A language learners’ forum

tungemål wrote: ... I guess Mongolia decides to use/not use a script because of a reason. They want to move away from russian influence. How practical it would be to use the mongolian script is probably not a reason.

I presume that the Mongolian government’s announcement concerning the reintroduction of their national script was accompanied by an explanation. However, I would imagine that it was silent concerning the progressive and deliberate isolation of the citizenry from outside influences, which was most likely the true impetus for this decision.

Over the past few decades, throughout the world, there has been a significant increase in the measures designed to promote the cultures, the languages, the values, and the interests of increasingly narrowly-defined groups, be these ethnic, linguistic, national, tribal, religious, or whatever. The same pie is being sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. These efforts have been widely encouraged and applauded in many quarters because they result in increased recognition of the unique characteristics which define the members of these smaller-and-smaller groups, greater autonomy for their members, et cetera. I suspect that the Mongolian government’s decision concerning the national script is symptomatic of this trend: we’re different, we’re special, let’s go our own, separate way.

The inevitable result of these movements has been the increased Balkanization and disintegration of the larger, heterogeneous entities of which the smaller groups once formed a part and in which they de-emphasized their cultural differences in the interest of greater social harmony and a reduction of inter-group tensions. We’ve seen this movie before and, even though we know how it ends, some people seem intent on reliving the experience.

EDITED:
Typos.