Thanks again to our guest blogger!
In high school or college, most of us who learned a foreign language, selected a language which used the Latin alphabet. These languages (French, Spanish, and German are just three examples) are used in most of North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. Now when we write a letter to an old friend using the remnants of the language that we have retained, it is fairly easy to sit at the keyboard and simply type. It is easy because English also uses the Latin alphabet.
Now imagine how much more complex typing is for regions on the boundaries where different writing systems exist. Here is a trilingual Ladakhi-English-Urdu dictionary.
It is used in regions of India and Pakistan. Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, is written in the Arabic script. English, one of the predominant languages in India, uses the Latin script. Ladaki, the language of the Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir state in northern India, uses the Tibetan script.
Just imagine the life of a typesetter or sign painter is in that region. Check out the map for a visual representation of the complexities!
