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       #Post#: 6792--------------------------------------------------
       "A Catastrophic Success"
       By: Alharacas Date: September 22, 2018, 6:23 am
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       If you're interested in reading about language/s, this is a
       short book/long article in pdf about the Turkish language reform
       instigated by Atatürk, well written and occasionally quite
       funny:
  HTML http://www.politicalavenue.com/languageschool/Turkish%20Language%20Learning%20Pack/Grammar/The%20Turkish%20Language%20Reform.pdf
       #Post#: 6793--------------------------------------------------
       Re: "A Catastrophic Success"
       By: Aliph Date: September 22, 2018, 7:02 am
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       [quote author=Alharacas link=topic=466.msg6792#msg6792
       date=1537615439]
       If you're interested in reading about language/s, this is a
       short book/long article in pdf about the Turkish language reform
       instigated by Atatürk, well written and occasionally quite
       funny:
  HTML http://www.politicalavenue.com/languageschool/Turkish%20Language%20Learning%20Pack/Grammar/The%20Turkish%20Language%20Reform.pdf
       [/quote]
       Hi Alharacas. I was thinking about Ataturk today!!!!I will read
       it later. I passed the last five hours sweating about a peace of
       a beautiful short story in Arabic. When I saw that you picked up
       the topic of the difficulties of a language I immediately
       thought about Ataturk and his reform on writing the Turkish
       language with western characters (I hope I am not wrong... no
       time to check that I have other things to do today).
       I had opened a thread about Arabic fonts on Italki and I think
       that that topic immediately rallied up my worst enemies from
       Casablanca to Riad and even maybe to Teheran (I know they are
       not Arabs but use the same script).
       I was asking if the difficulty of the Arabic script wasn’t a way
       to control the power of knowledge. I think it is a valid
       question for Japanese and Chinese too.
       #Post#: 6797--------------------------------------------------
       Re: "A Catastrophic Success"
       By: Alharacas Date: September 22, 2018, 7:29 am
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       Very glad that you read this post, Sofia! I was thinking that
       you in particular might be interested in reading the pdf as it's
       - inevitably - also about Arabic and Persian. :)
       I'd always thought that if you learnt how to read and write a
       certain script as a child, then that would seem easy to you as a
       matter of course?
       It seems to me that - and this is borne out by what Lewis says -
       it's rather the flowery, fancy wording than the script itself
       which was (is?) supposed to keep ordinary people in the dark.
       #Post#: 6799--------------------------------------------------
       Re: "A Catastrophic Success"
       By: Aliph Date: September 22, 2018, 9:07 am
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       Well the Arabic alphabet in itself isn’t difficult to learn but
       its script is difficult to read!
       No capital letters. No short vowels. Practically no ponctuation.
       Certain words are written in a way that they seem two words etc.
       It’s not like Greek or Russian alphabets. Reading Arabic is a
       riddle!
       So you already must know what you are going to read in order to
       understand. I think this kind of script doesn't help to diminish
       the gap between intellectual language and everyday language. I
       will take time to give a look to this book about the reform of
       the Turkish language.
       I think that languages are not sterilized cultural objects.
       There are always political considerations behind. One cannot
       avoid ideology.
       I found a link with a commentari about Geoffrey Lewis’s book
  HTML https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231960788_GEOFFREY_LEWIS_The_Turkish_language_reform_a_catastrophic_success_New_York_Oxford_University_Press_1999_Pp_190_HB_6500
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