switching scripts

[Peter Hook]

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Dear James,

        You will find that (in the Northern Areas of Pakistan) a similar
situation obtains with Burushaski (Nastaliq ceding to Roman) and with (if
I'm not mistaken on this - John Mock at UCSC is the expert) Wakhi.

        All the best,

                Peter

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, James Ward wrote:

> VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
> Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
>           John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
> Details:  Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN
> Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say:
>           SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
>           (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)
> Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu
>
> Thank you to both Peter Hook and Greg Cooper for your replies to my
> questions about Balti scripts.  It was certainly a surprise to hear that
> Roman letters are being used by younger writers.  My first impression
> from the responses is that the scarcity of published works in Balti does
> not necessarily indicate that there is not an active writing culture,
> even if it is in a state of flux currently.  I suppose most of the
> printed works are in Urdu.
>
> I wonder if this is a fairly unique situation?  I can't immediately
> think of any other "minority languages" which are in a social position
> to switch among unrelated script systems in this manner.  Often there
> will be instability of spelling in the languages of smaller communities
> within nations that use different official languages.  This is only to
> be expected if they haven't been standardized due to widespread print
> media, but usually in those cases there isn't much question about which
> alphabetic system to use.
>
> Anyway, many thanks again for your responses.  They have given me food
> for thought.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> James Ward
>