Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I mean in the longer term. Bulgaria has a lot of population issues and seems somewhat torn between the West and the Russian spheres, so I don’t think it’s inconceivable that in 50 years (after generations grow up online familiar with computer-based Latin alphabets) they formally switch to using it.

Serbia would probably switch first, though. When I was there a half decade ago, Latin and Cyrillic were used interchangeably. But it’s my understanding that Latin is much more popular amongst the young.

View on HN

It doesn't seem like you know what you're talking about. Have you ever been to Bulgaria, or are you just fantasizing? People in Bulgaria are already familiar with the 'computer-based Latin alphabet' and speak English decently well (at least anyone under 40). Also, I'm not sure what the population issue has to do with what alphabet they use. People will magically switch to the Latin alphabet because... there are fewer of them? By that same logic, should we expect Japan and South Korea to start using Latin characters too ?

Let me state this again, because people really seem to have a difficult time understanding my comment:

I said it was plausible that Bulgaria could switch to the Latin alphabet in a long time. The word plausible implies that it could happen, but is not guaranteed, or even likely. It is conceivable, it is a possible future. It doesn’t mean I think it will absolutely happen.

The reasons I think this switch is plausible are:

- the growing adoption of Western and EU Latin-based culture amongst the youth. The government and institutional power structures in Bulgaria are still largely populated by people who are over 35 years old. In 50 years, this won’t be the case, and the people filling the jobs will have been influenced by Latin-alphabet culture for decades.

- The population decline of the country is going to present serious issues. Some of the solutions to it will probably be closer integration to the EU, which almost entirely uses the Latin alphabet. Also factor in the Bulgarian diaspora which is growing up in Latin-language places elsewhere in the EU.

- The current geopolitical situation, wherein future Bulgarians may (again, plausibly) want to distance themselves from the Russian-dominated Orthodoxy world, of which the Cyrillic alphabet is still a fairly strong connection. Also consider that Orthodoxy itself is in decline, and so having this connection might not be that important to the Bulgarians of 2074. I foresee a similar thing amongst the youth in Poland and Catholicism.

No one is having difficulty understanding your comment. It's just very clear to someone who lives in Bulgaria that you don't have first-hand knowledge of what you're talking about, and your speculations about what might happen 50 years from now are not grounded in reality. No one in Bulgaria uses the Latin alphabet to write in Bulgarian, and there's no indication that this will change. As the French say, 'avec des 'si' on mettrait Paris en bouteille'.

I’d be glad to hear your responses to my three points and why I am so far off.

He did and so did I, you are just selectively ignoring them and gaslighting us.

50 years is a long time.

Between the existence of Austria-Hungary empire, when the Latin alphabet was very relevant for all the Balkans, and the end of WW2, when the Cyrillic became much more relevant for them is just 1945-1918=27 years.

As someone who is familiar with the political and social atmosphere in the country, I'll give it a try.

The growing adoption of "Latin-based culture" is not interfering with the usage of Bulgarian. Bilinguality is the norm for the newer generations. More than a decade ago in the pre-Unicode world, writing emails and communication in Bulgarian with Latin letters was acceptable because of encoding issues. Nowadays, it is no longer the norm, is frowned upon and is even ridiculed.

There is a considerable part of the intellectual elite that is pro-Western and seeks further integration with the west. They are perfectly fine with the alphabet and switching it is not on their agenda. These are, for example, professors, philosophers and linguists from Sofia university.

Thanks for an actual reply, I appreciate it. I agree it’s unlikely for a switch (and my original comment expressed nothing more than saying it was plausible) but I do wonder if younger generations will be more Latinized. The bilingual approach is an interesting one and seems quite likely to continue, I agree.

In Serbia, Latin is "popular" because it is the default in all computers and phones. Most don't bother switching or don't know how. In the old days, when sending an SMS had a price, using cyrillic letters was expensive as hell. You could barely write one third of an SMS for the same price. And that adds up pretty quickly! On a side note, as someone who has to use multiple keyborad layouts each day, it is annoying.

And in a few generations, you don’t think this usage of computers and phones is going to have a serious impact on how Cyrillic is used? People are going to use Latin on phones and computers all day long but still use Cyrillic just as much?

It most certainly will have a big impact. It will take a few more decades, but at some point everybody will simply switch. Both formes are equal in the eyes of the consitution, but Cyrillic is prefered by official insitutions, except if you deal with a lot of foreign affairs. Then it is more practical to simply use Latin all the way.

This is part of the national identity. No chance in hell.

Bulgaria’s population is set to halve by 2100, so again, considering the importance of Latin-based languages globally, integration into the EU, etc. I don’t think it’s that inconceivable. Maybe just not likely soon because of the historical connection to Cyrillic.

Again, I didn’t say it will happen, just that it seems conceivable to me.

Maybe reflect on what made you think that a nation would just scratch more than a thousand years of culture so that it is easier for facebook engineers to encode their web page. Have no other comment, really.

There are plenty of other examples of countries switching to a new alphabet, even when it would cut people off from their history. Turkish being a prime example. It has nothing to do with making life easier for Facebook engineers and I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. It has everything to do with what real people do in their daily lives, and what government institutions mandate.

These sarcastic replies are so tiresome and intellectually uncurious.

Ok, and just because a few countries did it, in what way implies that Bulgaria will? Your arguments have no basis other than "Country A did it, so Bulgaria is also more likely to do it".

I said it was plausible.

Try reading the comment again.

It is only plausible based on your own subjective views and cultural projection. As of now, it has no basis on any fact.

Ok. Well I’ve written a few long comments on why I think it is plausible, but you and the other commenter don’t seem to have actual responses, just insults. Hence this conversation is a waste of time.

When met with extreme obliviousness, sarcasm is the only escape of the mind.

Turkey switched lots of things as a deliberate act of cutting off with its past, including form of government, constitution, and legitimacy model, and after losing wars and territories for centuries. The fact that you disregard the context to arrive at the desired conclusion might have something to do with the intellectual difficulties you find yourself in.

You can’t seem to leave any comment without adding some sort of sarcastic rude put down, which really isn’t in the nature of this site, nor is it conducive for having an interesting discussion about the future of language. Learn some manners and try again, this time with actual arguments.

Your example using Turkish isn't that good. Turkic languages like Turkish or Kazakh switched to a latin alphabet because the arabic or cyrillic writing systems didn't suit them. The cyrillic script was explicitly created for slavic languages, so there's no need for slavic languages to switch to a latin based alphabet.

Turkish switched to the Latin alphabet and thereby cut itself off from over a thousand years of history and interaction with the Islamic world via Persian and Arabic. This decision was made more for political reasons, as Ätaturk wanted to Westernize the country, than for strictly linguistic ones.

Atatürk also commented on one occasion that the symbolic meaning of the reform was for the Turkish nation to "show with its script and mentality that it is on the side of world civilisation".[26] The second president of Turkey, İsmet İnönü further elaborated the reason behind adopting a Latin alphabet: "The alphabet reform cannot be attributed to ease of reading and writing. That was the motive of Enver Pasha. For us, the big impact and the benefit of an alphabet reform was that it eased the way to cultural reform. We inevitably lost our connection with Arabic culture."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet#History

For a while in the early 2000s to late 2000s there was a very widespread usage of 4 and 6 replacing the ch and sh sounds. In hindsight, this was more likely to replace the letters 'ч' and 'ш' than Latin letters.

However it died out.

It’s hard to see how switching alphabet would help euro integration. Looking at other countries - economical and political reforms required for EU membership is the real barrier, not the alphabet. And switching alphabet would have a huge cost not helping the economy.

I remember back around 20 years ago someone on this radio station https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE... was expressing support of the idea of switching to the Latin alphabet as a natural step in the integration of the country in Europe/ new digital age/ or something along those lines. His conclusion seemed to be that "society wasn't mature enough".

There’s a new wave of nationalism emerging in Bulgaria. Any interference with the national identity would be seen as blasphemy, done by foreign agents paid by the “embassy”.

That’s why I said in 50 years. 50 years ago, before Solidarity in Poland, before Reagan, etc. - the Soviet Union seemed like it would last centuries. It’s a long time.

And although I have only visited Bulgaria and not lived there, I do live in a neighboring country and see how much Western culture / EU culture dominates the local youth culture.

On the institutional level, it would likely take the efforts of an Ataturk-like figure that wants to tie Bulgaria more to the West.

In the longer term, too many unpredictable factors can collide, so anything is possible.

Particularly in Bulgaria, the youth is dominated by western culture only at the surface level. It’s in their consumption patterns, the outfit and the slang. Apart from that, it’s not a western culture by a long shot. The competitive individualism is not there. The family is expected to give a good and steady start to their children, at the cost of the comfort of the parents. The national symbols like the alphabet are encoded and institutionalised through the educational system. For example, all schools are marching through cities on the 24th of May, to celebrate the alphabet and enlightenment (просвета) in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com