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Day: May 2, 2016
Why is it possible for the Cyrillic script to be adopted in so many languages?
What made Roman script suited for adoption? The fact it was adopted a lot. Latin on its own is not particularly suited for a lot of phonemes, but it was the only game in town in Western and Central Europe, and that meant there was a long, long tradition of workarounds—both digraphs and diacritics. So […]
Is there a “White Black” prototypical character in the Balkan, Turkish, Middle Eastern, or Arabic folklore or fairy tales?
Not aware of one in Greek folklore. Lots of Arapis in Greek fairy tales, filling the same niche as ogres and giants—sometimes benevolent, sometimes malicious, but always exotic. But not aware of White Arapis. Answered 2016-05-02 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Is-there-a-White-Black-prototypical-character-in-the-Balkan-Turkish-Middle-Eastern-or-Arabic-folklore-or-fairy-tales/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
How has it happened and Kemal Ataturk did not adopt Greek Alphabet, although in the Ottoman empire the Greek (and Cyrillic) were spoken?
There was use of Greek script to write Turkish: Karamanli Turkish. Illustrated in https://www.quora.com/How-has-it… But without some concerted linguistic work, Greek script was not much better suited to Turkish than Arabic script was. No differentiation between <ı> and <u> for example: both ου. No systematic differentiation of <c> and <ç>, just as Greek (at the […]