I have long suspected of the Swedish spelling reform of 1906 what I have now seen expressed in a quote from a collaborator of Atatürk, about the Turkish alphabet reform.
Why does the Turkish language use the Latin alphabet instead of Arabic alphabet?
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Turkish-language-use-the-Latin-alphabet-instead-of-Arabic-alphabet-1
Now, go down to the answer of Mohammed Khateeb Kamran, knows basic Latin, Answered Sep 28, 2016. He quotes "İsmet İnönü, Turkey’s first PM, second President and Mustafa’s friend" as saying:
The goal of the alphabet reform is not to raise literacy rate. Before the Latin alphabet, literacy rate was low not because it was hard to learn the Ottoman alphabet. For many long years, the Ottoman state did not lean on mass education and literacy issues because of the long lasting wars; if the Ottoman state had paid attention to the literacy and education, the literacy rate would have been higher. One of the main goals of revolution was to close the doors of the past to the newer generations, break the ties with the Arab-Islam world and to lessen the influence of religion on the public. Newer generations would not learn the old script and we would control the works written in the new script. So, since the religious works were written in Arabic script they would not be read and therefore the influence of religion on the public would lessen.
The situation was a bit similar in Sweden. There was a state "Church" which was very compliant with power, therefore already secularising, but there were both philosophers and theologians who had written (sometimes very wrongly, but with more fervour) during the 19th C.
One Atterbom was half Neo-Platonic, somewhat nostalgic of Catholicism since his voyage to Italy (a bit like H. C. Andersen about Greek Orthodox). He is my favourite author in my own language. His work is considered illegible in original spelling and editors have not reedited all of it in updated spelling. So, those who have not learned that older "jern" is what you were taught as "järn", older "afund" what you were taught as "avund" in school, are not reading most of his work.
This is the main reason why in Swedish I boycott the spelling reform, precisely as if I were Russian, I would try to get as soon as possible books with the three letters abolished by Communists, and if I were a Turk I would learn the Arabic script of Turkish. In England, reading Shakespear or Boswell's life of Dr Johnson or Jonathan Swift or James Ramsay or whatever doesn't require acquiring another spelling (with Shakespear : you do need to get used to thou and ye and to -st ending for thou and to occasionally -th for -s in 3:d p. sg). You simply have to notice which words they used which you don't use and which words have changed meaning. End of story. In Swedish, school children being hurried over a taste of Swedish in older spelling, some of it very other (the language stabilised at c. 1700, later than in England, older Bibles and epics are difficult!) get the impression that anything NOT in the modern spelling is too difficult and hence don't read it.
I am trying to promote another attitude to older spelling, if not to the pre-1700's one. And, no, despite rumours to the contrary, I am not trying to imitate the 19th C language in all its aspects, just its grammar, boycotting bureaucratic rule changes for spelling (1906) and morphology (1950). So, since I am not trying to imitate the 19th C language, I am not failing. If I were more read in Sweden, I think my use of Swedish would help to foil what I think are the real purposes of Fridtjuv Bergh, the "İsmet İnönü" so to speak of Sweden. But some crooks involved with positions in psychiatry and abusing it for leftist goals, have stamped me as "imagining I speak 19th C Swedish" which is balderdash. They have, by this balderdash, made my position in Sweden isolated and my prospects, should I return, bleak.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Vigil of Sts Simon and Jude
27.X.2017
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