WI: China used a Latin or Greek-like alphabet?

Looking at a thing on Old Chinese, you'd think that the entire language was like Arabic or something like that, since Old Chinese had sounds that the modern Chinese regionalects do not have - things like /ɣ/, the voiced velar fricative and the like. Also, Old Chinese grammar was definitely not like Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese grammar. If Siddham was applied to Old Chinese, Chinese would've evolved differently than in OTL - who knows, maybe Chinese would not be tonal at all but would still be difficult for Westerners because of some sounds that would be difficult for them, not to mention a grammar that would be daunting (I'm thinking if something like the Austronesian alignment being widely used, for example). Plus, there's the task of modifying Siddham to match Old Chinese phonology - for example, the pharyngealized consonants.

If Old Chinese is written using an adapted Siddham script, I have a feeling Modern Chinese will be similar to Modern Tibetan in that it will use a writing system derived from an Indic system and possibly have a spoken language that has done away with all the complex consonant clusters while keeping them in the writing system.
 

Keenir

Banned
The Chinese alphabet is not good for use in the printing press because to get the right slide to use they would need to look through thousands of different characters to just find one word,

consider who would be using this printing press - likely the educated classes, if not the Imperial Court.

though you only need to look through thousands if you kept forgetting where things were arranged. (by that logic, you have to keep searching your keyboard for where the Y key is - do you?)

rather then what the Europeans had with their language, which was far more suited for a movable type tablet then Manderin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, or any of those laguages that have one picture equal a word.

okay, what does this picture mean?: T

or this one?: O

here's a better explanation of the Chinese script: http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm (explained in such a way while showing how to make English work in it)
 
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