrcroob8563]

​@@gargamel3478Calm down

[@TheTwitch1000]

⁠​⁠@@gargamel3478Vae victis. Ave Roma

[@HCOGGAN]

TFW he didnt even mention vietnam :(

[@mifffalden9225]

It's also worth noting how firmly computers have entrenched the Latin alphabet due to ASCII (consisting of only the English alphabet, digits 0-9, and a selection of special characters) being the basis for nearly every form of digital text. Things like usernames and URLs are typically limited to a subset of ASCII, which means just the twenty six English Latin letters. Also, heaven help you if you're dealing with a non-Unicode system where non-ASCII characters can be presented as unreadable mojibake.

[@Auskooper]

I find that having the same alphabet across many languages makes learning another language easier as you don't always need to learn a completely different set of symbols to read and write to learn another language. Though different languages might have different rules on the letters, like the j's in Spanish are pronounced like h's in English and h's are silent in Spanish, and w's in German are pronounced like v's in English.

[@HalfEye79]

I think, as humankind gets even more globalized, the "Latin Script" or even another script gets spread even more.

[@amirhad6594]

The advantage of latin alphabet is it's simplicity. One letter per sound (in most cases) and the simplistic forms that are still legible even when tweaked a bit. Such as when doing ornate fonts, or when writing as fast as possible. Every letter is max four lines/strokes, which are often condensed into a single stroke when writing. Alphabets that use 200+ unique characters , where it takes a writer 5 seconds to put one character down, while fascinating are just less practical for everyday use.

[@MichailAgustusSolomonic]

Long answer : Simple, Sleek and Easy Short answer : Colonization

[@kilanspeaks]

In Indonesia, we have over 700 languages and dialects, along with a variety of traditional scripts, such as: - ꦤꦸꦱ꧀ꦮꦤ꧀ꦠꦫ - ᨊᨘᨔᨊᨛᨈᨑ - ᯉᯮᯘᯉ᯲ᯖᯒ - ᬦᬸᬲᬦ᭄ᬢᬭ - ᮔᮥᮞᮔ᮪ᮒᮛ When it comes to our national language, Indonesian, it's only fair to use a neutral script like the Latin alphabet to avoid conflicts and jealousy among the diverse groups in our country. As an Indonesian, I’m proud of this decision. Despite our differences, we’re united by our fluency in our national language and our shared comfort in using the Latin alphabet to communicate. This might seem simple, but it’s not something all our neighbors can achieve, as many are segregated by languages with no unifying lingua franca. However, as a language enthusiast, I’m also concerned that our regional languages and traditional scripts are dying. The success of our national language is a double-edged sword.

[@krazykris9396]

I think of an alternative world where english kept using runes, and a lot of native American and Aborigional languages would be using a varient of runic script.

[@Naaastya.ŷraeva]

Kjirilëtsa(Cyrillic) is also used by many Turkic languages, Kavkaz, Iranic, Mongolic, Sino-Tibetan(Chinese) and other Eastern European and western Asian languages that aren’t Slavic

[@RanmaruRei]

Some fun fact. Romanian actually used originally Cyrillic alphabet, they switched to Latin only in 19th century.

[@Knuckles_la_Enchilada]

9:43 I don't even understand why they would want to create specifically an alphabet when we already have the logosyllabic-pictographic writing system, which is honestly really unique (and pretty!) and less cumbersome

[@unclebozo9845]

Polish and Latin are actually related, through being Indo-European languages.

[@alyss_aq]

That's the case for most languages in Europe, and some in Asia

[@adamclark1972uk]

Polish and Hindi are also related

[@unclebozo9845]

@@adamclark1972uk yep

[@royarievilo1580]

All European languages are related

[@TomRNZ]

@@royarievilo1580 That's not true at all. Basque is a language isolate not related to any other languages in Europe. The Uralic language family (including languages like Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian) are also a seperate language family to Indo-European.

[@vulpo]

What about the role of technology? The printing press and the Latin alphabet's greater suitability to movable type compared with Arabic and many other writing systems. And the relative ease of using the Latin alphabet as printing technology continued to develop and expand through the centuries (typewriters, Morse code, and ASCII) compared with inventing your own from scratch.

[@stephengray1344]

The printing press played a role, but more modern technologies are far less relevant. If you look at virtually any language which acquired a written form over the last two centuries, you will find that the work of creating the written form was done by Christian missionaries as part of the work of translating the Bible. If there are any exceptions they are almost certainly in languages where the vast majority of native speakers are bilingual. In those cases, it is possible that missionaries translated a Bible into a more popular language, that this introduced the speakers to writing, and they found writing so useful that they invented a written form for their native language.

[@derikaem8021]

Nerd Trivia Fact: In Transnistria they use Cyrillic script for a Romance language

[@williswameyo5737]

Christian missionaries in Africa introduced the Latin Alphabet to various African languages apart from their own European languages that the missionaries spoke

[@PendelSteven]

It's also very handy you can just type the latin alphabet with, I dunno... A keyboard? Or the virtual one on your smartphone? Imagine all the new keybaords we would need to design if we would change alphabet. Let alone learn how to type again. No, thank you! I'm fine!

[@pandaonabus]

I would love to see a Hawaiian keyboard though, would go down well with the 60% keyboard crowd.

[@vffvgh6412]

Could have mentioned countries that changed from theie native script to latin, like turkish during Ataturk or malay and Indonesian from jawi (arabic) to latin

[@jeungbou]

You forgot to mention the languages which had a horrible and ill fit writing system before and did a writing reform adopting the latin script, like all the Turkish languages, Zhuang, Vietnamese or all the Indonesian languages. This is not due to European colonialism, but also the features of the Latin script, which just makes it an easy to use and very flexible writing system.

[@tristandunn4628]

Rob Words covered the Shavian alphabet (kzbin.info/www/bejne/emeZfaWipNmpeaM), as a way to try and solve the mess that is English spelling. Whilst it kinda solves the spelling problem, it would make English harder to learn, as you'd have to learn to read again. This my main reservation about going to a country that doesn't use Latin script. Not speaking another language and expecting everyone to speak English is arrogant enough, but also then not being able to read anything, really hammers home how vulnerable you are.

[@RCon25]

Don't forget, even some Asian languages.... like Vietnamese, Tagalog, Indonesian, and Malay.

[@danarabi9038]

There is native language Indonesia call cia-cia that use Korea script because it fit their sound better

[@alb8758]

Deliberately confusing things by giving languages that use the Latin alphabet their own unique new invented alphabet is one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in years.

[@gavinjones]

This sounds like the same dumb reason why some renaissance era scholars made English spelling deliberately confusing by introducing back few letters in certain words from their old Latin spelling.

[@dursty3226]

i wonder what the older scripts would look like today if they had been allowed to evolve

[@williswameyo5737]

Swahili 🇰🇪 soon implemented the Latin Alphabet despite being phonetic in its spoken form

[@LCCWPresents]

European colonization and I’m some areas anti- former colonization. Example, in Ethiopia Oromo used to use the Ge’ez alphabet for their written language, but after the fall of the Derg in 1993, Oromo switched to the Latin alphabet due to the Ge’ez alphabet being related to Ethiopian colonization efforts outside of non-southern Semitic languages inside its borders. Oromo is not the same group linguistically or ethnically as the Amharic, Tygree, or Afar in northern Ethiopia and they only used Ge’ez because no other writing system was as easily available as Ge’ez for the longest period. After Ethiopia federalized in the 1990’s it was easier for Oromo people to use the switch to the Latin alphabet as a way to remain separate.

[@Videoman2000]

Could it be also, because it‘s easy to learn and flexible.

[@algotkristoffersson15]

It’s not easy to learn how it is used in English

[@Videoman2000]

@@algotkristoffersson15 I saw once a video which explained why it uslike that in english, basically there were several wordbook publishers which each had their own orthography.

[@teaser6089]

@@algotkristoffersson15 It actually is quite easy compared to most other languages in the world lmao.

[@oDAKE]

​@@teaser6089I see you are a linguistics proffesor. Did you know people can be born in different places, where Latin script and English are not taught to them since early childhood? And for them, it's harder to get a grasp of the language, rather than someone who speaks a similar language, also using Latin script?

[@clement2780]

äöüß german; åæø danish norwegian; äöõü estonian finnish

[@francisthegreat4064]

Filipino alphabet has the 26 letters of the English alphabet plus another two more, the digraph ng and the ñ borrowed from Spanish alphabet.

[@angeldude101]

If "ng" is borrowed as a digraph, then what makes it a separate letter? I feel like whatever argument can be made, it should be applicable to Eŋglish as well where it's also usually a digraph.

[@francisthegreat4064]

@@angeldude101 In Filipino alphabet ng is not a borrowed letter. It is only the ñ that is borrowed from Spanish alphabet.

[@francisthegreat4064]

@@angeldude101 Ng is already available in the pre-colonial abugida of the Philippines. That abugida was called Baybayin.

[@angeldude101]

@@francisthegreat4064 I'm just tryiŋ to understand why a digraph is being counted as a separate letter from its components. If they were fused into a siŋgle letter or ligature, like the "ŋ" I've been using here, then I'd understand it being counted separately.

[@megaton6023]

Easy answer: 🇮🇹➡️ 🇪🇸🇬🇧🇫🇷🇵🇹 ➡️ 🌏🌍🌎

[@lp-xl9ld]

"Perhaps one day in the future, every language will have its own script..." Nope. More likely the reverse will be the case. There will be ONE language and ONE way to write it.

[@teaser6089]

I don't think there will be one language. Even when we start colonizing new planets, these new planets are most likely going to form new languages of their own after hundreds or thousands of years.

[@Chance_Rice]

Maybe 1 scrip but I doubt 1 language, just look how diverse Arabic is

[@JamesDavy2009]

@@teaser6089 Especially if the shapes of our vocal passages change over time.

[@mqegg]

​@teaser6089 this is absolutely true with modern technology, people on different planets in the solar system would still take minutes to hours to communicate with earth. if not new languages, new dialects of existing languages would happen

[@alfstewart22]

You never mentioned that over 200 million Indonesian and Malaysian speakers use the Latin alphabet for Bahasa as their main script

[@pieterjan29]

Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin.

[@MatthewConnellan-xc3oj]

What if every language had its own alphabet?

[@CatherineKimport]

Doesn't English kinda have its own script now with the Shavian Alphabet?

[@Phobero]

Because it's the best

[@macsnafu]

The Romans and Christianity. Makes sense.

[@Armando-to2cq]

Languages derived from Latin are the best sounding!!!

[@SC2Villares]

His way of speaking the end of the phrase is quite obnoxioouuus'êan. Everytime doing that long melodieêann

[@psikeyhackr6914]

The Romans were the best organized savages in the Mediterranean area. Then the British and Spanish took up the crusade.

[@tigranav.3960]

make a video about albania and caucasian albania

[@JediSimpson]

5:45 - The 15th Century, not 14th.

[@Mateus-ir3vv]

Because of Portuguese Catholic priests that is the truth

[@SerGio-mw9pc]

You forget another big user of Latin alphabet that has nothing to do with Rome and very little influence of Christianity: Indonesian

[@stephengray1344]

Indonesia actually does have a very large Christian minority, which has been growing fairly fast (at the expense of Islam as well as native/pagan religions) for many decades.

[@malarobo]

The answer is dutch colonization. Dutch is written in latin alphabet because of Rome. Then indirectly indonesian use of latin alphabet is due to Rome.

[@username65585]

I wish other languages had added letters rather than using the same letters to represent different sounds.

[@agme8045]

We should all use IPA

[@daniel-zh9nj6yn6y]

I'm Romanian. We have added letters: ă, â, ș, ț. And î, which sounds exactly like â, but is used only at the beginning of a word. Ex: înăuntru (inside) vs când (when)

[@clement2780]

çë albanian, ğıİşçöü turkish, őű hungarian

[@ryanrigley]

ROMA forever! Caput Mundi.

[@1234booky]

Always wondered why turkish uses latin instead of greek?

[@richdobbs6595]

It switched away from Arabic script relatively recently, around 1928. Latin was viewed as more modern and pan-European compared to Greek or Cyrillic. Also, Russia and Greece were more directly its enemies, say compared to German.

[@teaser6089]

@@richdobbs6595 Exactly it was an effort of the Turks to be perceived more modern and more relevant.

[@barryon8706]

So many use Latin characters because of Latin America.

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Why do you use Arabic numerals to count? What about those Italian numbers? Because rome is technically in Italy...

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Arabic numbers are easier to use and read than roman numerals

[@Clancydaenlightened]

That and you have the concept of 0 = nothing

[@teaser6089]

@@Clancydaenlightened I mean the concept of zero came a little later. But yeah

[@o0...957]

​@@ClancydaenlightenedThat came from India.

[@Mhark127]

In Portuguese🇧🇷🇵🇹 we use the Roman numbers when talking about centuries. So, instead of "19th century" we write "XIX century".

[@The_Forgettable1]

10:00 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made their own English alphabet once

[@CarlosPinheiro-Chico]

Just call them Mormons

[@oberonpanopticon]

I’d guess it’s because Rome was kind of a big deal

[@gertdejong9161]

More alphabets? no I dont think so... We will sooner purge the others than adopt a new one

[@MrRhombus]

7:15 “13 Letters” _Shows 12_

[@DawnDavidson]

You missed the little apostrophe like mark next to the W. I’m guessing he is including that as a letter. I believe it represents a glottal stop or something like it.

[@MrRhombus]

@@DawnDavidson I didn’t miss anything and I know. Punctuation is not a letter.

[@reillywalker195]

​@@MrRhombus The apostrophe in that case _is_ a letter because it represents a sound in Hawaiian-the glottal stop.

[@JamesDavy2009]

@@reillywalker195 Said letter is called "‘okina".

[@0ee63]

Languageeesuh

[@BlackyBrownDestruction9337]

Vietnam

[@davidsenra2495]

Because Rome.

[@jennydeaf9O9]

tbh its my fav alphebet

[@NeonBeeCat]

The short answer is imperialism.

[@abchaplin]

… in its more and less pernicious forms.

[@williswameyo5737]

However it increased literacy of languages that would have gone to oblivion

[@clement2780]

ċġħż malta; ąčėęįųšūž lithuanian; ĀČĒīĶĻŅŠŪŽ Latvian

[@mingfanzhang4600]

😅😅😅

[@mingfanzhang8927]

😊

[@mingfanzhang4600]

@@mingfanzhang8927 #Islam

[@dinisfonseca6305]

Graphs* not Grophs

[@billypathy]

Colonialism.