Reply To: How can I learn Yiddish?

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akuperma
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zahavasdad: Several languages changed alphabets in the 20th century, largely as a way to prevent the population from being able to read traditional literature and limit them to reading the new script used in the books the government wanted them to read. The support for changing from the Hebrew script to Roman script was considered by secular Jews as a way of encouraging Jews to get away from Torah. Russia switched several languages in their territories from Arabic script in order to distance the populations from Islam (Turkey did likewise). For Yiddish and Hebrew, opposition from frum Jews was a major factor, To make such a change work, the government has to be able to use extreme methods to prevent people from using the form script (e.g. gulags, executions, etc.).