Link: “Michael Cannings (@formosaphile): How many competing writing systems can one language have? …”
Interesting Twitter thread about the multitude of different writing systems used to write Hokkien! (Saved on archive.is, because I have very little faith in the longevity of Twitter links these days.) It’s difficult to write in Chinese characters, because about 15% of Hokkien words have no cognate in Mandarin, nor an ancestor in Old Chinese. There are a few different systems used to write those words (and sometimes for writing whole texts), including ones based on the Latin alphabet, bopomofo, and apparently a Hangeul-based/inspired script which was new to me. Cool stuff 🙂
Jessica Smith is a socialist and a feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.