[Marxism] Cyrillic vs. Latin alphabet

[David Walters <dwalters@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have to say I disagree with Tom on this, respectively.

I find the whole move to Latin to be a sign of the grossest aspects of
US cultural-imperialism, yes, just like the MacD's going up everywhere.
It represents a *sick* homogenization of the world culture for the
benefit of only one thing: imperialism, and US imperialism at that.

Who cares if Indonesians or Russians can understand English speakers
better? Does it make us English speakers understand Basara Indonesian
any better? It will represent a cultural-class divide, just as sections
of the Latin American ruling class in 19th Century conversed in French
rather than Spanish.

Ideally, if any non-Latin alphabet changes, it should do it the way the
Japanese have done it. The Japanese you ask? Yes. They've
*incorporated* Latin letters *into* their alphabet, so that they are
recognizable by the Japanese people, usually in advertisements, but at
least it's done in a less intrusive way, and it doesn't push out the
native Kanji and other Japanese character sets.

Some other things to consider. Despite the overwhelming opposition by
the Serbian people to NATO's attacks on them, there has been, since the
1980s, a shift away from Cyrillic to Latin by Serbia's youth. The
administrator of the Serbo-Croatian section of the Marxists Internet
Archive was discussing this with me. He was a year out of high school
when we discussed it. He's part of this same process, where young
people 'look West' (and, no, he doesn't mean Croatia...) and learn the
Latin script to their language since it gives them a leg up in
advancement, and its... cool. And..it makes Serbian integration into
capitalist Europe that much easier.

David


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism