Why is the Latin script not a standard?

Answer

Dear Eric,

That’s easier said than done.

To begin with, it is not at all true that the Latin script can be applied to all languages ​​without any problem. Even in languages ​​that already use the Latin script, the Latin script is not without problems. The Latin script was designed centuries ago for Latin and no language other than Latin. (Nuance: the alphabet used by the Romans was adopted by the Greeks and Etruscans from the Phoenicians; they adapted it to the needs of the Latin language.) So the Latin script has been adapted for Latin, but still not for any other language. The Latin script is suitable for Latin because most characters correspond to only one sound. It is annoying for us that the Romans did not distinguish between short and long vowels when writing, but for them that must have been no problem.

Due to the appearance of Latin during the emergence of the later national European languages ​​(German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch …), those national languages ​​simply adopted the Latin alphabet. At the time when writing in Dutch was started, the European international scholarly language was Latin. That is why Dutch has adopted the Latin alphabet. The same goes for French, German … But the Latin alphabet was much less suitable for Dutch or French or German … than for Latin itself.

If we now look at Dutch, you see that there are many more vowels than there are vowel letters. Dutch has many more vowels than Latin. So we have to constantly make weird combinations of letters to make individual vowels visible in writing. We only have the a, e, i, o, u and y. And we also have the disadvantage that the i and the y represent the same vowel. We need to make letter combinations to represent certain other vowels, such as oe and eu. The a, e, i, o and u are used alternately in open and closed syllables to represent ten different vowels. The a is a long (palatal) a in an open syllable (eg “later”), but a short (velare) a in a closed syllable (eg “lat”). And if a long (palatal) a ends up in a closed syllable (eg “late”), we have to write the a twice. That system was developed in this way precisely because the Latin alphabet is not suitable for Dutch. The letter e is even worse. It can represent three sounds in Dutch. For example, pay attention to the pronunciation of the e in the word “teaching”. Three different e’s.

The solution that Dutch has chosen to represent fourteen vowels (not to mention diphthongs) with six characters, is not the same solution that German has chosen to write its own collection of vowels. And English and French also do things differently. In Dutch, the oe sound is represented by oe, in German with u. In Dutch, the uu sound is represented by u (in open syllable) or uu (in closed syllable). In German, another trick is used: the umlaut sign. So the uu sound is written as ü.

Using the same Latin alphabet internationally and therefore worldwide is only half a solution to improve communication worldwide. It makes letters more recognizable, but if every language uses the Latin alphabet in a different way to put its sounds on paper, the chaos remains incalculable. We can more or less convert Chinese into Latin script. But do we do that according to the Dutch interpretation of that Latin script? Or the English? Or …? Just look at the difference between the Dutch, English, French, German transcription of Russian. Different every time. Владимир Владимирович Путин is in Dutch Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, in English Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, in French Vladimir Vladimirovitch Poutine and in German Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Putin. To be able to read the German rendering of the Russian name, you need to know how to pronounce w in German.

We should therefore agree internationally to have the twenty-six letters of the Latin alphabet correspond to a sound everywhere in the same way. And that is almost impossible, for example because a w in Dutch does not sound the same as in German, nor does it sound like in French. And then I don’t even compare Dutch with an Asian or African language.

Sincerely,

Peter Debrabandere