Pakistan's Ataturk, though not the way you'd expect...

That’s how you say it in Farsi, too! You’re already halfway there.

;) دانم، فارسی‌را حرف زنم
And I've been picking up some Urdu lately too.

I mean, this idea isn't completely implausible, but it would mean Ayyub Khan and any subsequent government would have to abandon Pakistan's raison d'être in favor of a Kemalist western-oriented secularism.

Wasn't there a similar movement for romanization in 1920s/30s Iran, but never gained ground because the Shi'a clerical establishment and the bulk of the population had little interest?
 
;) دانم، فارسی‌را حرف زنم
And I've been picking up some Urdu lately too.

I mean, this idea isn't completely implausible, but it would mean Ayyub Khan and any subsequent government would have to abandon Pakistan's raison d'être in favor of a Kemalist western-oriented secularism.

Wasn't there a similar movement for romanization in 1920s/30s Iran, but never gained ground because the Shi'a clerical establishment and the bulk of the population had little interest?

‎ببخشید. فکر کردم شما اردو صحبت کردید

There have been a lot of language reform ideas floated in Iran in the 19th-20th centuries. They’ve all foundered due to the conflicts between nationalism and Westernization, like most reform efforts in Iran.
 
‎ببخشید. فکر کردم شما اردو صحبت کردید

There have been a lot of language reform ideas floated in Iran in the 19th-20th centuries. They’ve all foundered due to the conflicts between nationalism and Westernization, like most reform efforts in Iran.

!هیچ مشکل
Just goes to show how heavily Urdu has been influenced by Persian.

Interesting that that conflict has been so dramatic in Iran. Why does it seem like Turkey didn't have as big of a problem shifting towards westernization? Did the Ottoman collapse in WWI simply make any other course of action no longer feasible?
 
You clearly just need to replace all unspellable words with their Farsi equivalents. Easy peasy.

Then you end up with Rekhta, a variety which no one really speaks outside of poetry and some songs. It serves to make Urdu even more inaccessible to the people at large.
 
!هیچ مشکل
Just goes to show how heavily Urdu has been influenced by Persian.

Interesting that that conflict has been so dramatic in Iran. Why does it seem like Turkey didn't have as big of a problem shifting towards westernization? Did the Ottoman collapse in WWI simply make any other course of action no longer feasible?

Turkish nationalism wasn’t really a thing outside of Ataturk, basically. He was able to impose his model of westernized nationalism because there was no rival, and most of it was explicitly rejecting Ottoman religious universalism. In Iran, there were three competing influences from the Shiite clergy, Persian ethno-nationalism (mostly based off Ferdowsi and anti-Arab sentiment), and western influence. All had different constituencies and were to some degree opposed. The Pahlavis had to balance all three with very little historical legitimacy or natural power base. Combine that with the West pushing Iran around in a way they could never do to Turkey and Iran’s ongoing struggle to develop economically and you have an insoluble problem. It wasn’t hard for Turkey to become a European power because it already was one centuries before Ataturk; Iran had to become a regional power while fending off foreign influence and trying to define Iranian identity to a population that had more immediate concerns than their country’s place in the world. You can see how the current regime is having the same problems as the Pahlavis due to having to balance the same set of priorities, though a lot of their problem is due to foreign adventurism, getting a little too enthusiastic about the giant leadership vacuum the US has created in the region since 2001.
 
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