How Long to Replace National Alphabet?

How long for a ruler to replace alphabets used by its colony pre-invasion?

For example, how long before the traditional Chinese letters in Manchuria be replaced by Russian cyrillic or Japanese hiragana/katakana/kanji?

Thanks in advance!
 
Decades at least, depending on the level of literacy. I mean here in the west it would take at least 12-13 years to get all school students on the new system, never mind educating the adults. Things would be much easier if you were to start off with an illiterate people.
 
Ataturk did a similar thing, didn't he? Not quite the colonial invasion scenario proposed above, but a seismic shift in cultural attitudes regardless.
 
So, 50-60 years of occupation would be long enough for this operation to happen?
I mean, as far as the native population really foreign on using their own pre-colonization alphabets?
 
So, 50-60 years of occupation would be long enough for this operation to happen?
I mean, as far as the native population really foreign on using their own pre-colonization alphabets?

Oh, yeah. How many Turks or Central Asians could read their language in the Arabic script in 1970, except some philologists?
Of course, you will have a cohort of older people already literate with the old system, but if the state commits itself fully, such a switch can happen in one or two decades for the general population.
The higher the literacy rate with the old system, the slower, I suppose.
 
Yeah, that's more-or-less my thought, the higher the literacy rate the more people have to 'unlearn' the old alphabet/language, and the longer it takes to replace all the old books, if they ever do. In fact given a high-enough rate of literacy you're unlikely to ever totally wipe out the old language.
 
Koreans did the same with Hangul. The idea was that a peasant could learn it in 2 days.

Not really. Hangul was invented around 1444, but the literary elite were vehemently opposed to it. It's likely that Sejong developed most of the system by himself, so most of the government members were opposed to learning a new writing system because it could have undermined their status. The commoners did learn it to some extent, but further research was completely banned by 1506. Although the writing system was used after the ban by a few people, mostly those who were literate in Chinese characters, it was not taught systematically, and was not standardized.

It was not until the early 1900s that the writing was standardized to some extent, and the writing was not widely taught until after 1945. In other words, it took more than 500 years for Hangul to be used widely by the masses. Although the situation might be different in other countries, both the government and the people have to embrace the new system in order for it to be disseminated effectively.
 
Top