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Are they a majority of languages if counted? I guess it also matters if you count the number of languages or if you count the number of people writing them.
by msh 4y ago
Are they a majority of languages if counted? I guess it also matters if you count the number of languages or if you count the number of people writing them.
- gumby 4y agoLet’s just use Greek and its descendants (Latin, Greek and cyrillic alphabets) and Brahmic-derived writing (we said “alphabet” when I was a kid but now ppl say “ Abugida“. There are about 200 languages spoken in Europe, all of which use these alphabets. India has over a hundred “major” languages and about 1600 others, most of which use Bramic writing alphabets (the major exception, Urdu, uses a form of Arabic writing). So a big imbalance! Oh, you want speakers? merely counting people who read Hanzi + Arabic-Alphabet readers + the Indian subcontinent gets you more half the world‘s population. And there are hundreds, maybe over a thousand writing systems.
- bmn__ 4y ago> in Europe, all of which use these alphabets Latin is much more wide-spread than that! You neglect whole of America and Australasia and half of Africa. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Writing_systems_worldwide.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Writing_... > So a big imbalance! When we sum up realistically, then world-wide the amount of users of writing systems with case/"cameral" are about equally balanced with those without.