eli5 How do languages have the same alphabet (like Spanish and English) but are so different with their words?

Question

eli5 How do languages have the same alphabet (like Spanish and English) but are so different with their words?

In: 2

Answer 1

Great answers by others below:

Western Europe tended to use Latin based alphabet, while Eastern Europe used a Greek based alphabet: modified by monks Cyrill & Methodius.

In regions on the border, like in the former Yugoslavia, you have basically the same spoken language: Serbo-Croat, but different alphabets were used. The Croats used Latin letters and the Serbs used Cyrillic.

Compare: *Dobar Dan* to *Добар Дан*.

It gets even more interesting when you look at Turkish. Older Turkish used the Arabic alphabet (from year 900 to 1928), but switched to Latin letters after 1928.

They had to adjust writing from right to left, to left to right!!