5 ms·

Not to mention numerous ex-Soviet countries have replaced their Cyrillic system for Latin ones to demonstrate their independence from Russian colonialism.

motionlessveloc 5d ago
And many of those Cyrillic systems had in turn replaced previous Arabic/Persian-based writing systems.
Lumich 5d ago
I'm wondering what script the North American Indians† would have replaced the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place and not been all but exterminated instead. Well, anyway … “evil Russians colonialists”. † I know the PC term in North America is “first nations” or some such but for those outside NA using the old term is perfectly fine.
- gucci-on-fleek 4d ago
  > I'm wondering what script the North American Indians The Cherokee syllabary [0] and the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics [1] are both scripts designed for use with North American indigenous languages, and both are still widely used (relative to the usage of indigenous languages in general). > the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place Well, history is complicated: it's certainly true that the vast majority of the colonizers were trying to ban the indigenous languages, but there have always been a few people working with the local groups to understand and develop their languages, even hundreds of years ago. And over the last 50 years or so, there's been lots of support for language preservation and education. > and not been all but exterminated instead I'm not sure if you're talking about the languages or the people here, but there are some 6 million Indigenous people [2] and 700k speakers of indigenous languages [3] [4] [5] in North America today, so I wouldn't quite call either "all but exterminated". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Amer... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#Northern_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Am... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#/media/File:Indigenous_language_speakers_in_Canada-3.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#/media/Fil... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States#List_of_Native_American_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States...
  - Lumich 4d ago
    Yes, my comment was a bit over the top. The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable. And I know there are always good people even when the dominant force is bad. « there are some 6 million Indigenous people » — Now where have I seen that figure before? ^^ ChatGPT tells me there are even 9.7 million people in the USA who identify as "American Indian or Alaska Native" (2020 census). I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated". Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization (in which they had not yet been confined to reservations, but gradually driven from their ancestral lands "by treaty") to what was to become Oklahoma (part of the 1803 Napoleon purchase) by the aptly named 1830 "Indian Removal Act", which is why today OK has the highest absolute number of Indians (730k), followed by Arizona, New Mexico and California (annexed from or "ceded" by Mexico, formerly Nueva España). So, I exaggerated. They were not exterminated, but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization.
    - gucci-on-fleek 3d ago
      > The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable. Yup, this is unfortunately the case. Colonization definitely made things vastly worse than they were before, but the modern world has become so connected that it's challenging for small languages to survive: young people want to read books, watch TV, and get an education, but it's hard to support all that in a language with only 50k speakers. Bilingualism helps a lot here, but if people can only use their languages to speak to their families, then they're less likely to teach it to their children. For some further background, I took a class in a local indigenous language last year, so I know a tiny bit of one indigenous language [0], but that language has less than 10k speakers in total. Everyone is putting in a lot of work to preserve it, and it's universally taught in all the schools on the reservation, but unfortunately that's not even enough people to sustain a local newspaper. And to make matters worse, there are two other completely distinct indigenous languages spoken in the same city, so the indigenous people can only use English to speak to each other if they're from different tribes. > I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated". To be fair, there are cases like the Beothuk [1], but that's a rarity. Actually, before I had looked up the numbers, I had assumed that the populations were far larger than they actually are. It looks like that the US only has twice as many Indigenous people as Canada, yet 10× the overall population. I live in Canada, so I had assumed that the proportions were similar, so you're not the only one here who was surprised by the actual numbers :) > Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization […] but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization. Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Canada has plenty of its own atrocities, but we've thankfully never done anything like that. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoney_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoney_language [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk#Extinction
inkyoto 4d ago
Not numerous but specifically Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all four countries speak Turkic languages, and they chose to do so to align themselves with Turkey. The adoption has been rather slow, and previous Cyrillic based scripts remain in wide use, though. Moldova switched for a similar reason as Moldovans speak Romanian, and they did so to align themselves with Romania. That is a total of five countries. The actual history is rather more nuanced, as after the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks – intent, at least in principle, upon eradicating Great-Russian chauvinism and weakening the Russian cultural dominance – introduced the policy of «korenizatsiia», or «nativisation». The new policy encouraged non-Russian populations to cultivate distinct national identities, use their own languages in administration and education and, where indigenous languages had previously lacked established writing systems, develop scripts and literary standards of their own: «Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in Soviet republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. This policy was implemented even in areas with large Russian-speaking populations; for instance, all children in Ukraine were taught in the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenizatsiia facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life. In that manner, the cadre of the local Communist Party were promoted to every level of government, and ethnic Russians working in said governments were required to learn the local language and culture of the given Soviet republic»[0]. For that reason, nearly all new writing scripts developed between 1920's and mid-1930's were Latin based. Joseph Stalin, a Georgian himself, ended and reversed the policy in the mid-1930's and instructed the Latin-based scripts to be replaced with the Cyrillic-based ones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia
- Lumich 4d ago
  This somewhat counter-intuitive bolshevist policy of regionalization and decentralisation starts making sense if Richard Poe is right, who says they (them being mostly Jews) were working for the British. How the British invented Communism (and blamed it on the Jews) • Richard Poe @ RTF (Matthew Ehret) • 2h01 • https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw

motionlessveloc 5d ago

And many of those Cyrillic systems had in turn replaced previous Arabic/Persian-based writing systems.

Lumich 5d ago

I'm wondering what script the North American Indians† would have replaced the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place and not been all but exterminated instead. Well, anyway … “evil Russians colonialists”. † I know the PC term in North America is “first nations” or some such but for those outside NA using the old term is perfectly fine.

gucci-on-fleek 4d ago
> I'm wondering what script the North American Indians The Cherokee syllabary [0] and the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics [1] are both scripts designed for use with North American indigenous languages, and both are still widely used (relative to the usage of indigenous languages in general). > the one given to them by their English-speaking colonizers with had they been given any in the first place Well, history is complicated: it's certainly true that the vast majority of the colonizers were trying to ban the indigenous languages, but there have always been a few people working with the local groups to understand and develop their languages, even hundreds of years ago. And over the last 50 years or so, there's been lots of support for language preservation and education. > and not been all but exterminated instead I'm not sure if you're talking about the languages or the people here, but there are some 6 million Indigenous people [2] and 700k speakers of indigenous languages [3] [4] [5] in North America today, so I wouldn't quite call either "all but exterminated". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Amer... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#Northern_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Am... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#/media/File:Indigenous_language_speakers_in_Canada-3.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#/media/Fil... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States#List_of_Native_American_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States...
- Lumich 4d ago
  Yes, my comment was a bit over the top. The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable. And I know there are always good people even when the dominant force is bad. « there are some 6 million Indigenous people » — Now where have I seen that figure before? ^^ ChatGPT tells me there are even 9.7 million people in the USA who identify as "American Indian or Alaska Native" (2020 census). I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated". Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization (in which they had not yet been confined to reservations, but gradually driven from their ancestral lands "by treaty") to what was to become Oklahoma (part of the 1803 Napoleon purchase) by the aptly named 1830 "Indian Removal Act", which is why today OK has the highest absolute number of Indians (730k), followed by Arizona, New Mexico and California (annexed from or "ceded" by Mexico, formerly Nueva España). So, I exaggerated. They were not exterminated, but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization.
  - gucci-on-fleek 3d ago
    > The moreless catastrophic decline of their languages was perhaps unavoidable. Yup, this is unfortunately the case. Colonization definitely made things vastly worse than they were before, but the modern world has become so connected that it's challenging for small languages to survive: young people want to read books, watch TV, and get an education, but it's hard to support all that in a language with only 50k speakers. Bilingualism helps a lot here, but if people can only use their languages to speak to their families, then they're less likely to teach it to their children. For some further background, I took a class in a local indigenous language last year, so I know a tiny bit of one indigenous language [0], but that language has less than 10k speakers in total. Everyone is putting in a lot of work to preserve it, and it's universally taught in all the schools on the reservation, but unfortunately that's not even enough people to sustain a local newspaper. And to make matters worse, there are two other completely distinct indigenous languages spoken in the same city, so the indigenous people can only use English to speak to each other if they're from different tribes. > I was wrongly exaggerating in claiming they had been "all but exterminated". To be fair, there are cases like the Beothuk [1], but that's a rarity. Actually, before I had looked up the numbers, I had assumed that the populations were far larger than they actually are. It looks like that the US only has twice as many Indigenous people as Canada, yet 10× the overall population. I live in Canada, so I had assumed that the proportions were similar, so you're not the only one here who was surprised by the actual numbers :) > Instead, they were removed from the territories that underwent English colonization […] but they were uprooted or eradicated from the lands of their forefathers under English colonization. Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Canada has plenty of its own atrocities, but we've thankfully never done anything like that. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoney_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoney_language [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk#Extinction

inkyoto 4d ago

Not numerous but specifically Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – all four countries speak Turkic languages, and they chose to do so to align themselves with Turkey. The adoption has been rather slow, and previous Cyrillic based scripts remain in wide use, though. Moldova switched for a similar reason as Moldovans speak Romanian, and they did so to align themselves with Romania. That is a total of five countries. The actual history is rather more nuanced, as after the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks – intent, at least in principle, upon eradicating Great-Russian chauvinism and weakening the Russian cultural dominance – introduced the policy of «korenizatsiia», or «nativisation». The new policy encouraged non-Russian populations to cultivate distinct national identities, use their own languages in administration and education and, where indigenous languages had previously lacked established writing systems, develop scripts and literary standards of their own: «Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in Soviet republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. This policy was implemented even in areas with large Russian-speaking populations; for instance, all children in Ukraine were taught in the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenizatsiia facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life. In that manner, the cadre of the local Communist Party were promoted to every level of government, and ethnic Russians working in said governments were required to learn the local language and culture of the given Soviet republic»[0]. For that reason, nearly all new writing scripts developed between 1920's and mid-1930's were Latin based. Joseph Stalin, a Georgian himself, ended and reversed the policy in the mid-1930's and instructed the Latin-based scripts to be replaced with the Cyrillic-based ones. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia

Lumich 4d ago
This somewhat counter-intuitive bolshevist policy of regionalization and decentralisation starts making sense if Richard Poe is right, who says they (them being mostly Jews) were working for the British. How the British invented Communism (and blamed it on the Jews) • Richard Poe @ RTF (Matthew Ehret) • 2h01 • https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw https://youtu.be/Cxen-IzX-Gw