File talk:Latin alphabet world distribution.svg

Kazaksthan

In Kazaksthan the "Qazaqsa" is the Kazaksthan language written in latin alphabet. There are official projects to substitute cyrillic with latin alphabet. Please, read http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qazaqsa

I believe should be used the light green color in the map for Kazakisthan.--Paul0559 (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

This checks out --Indolering (talk) 23:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Kurdastan

Iraq or at laest Iraqi kurdastan should be highlighted in light green to reflect the latin kurdesh alphabet.--J intela (talk) 06:00, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

English Wikipedia states that Kurdish is spoken by 20% of the country and the Kurdish language entry states that the Arab script is used in Iraq. Is this incorrect? --Indolering (talk) 23:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

China

Given that both the PRC and ROC (Taiwan) use Latin as their official phonetic system which will be found in virtually all modern Chinese dictionaries, should they not be included as co-official? It is not just a romanisation system like Revised Romanization for Korean, but serves a purpose to the native speakers themselves, and is particularly important for computer input. - 218.247.31.131 16:09, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

From what I can tell, it's much more "supplemental" than "co-official", given that connected passages of Chinese are rarely written in Latin text for any "mainstream" use. There's a widespread use of Pinyin in place signs (along with Chinese characters), but other than that, the uses all appear to be very narrowly technical and specialized. AnonMoos (talk) 22:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I think supplemental would be more accurate for romaji in Japanese. I'm not sure how you define "official", but it's a State-defined standard for phonetic transcription. To me that meets the definition of some sort of "officialness". It's also the first script taught to (Chinese) children learning to write Chinese in school. (I was already aware it appears on road signs, I'm writing from within China). Also, on the reverse of banknotes, where official regional languages/scripts are included, the very first is pinyin "ZHONGGUO RENMIN YINHANG" (it's also the largest). The fact that it is in pinyin is intentional as 中国人民银行 has a widely-known English name they could have used (People's Bank of China). The website is even pbc.gov.cn, but yet they use the pinyin, because it's an official. Shop signs that do not have an English name routinely have pinyin marked also. I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just trying to establish what the criteria being used for the map is. - 218.247.31.131 05:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Pinyin has official status for supplemental uses, but it's rarely used to write ordinary connected text passages (sentences). To my mind, "co-official" would mean something much more like the status of Latin and Cyrillic alphabets in the former Yugoslavia. AnonMoos (talk) 05:40, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Japan

As far as I can tell, the case of Japan is much like China -- the Latin alphabet is used on place-name signs, in fashionable imitation or pseudo-imitation of western cultures in advertisements, and in a few other limited contexts, but very rarely to write connected text passages of the official language of Japan, Japanese. Therefore it's difficult to say in what sense Latin is an official script of Japan. AnonMoos (talk) 22:14, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

It's very common in running text, much as Greek is common in English text. It's also the script of international finance and law, so if we're going to accept that, we'd need to color the entire globe green. (I see we're missing Antarctica and the oceans.) Kwamikagami (talk) 22:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Latin letters are used semi-sporadically in Japanese text, but rarely is a series of complete Japanese sentences (written by Japanese people in Japan for Japanese people) written with the Latin alphabet. AnonMoos (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Pinyin is more common in China, even used for military communications, but we don't color in China. Kwamikagami (talk) 00:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Japan certainly shouldn't be listed as dark-green. --Indolering (talk) 23:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Third Category

This map attempts to represent the romanization of writing systems around the world and I don't think it would be intellectually honest to classify China or Japan as "using a Latin alphabet."

However, China and Japan heavily use romanized versions of their writing systems. China uses Pinyin in an official capacity and the use of a romanized alphabet as an input method is popular in both countries.

What if we had an "other" category for mainstream usage of a romanized writing system? I agree with other comments above that this should go beyond "used in business and finance" because, well, that just reflects English's dominance. In Taiwan, for example, they apparently use a non-rōmanji input method, so we wouldn't run the risk of coloring the whole map green. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Indolering (talk • contribs) 00:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

"Input methods" are computer typing shortcut stuff which doesn't change the nature of what is written. And Japan and China use romanizations in place-name signs, and a few other short functional contexts, but rarely in ordinary connected sentences-long texts written in China in Chinese to be read by Chinese people, or written in Japan in Japanese to be read by Japanese people. AnonMoos (talk) 08:52, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I do agree that the Latin script is at least co-official in China. Required in lot of places, on official documents (including only for national use, leaving aside the case of passports, it is part of the identity of peoples), also it is the only script for various Chinese languages also recognized at least regionally (along also with other scripts, notably Arabic, Mongolian, Yi). It is not just "supplemental" (like Bopomofo). Even the ideographic script is not enough in lot of cases because Latin is not ambiguous (and there's no harmonization for lot of terms and the ideographic scripts is not fully standardized and not even known beside about 2000 sinograms for common use). Sinograms also have a lot of variations, many of them supported by just a few people inventing them all the time (there are somefuzzy rules for creating semi-phonetic sinograms, but the composition and simplifications follow no standard like the one used for Hangul in Korean and other simplified subsets inherited from it: kanas in Japanese, Bopomofo...). There even exists some sinograms that have borrowed some alphabetic letters and integrated them in their compounds with minor or NO modifications at all; numerous examples in Japanese (with letter forms borrowed from Latin/Greek/Cyrillic or Tibetan and other Indic abugidas, and various symbols and diacritics! verdy_p (talk) 14:41, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Taiwan: Co-official since 2017

Taiwanese Aboriginal languages, using Latin Alphabet, became co-official language of Taiwan since June 2017. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/07/20/2003674932 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elnino199127 (talk • contribs) 21:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC) --Elnino199127 (talk) 21:54, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Ethiopia

Aside from its federal language (Amharic), there are several official regional languages in the country such as Oromo and Afar which are written in Latin alphabet. Ethiopia should be in light green also? 66.2.62.183 14:03, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

North Macedonia

Should be light green as Albanian is co-official language at a state level, and some other official regional languages such as Turkish, Bosnian and Aromanian. 152.130.7.10

Mali

Since 2022, Mali has at leas 13 official languages and some of them are not written in the Latin alphabet. It should be changed to light green. 152.131.15.97