Dante was the first person to write serious verse in Italian, true. He wanted his work to be accesible to the common reader, something that, as you say, was somewhat frowned upon by the literary establishment of the day. But AFAIK written Italian does predate his work by quite some time. Note that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates from a time when Latin was being used for most religious and literary works (Bede, Alcuin, etc.)
My point? It seems to me unlikely that Brithini would be the only written language in the west. Agreed, in many of the more conservative countries this might be so. And I'm sure its used for discourses between wizards, in ecclesiastical texts and the like. But in at least some countries (I'm thinking of Loskalm, myself) there would, IMO, be local writing as well. I'd agree that using it might lead people to think of you as uneducated, though!
Also, I'd have thought that to Read/Write Brithini you'd also need to be able to speak it (though not necessarily very well) if it really is a phonetic alphabet. Probably not a problem for wizards, but I don't see much evidence for this in other people. OK, that last sentence is largely an argument from the rules, and so could well be cobblers!
It seems more likely to me that the universal written language is intended to be ideogrammatic. But having said that, writing in an abstruse language that nobody but wizards can understand seems a much more fun idea. So, what the heck, I agree with Nick: it's phonetic. But there are some of the other Western languages have their own written forms, too, IMO.
Peter Metcalfe suggested that the written Western language might be analogous with Arabic. Judging from the Arabs from various regions (Iraq and Lebanon mainly, but also a few other countries) the variations Peter mentions are more dialects than true languages. Sort of like Loskalmi and Carmanian with their 1/2 comprehension modifiers rather than Loskalmi and Seshnegi, which I would expect to be far more distinctive to the point of not being able to share a phonetic written language. Frex, AFAIK there is no way to use one phonetic written language for both French and Italian, even though these languages are quite closely related. Entirely IMO, of course, and based on wholly subjective opinion.
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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