Reflections on the privilege of writing in the Roman alphabet

As a society we’ve adopted the paradigm of selection over creation. As a result, outside organizations get to decide what, exactly you get to select from.

This may not seem all that important. But what it comes down to is that those of us who use the Latin alphabet are incredibly privileged. Yes, the Latin alphabet is the most commonly used writing system, both by the number of languages it represents and the number of writers in those languages. But that only makes it worse, I think, because it allows us to squabble over the skin color of little cartoon people when there are plenty of people who are not currently permitted to type in their native language.

For an in-depth look at this issue from the eyes of a person who speaks from experience (i.e., not myself), I highly recommend the article “I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can’t Write My Name.”

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