Screw the latin script and its derivatives.

With any pod post Napoleon wars, do as much to curb the spread of the latin and cyrillic scripts as possible. Have one or more countries dump the latin script in favor of another.

Is this too implausible? For example, maybe during decolonization, have many African countries reject the latin script as a colonialist influence and instead switch to the Arabic or even Ge'ez scripts. Or maybe they pull a Berber and make their own.

NOTE: While I want to screw both generally, if the choice is nothing but latin vs cyrillic, choose cyrillic. For example, prevent Romania from jumping to latin.
 

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Post Napoleonic Wars? It's just not going to happen. Nations don't make policy based on ideals or principles, they use what works. And if using Latin script already works because so many people are Christian, and doctors and other educated people use and know the script, and it's easier to communicate with developed nations and corporations who provide technology and aid, then by golly Latin script will be used.
 
The Latin script was spread through European Domination. With a PoD after 1800, it is already too late to reverse the process in places like the Western Hemisphere. However most Muslim counties could keep using the Arabic script with a pretty late PoD provided they stay social conservative by the time mass literacy campaigns begin.

The Arabic script was as widely used as the Latin one for a very long time. In certain places in Africa, like along the Swahili Coast, it is still in use. Could a Oman-Wank lead to a permanent spread of the script into the interior? The best way for Africans to keep the Arabic Script may be tying it and Islam to the anti-colonialism movement. Though that could lead to earlier Islamist style regimes in African countries.

Malay could keep using the Arabic script, though the Latin one was adopted for pragmatic reasons that would be difficult to butterfly away. The example Vietnamese alphabet is interesting. I believe the reason for the script being adopted was because the country was so illiterate when the switch happened that it wasn't difficult. But Vietnam could easily keep its Chinese style script. After all Japan manages fine with its Chinese style script. Or they could create and implement a new one from scratch, like Korean did. Either way, this does not lead to the adoption of the Roman script.

*I just realized 90% of my post is how to keep the Arabic script relevant.
 
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You definitely need a waaay earlier POD for this to happen with organically occurring scripts.

Maybe, just maybe, you can get some conlang script to take off. There were many phonetic alphabets created in the 18-19th centuries, mostly by philologists.
 
A good Ottoman wank, plus PODs paralyzing Austria and Russia, would go some way in fulfilling this.
@Koprulu Mustafa Pasha how feasible is this?

Post-Napoleon? Not an Ottoman Wank... Ottoman Wank is pretty much only possible in Africa which there is no Latin nor Cyrillic script. Maybe if the Cyrillic using people like Serbs and Bulgarians leave in bigger numbers for the Americas while the Muslims remain pretty much. It may help to reduce Cyrillic in the Balkans largely if the Ottomans remain. Considering that Turkish is not really attractive with the Arabic Alphabet, it is going to be proposed to be changed. Latin Alphabet made the Turkish a bit closer to Europe. But... the old Turkish Alphabet is not that far off to be considered as a new alphabet to be used.

Local African States on the edge of the Sahara, the Muslim ones, can survive with their Arabic script. Ethiopia keeps surviving with their script... Ehm... Maybe if Central Asia remains independent AFTER the Russian Revolution... I don't think they could survive Russian Rule/Vassalization post-1815 but they could surely survive if the Russian Revolution keeps on after 1918. Preferably longer.

Over all, I think it is unlikely to halt the spread of Cyrillic and/or Latin
 
Post Napoleonic Wars? It's just not going to happen. Nations don't make policy based on ideals or principles, they use what works. And if using Latin script already works because so many people are Christian, and doctors and other educated people use and know the script, and it's easier to communicate with developed nations and corporations who provide technology and aid, then by golly Latin script will be used.
Well, Japan is one of the most advanced countries in the world and they do fine with no latin script.

I think having a prosperous Ottoman empire and Persia would help. If these countries are super succesful, it would incentivize more people and countries to keep the Arabic script to communicate with them.
 
What Africa needs is locals to spread their own scripts--basically an African Sequoyah (and I don't mean the Vai syllabary which was created from influence by former slaves owned by the Cherokee). The best places would be the non-Muslim parts of Africa, since the more Muslim-influenced parts can use Arabic. Ideally there would be no Scramble for Africa and instead Europeans would stabilise a variety of states in Africa which would naturally use what they know--Arabic--to write their languages. The non-Muslim parts would use a variety of constructed alphabets based on European alphabets, Arabic, and even Cherokee syllabary to write their language, which would spread in various contexts and eventually be used by European missionaries and colonial administrators as a cost-saving method.

NOTE: While I want to screw both generally, if the choice is nothing but latin vs cyrillic, choose cyrillic. For example, prevent Romania from jumping to latin.

I believe in this era there's still the possibility of writing Albanian with the Greek alphabet, and the Russian Empire could Cyrillicise most or all of their Latin-using ethnic groups, except maybe the Poles. Possibly it could even be promoted as a nationalistic measure if it's early enough and they play the right cards, at least for Finland and Estonia, as the earliest Finnic-language texts (an old birch-bark letter) are written in Cyrillic.

You definitely need a waaay earlier POD for this to happen with organically occurring scripts.

Maybe, just maybe, you can get some conlang script to take off. There were many phonetic alphabets created in the 18-19th centuries, mostly by philologists.

This, combined with creative nationalism. By that, I mean having Hungarian readopt the rovas runes, which perhaps could spread to Finnish and Estonian. Glagolitic could be used for various Slavic languages in this case, basically whatever isn't Russian in some sort of nationalistic backlash. Or even better, an artificial Slavic script, since I know there's some pseudoscience/pseudoarchaelogy floating around about pre-Christian Slavic scripts which seems easy to create for anyone who wants to invent a tradition. Germanic countries could revert to Germanic runes.

This would probably be in some sort of fascist Europe following certain strains of fascism which would reject the recent Christian past in favour of pre-Christian local traditions (be it the Romans/Greeks or some glorious pagan past). It could flow to the colonised world from there, either by rejection of their own Abrahamic (antisemitism is inevitable here) traditions--Islam in this case--or just encouraging locals to create their own scripts (perhaps in preparation for independence, since these fascists might tend more toward internal splendor rather than imperialism of "lesser races"). There's quite a few indigenously created African scripts to write African languages after all. Same with Asia--for instance, the Indonesian fascists could use Javanese or some other pre-Islamic script for their language and others.
 

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Well, Japan is one of the most advanced countries in the world and they do fine with no latin script.

I think having a prosperous Ottoman empire and Persia would help. If these countries are super succesful, it would incentivize more people and countries to keep the Arabic script to communicate with them.
You're missing my point. Japan adapted Western technology on an almost wmeven footing with European countries, even defeating a major European power (Russia) 1v1 in 1905. 99% of the nations we're talking about wouldn't be able to do that.

After 1800, prosperous Ottomans and Persia can't stop the steamroller of European influence. Especially once radio is invented and geographical barriers minimally impact information exchange, and the airplane doing the same for human movement, it's Latin script all the way.

@metalinvader665 I don't see a fascist regime lasting long enough to replace Latin script. That would be the work of decades, maybe even a century.
 
You're missing my point. Japan adapted Western technology on an almost wmeven footing with European countries, even defeating a major European power (Russia) 1v1 in 1905. 99% of the nations we're talking about wouldn't be able to do that.

After 1800, prosperous Ottomans and Persia can't stop the steamroller of European influence. Especially once radio is invented and geographical barriers minimally impact information exchange, and the airplane doing the same for human movement, it's Latin script all the way.

@metalinvader665 I don't see a fascist regime lasting long enough to replace Latin script. That would be the work of decades, maybe even a century.
Could it at least prevent Turkish from adopting the latin script?
 
This would probably be in some sort of fascist Europe following certain strains of fascism which would reject the recent Christian past in favour of pre-Christian local traditions (be it the Romans/Greeks or some glorious pagan past). It could flow to the colonised world from there, either by rejection of their own Abrahamic (antisemitism is inevitable here) traditions--Islam in this case--or just encouraging locals to create their own scripts (perhaps in preparation for independence, since these fascists might tend more toward internal splendor rather than imperialism of "lesser races").
Besides the fact that i loathe fascist wanks, none of that would work. Itd take one hell of a POD for europe to embrace neopagan fascist cultists. Theres a reason why the fascists that did come to power at least tried to appeal to the christian populace.

Secondly, fascist regimes are always imperialist, regardless of the rhetoric they spew. Some people even go as far as to describe fascism as imperialism/colonialism brought home. They aren't going to be creating independent states run by subhumans, because that poses a threat to them ideologically if not militarily.
 
Besides the fact that i loathe fascist wanks, none of that would work. Itd take one hell of a POD for europe to embrace neopagan fascist cultists. Theres a reason why the fascists that did come to power at least tried to appeal to the christian populace.
Wasn't naziism very pagan-ish? I heard many catholics where alienated by it
 
Wasn't naziism very pagan-ish? I heard many catholics where alienated by it
While occultism was pretty common among the nazi's, it was never part of their propaganda wich continued to use Christian themes (although perhaps in a sacrilegious way). Particularly what comes to my mind is a part of triumph of the will where hitler is arriving in a plane and the camera is focused on the city bellow, where the plane is casting a crucifix shaped shadow.

Im not an expert on german politics leading up to the nazi regime, so idk why catholics didn't vote for them, or whi thry voted for instead, possibly for the conservatives that brought the nazis into government with them to keep out the socialists
 
You're missing my point. Japan adapted Western technology on an almost wmeven footing with European countries, even defeating a major European power (Russia) 1v1 in 1905. 99% of the nations we're talking about wouldn't be able to do that.

After 1800, prosperous Ottomans and Persia can't stop the steamroller of European influence. Especially once radio is invented and geographical barriers minimally impact information exchange, and the airplane doing the same for human movement, it's Latin script all the way.

@metalinvader665 I don't see a fascist regime lasting long enough to replace Latin script. That would be the work of decades, maybe even a century.

Thailand uses their native script. The Ottoman Turkish was a prestige dialect of Turkish with extensive Persian and Arabic loans which can naturally be written in Arabic script. As for Persian, it's plausible the mess that Persia was in the early 19th century could reform to match at least the OTL Turks. A successful Amir Kabir could do a lot for the Qajars, for instance.

As for fascists, there's a potential for fascism to evolve, seize control, and reshape their nation, not much different from communism. Not starting WWII would be huge, and a Germanic fascist regime doesn't need to go for aggressive and utterly unsustainable rearmament.

Besides the fact that i loathe fascist wanks, none of that would work. Itd take one hell of a POD for europe to embrace neopagan fascist cultists. Theres a reason why the fascists that did come to power at least tried to appeal to the christian populace.

Agree, it's very hard to rewrite European culture (Christian for over a millennia) in favour of the whims of nationalists. However, I will note that communists in Albania and elsewhere managed to enforce state atheism or various cults (Juche) to rather successful degrees. And if the PoD is 1815, there's plenty of room to mess around with ideologies.

Secondly, fascist regimes are always imperialist, regardless of the rhetoric they spew. Some people even go as far as to describe fascism as imperialism/colonialism brought home. They aren't going to be creating independent states run by subhumans, because that poses a threat to them ideologically if not militarily.

Fascism is very flexible--there were Jewish fascists (Lehi in colonial Palestine), African American fascists (Pacific Movement of the Eastern World), and Native American fascists (Chief Red Cloud/Elwood A. Towner). Combined with anti-race-mixing ideals (a key part of the alliance between neo-Nazis and black separatists along with shared antisemitism) there's an obvious place for fascist movements to support each other. Japanese fascists envisioned a variety of local fascists all bowing to Japan--this would be a plausible model for a European country like France or Britain which is overthrown by fascism. It's building up local fascists to ease the costs of administering such colonial regimes before sinking in the teeth of neocolonialism. It isn't too implausible with a PoD at 1815 to get an ideology in Europe akin to Japanese fascism in regards to colonialism.

Wasn't naziism very pagan-ish? I heard many catholics where alienated by it

Some were, but publically Hitler acted as a Christian despite his personal thoughts toward religion.
 
While occultism was pretty common among the nazi's, it was never part of their propaganda wich continued to use Christian themes (although perhaps in a sacrilegious way). Particularly what comes to my mind is a part of triumph of the will where hitler is arriving in a plane and the camera is focused on the city bellow, where the plane is casting a crucifix shaped shadow
I mean, didn't Hitler plan on liquidating the Catholic church? And wasnt he quoted as saying Christianity was a weak religion?
 
I mean, didn't Hitler plan on liquidating the Catholic church? And wasnt he quoted as saying Christianity was a weak religion?
He also said that jesus was an arian fighting against judaism. Either way, those weren't the views the regime expressed publicly, for obvious reasons. If nothing else, fascist regimes are very conscious of the public image.

It's building up local fascists to ease the costs of administering such colonial regimes before sinking in the teeth of neocolonialism.
I don't think i have to explain that setting up puppet states is still imperialism
 
Could it at least prevent Turkish from adopting the latin script?
Only if you drastically reform and simplify Perso-Arabic script to make it usable from a Turkic POV. As it stood IOTL, the Ottoman script was very unwieldly due to its Perso-Arabic orientation, which emphasized consonants over vowels - and the vowel is the most important part of Turkic languages, which was primarily neglected to force it to fit the three-vowel system of Arabic. Only a major orthography reform would address these problems with Perso-Arabic as appliied to Turkish.
 
Well, we are getting off track here. Is there a way to have the Ottomans and/or Persia beat a major European power in a war? Like, maybe a joint Perso - Ottoman attack on Russia to retake lost territories?
 
Only if you drastically reform and simplify Perso-Arabic script to make it usable from a Turkic POV. As it stood IOTL, the Ottoman script was very unwieldly due to its Perso-Arabic orientation, which emphasized consonants over vowels - and the vowel is the most important part of Turkic languages, which was primarily neglected to force it to fit the three-vowel system of Arabic. Only a major orthography reform would address these problems with Perso-Arabic as appliied to Turkish.
Well, how come the script works for Persian?

Anyway, couldn't you just add a bunch of new vowel letters? Farsi has some letters that don't exist in Arabic.
 
Well, how come the script works for Persian?

Anyway, couldn't you just add a bunch of new vowel letters? Farsi has some letters that don't exist in Arabic.
It works for Persian (keeping in mind that "works" is relative, as speech should not be confused with writing) because in the three standard literary varieties and in the Classical language the vowel inventory inherited from Early New Persian was just small enough to make it work. New letters could work in stretching the script to make it work - this is true of the old Central Asian adaptations through Chagatai, and even Kurdish has adopted such a consistent usage that its use of Perso-Arabic script is basically that of an abugida.
 
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