3 ms·
Well, we do have it. Of course, it is Latin based, but still.
by rimliu 7y ago
Well, we do have it. Of course, it is Latin based, but still.
- Koshkin 7y agoThe reason, in this case, is mostly historical (religious affiliation). At the same time, Latin alphabet is phonetic and as such it is not really a good single base for many languages that have more sounds than Latin (even there some letters represent two different sounds). Excessive use of diacritics is not a good solution. Some languages address this by mixing several base alphabets, but ideally, each should have its own alphabet; besides the obvious advantage, this allows to avoid issues arising from the sharing of an alphabet between completely different languages (like "literal" carrying over personal names etc. without taking their pronunciation into account; this issue even exists in regard to Chinese, where names spelled in pinyin are carried over into English leaving them unpronounceable for a native English reader; but forget pinyin: here is a last name - Chrzaszcz - you'll have a hard time even remembering how to pronounce it a while after you have been told how).
- rimliu 7y agoLithuanian is mostly phonetic. And "mostly" here is just a precaution to take some edge cases into account. Some diacritics just modify the length of the base sound (Ą, Ę, Į, Ų, Ū). I would not say that case Ė, Č, Š and Ž warrant having a completely new alphabet. If that was a case pretty much any language that has Latin-based alphabet should get a new one, because pretty much all of them have their own additions.