MINDFULNESS & WELLBEING May 2026

Alphabets that changed over time

We often take the power of writing for granted, particularly if we only use a single or small number of writing systems in our own lives.

Writing systems have enabled humans past and present to preserve collective knowledge, create great works of literature, document events, and communicate across the miles. Communicating our ideas in writing has also been credited with helping humans to form more complex ideas and arguments by providing us with a means of recording, reorganising and refining our thoughts.

According to World’s Writing Systems, as of 2022 there were 293 known writing systems worldwide, around 156 of which are still currently in use, but since there are approximately seven thousand languages spoken in the world today, it’s clear that there’s a high level of overlap between writing systems used across all languages. Most if not all of the world’s writing systems fall into one of six categories depending on factors such as whether the writing system is phonetic or pictorical, and whether each unit of writing represents a single or composite sound. Technically, ‘alphabets’ such as Latin, which represent consonant and vowel sounds as separate symbols, constitute only one of these six categories, even though the word ‘alphabet’ is often used to refer to all writing systems.

Today, Latin script is the world’s most widely used writing system, and around 70% of the world’s population is believed to use some version of the Latin script.

Languages change over time and in some cases so do their writing systems. Sometimes countries or cultures shift to a different writing system as part of a national modernisation project or in order to distance themselves from colonialism or other negative historical connotations. In other cases, writing systems are developed or adapted to help boost national literacy or to create a more effective way of communicating the unique speech and pronunciation of a particular language. Alphabet changes have also been used as a means of aligning with neighbouring countries, easing international trade, and forging closer bonds between cultures coming from a similar language background.

Changing an alphabet or other writing system is not always easy, and some of the hazards include distancing subsequent generations of people from documents or other written material in the previous alphabet; unicode or typing issues surrounding the new language, particularly if it involves diacritical marks, as many modified alphabets do; compatibility with neighbouring countries that might use different scripts; the potential need to republish road signs and other official correspondence, and deciding whether to unilaterally adopt a different writing system or use the old and the new system simultaneously. All of these questions are particularly pertinent in places where more than one language is widely spoken (which is a lot of the world).

In this month’s translation industry updates, we’ll be looking at some of the places that have made the leap.

One interesting example of a nation that changed alphabet three times in the space of a hundred years is Azerbaijan. Like its westerly neighbour Türkiye, Azerbaijan had been using the Arabic alphabet until the 1920s when the Latin script was adopted. Unlike in Türkiye, the alphabet then changed again in 1939 when Azerbaijan adopted Cyrillic script like many other places under Soviet rule. After gaining independence in the early 1990s, in 2001 Azerbaijan readopted the Latin alphabet under a presidential decree which required official documents, outdoor advertising and signs to be written in Latin script and apparently also required all scientific and cultural literature to be reprinted, as reported by the Guardian at the time.

Azerbaijan is not the only post-Soviet country to have transitioned between writing systems. Kazakhstan is currently also in the process of phasing out Cyrillic in favour of Latin script with a transition period expected during which both writing systems will be used. Since Russian is the second official language of Kazakhstan, signs and official documents will be bilingual in Kazakh (using Latin script) and Russian (using Cyrillic script). Meanwhile, Serbia is often described as the only European country to simultaneously use two alphabets, with the Cyrillic alphabet reportedly continuing to resonate for historical and cultural reasons while the Latin alphabet is widely employed for practical purposes, particularly in online environments.

Out on the opposite side of the world, a number of other countries have adopted different alphabets. The Vietnamese language used to use a logographic script based on Chinese characters (‘chữ Hán’) introduced to Vietnam in 111 BCE, and from then on most official documents were written in literary Chinese until the twentieth century when a modified version of the Latin script adapted for Vietnamese took over. This shift left subsequent generations unable to read historical documents without having studied the Chinese characters but is also credited with creating a more effective system for relaying the pronunciation of Vietnamese and with boosting the national literacy rate at a time when far fewer people were able to read.

Literacy and education were also a key part of Korea’s transition from Chinese characters (known as ‘hanja’) to the hangeul script in usage today. As was the case in Vietnam, Chinese characters were not always successful in capturing the phonetics of spoken Korean and with this in mind plus a desire to help educate people from the working classes, King Sejong the Great commissioned scholars to create an alphabet that would make it easier for Koreans to read and write in their native language, with the new alphabet being officially proclaimed in 1446. To this day, the hangeul alphabet is widely admired by students of Korean as a foreign language due to its practicality, and in recent years it has also been used to write the indigenous Indonesian language Cia-Cia, more than 4,000 kilometres from Seoul, after being discovered to be more effective at conveying the sounds of the language than Latin script.

These are just a few examples of languages and cultures that have changed writing systems at different times for different reasons, but there must be many more examples too, including from smaller countries shifting between less frequently-used writing systems, so if you know of any other places that have adopted different scripts, please don’t hesitate to write in the comments.

Happy translating and writing, and see you again for next month’s updates!

Sources

ABC Net, January 2024

Indigenous Indonesians use Korean letters to save a dialect

https://www.abc.net.au/asia/indigenous-indonesians-use-korean-letters-to-save-dialect/103306022

BBC, October 2017

Kazakhstan to Qazaqstan: Why would a country switch its alphabet?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41800186

BBC Worklife, April 2018

The cost of changing an entire country’s alphabet

https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20180424-the-cost-of-changing-an-entire-countrys-alphabet

Danube On Thames, undated