In Turkey, Attatürk launched a sweeping linguistic revolution, switching to the Latin alphabet, enforcing a different language style, and making the new literacy system available to the entire public. Greece also experienced controversies over the appropriate literal language – whether it should be “Katharevousa” or the popular dialect “Dimotiki”.

The Arabic-speaking world remained in a diglotic state, but it is hardly surprising that this state-of-affairs is being challenged repeatedly, especially as technology constantly pushes toward widespread literacy, namely toward reducing the gap between the literate language and the common vernacular.

From my experience, Egyptians are less comfortable with this state of diglossia than other Arabic-speakers. This probably has to do with the fact that Egyptian Arabic acquired more prestige over the years. A speaker of African American Vernacular English would be more comfortable if he was told that he had to learn Latin at school in order to be literate. He probably noticed in an early age that his vernacular is not widely accepted, and he knew he would have to learn a new language at school. An English speaker from Oxford might wonder why he must use Latin in writing rather than his native English, which is so widely accepted anyway.