Why Asian and Middle-Eastern languages have survived for so long using their original scripts, unlike Slavic languages?

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Slavic languages were written in Cyrillic, but after a while, they started to use the Latin script, and the languages were completely split into separate languages using different scripts, now being known as Eastern and Western Slavic. However, looking at Asian and Middle-Eastern languages, we see that they are not splitting into different languages using different scripts like Slavic languages. Why did that not happen to them?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

This never happened in the first place.

First, the split of Slavic languages occurred before the Cyrillic script was invented, and the adoption of Cyrillic or Latin scripts mostly depended on whether the state religion was Catholic or Orthodox Christianity. (With some exceptions.) The split of Slavic languages itself was largely a factor of geography and politics – different nations spoke different dialects that eventually became different languages altogether.

Second, “Asian and Middle-Eastern languages” is a very broad category encompassing many language families. Some of them *have* split, or started using different scripts. Others haven’t. Again, it often depends on geography and politics.

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