RFE/RL reports that Kazakhstan is considering switching to the Latin alphabet. It was Nazarbaev himself who suggested that the transition should be made, following earlier switches made in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He said, though, that the move should not be done too quickly and that both will have to exist side-by-side for a while. If Uzbekistan is to be mentioned as an example though, the Kazakhs would be better served by trying to avoid eternally-shifting deadlines.*
But that’s not all. Nazarbaev also wants to promote the use of Kazakh by government employees and replace Russian scientific terms with Kazakh equivalents. That is not to say that he wants to harm the position of Russian. He says that it should remain widely spoken, but efforts to raise the status of Kazakh are sure to be perceived by Russian speakers as something of a threat.
*Out of curiosity, how many Uzbek-speaking readers use Latin most of the time? I type in Latin and write by hand in Cyrillic.
UPDATE: IWPR has more on this story.
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Being more familiar with the Azerbaijani dili, I think that this is a good thing.
If it was 1994.
I dunno… I think it might be too late to swap…
I fail to see the benefit really. It makes a break with the past and gets rid of an alphabet that was forced on the language. I guess that might be good. But the children who would learn only the new alphabet in school would have to learn the old one as well at some point to read Kazakh language publication from the Soviet period and, realistically, 20+ years of independence. Seems like a mighty big project for only marginal gain.
It was reported on the news as a done deal, they are moving to the Latin alphabet. No reason was given, but since Kazakh relies on even more letters than the Cyrillic alpahbet (including some Latin letters like “i” and “h”), I think it would be a pain. They might as well go back to the original Arabic Turkish script!
You wouldn’t happen to know if they will use this alphabet do you? One of the nice things about switching is that if it’s done right, it makes typing easier. If they use all those diacritics though… Not having them creates ambiguities in Uzbek, but nobody spells things “correctly” anyway, so it’s not that big a deal.
Why you all do not like this? Look at uzbeks, now they are fully able to use latin, for me latin is MUCH MORE BETTER than any other. it is easy to type and read. and for your curiosity: only old people in uzbekistan prefer cyrylic. of course it will take time but for sure it will be kazakhs’. ask anyone in uzbekistan. they just hate russian. Kafirs’ language!
Latin & Latin, btw – mostly because a) I’ve never studied Russian, so Cyrillic isn’t my bag, and b) my Uzbek teacher favoured Latin over Cyrillic.
Language reform isn’t my area of speciality; do proponents for the switch to the Latin script in Central Asia make the argument that the languages there are better served by the Latin script, as with, say, Anatolian Turkish?
All signs in Kazakhstan is in Kazakh and Russian, and most people use Russian anyway. So, if Russian remain in Cyrillic, people would have to use two scripts?
Ukrainian website Vlasti.net wrote that this is a political move that shows Kazakhstan breaking away from Russia
I’ve never seen Kazakh transliterated into Latin, so I don’t know how it will be done, (and I can’t read Arabic or Kazakh so I just know Kazakh in Arabic looks pretty!) but there will need to be some extra letters or diacritics I suspect.
I do Azerbaijan dili, and in my research I have to deal with the arabic alphabet (which I don’t know), the old latin script, and cyrillic. From a purely selfish standpoint, i like the modern Latin the best. I can’t stand the Kazakh cyrillic, so I’m all for them changing it! Hope they go with Ataturk’s alphabet like Azerbaijan did!
Like I said, I prefer to type o’zbek tili in Latin, but write by hand in Cyrillic (though that’s probably because I take great pride in my Cyrillic handwriting). I actually prefer to read printed materials in Cyrillic, but that’s probably because that’s what I see most often. I was reading lots of Latin last year, and it was hard to go back and forth for me.
Nick, how much do you deal with Cyrillic in the classes at IU? We have a student who took the summer course this year who could read Cyrillic fine, but had to make a bit of a transition. (It was probably easier since she is familiar with Russian.)
As for alphabets, for all its inadequacies, I am quite partial to the Uzbek Latin alphabet. It is, after all, identical to the English one (though it lacks use of “c” which I think should be “ch,” making achchiq easier to spell), making it a breeze to type. I imagine though that it will be closer to what I linked above.
Nathan, I think there’s a bit of a generation gap between the Uzbek teachers at IU. The teacher for the Introductory class I took preferred the Latin, whereas the teacher for Intermediate/Advanced seems to prefer Cyrillic.
I heard a lovely story at CESS about alphabet shenanigans in Uzbekistan from Malik, the above-mentioned teacher of Intermediate/Advanced Uzbek. His father, born very early in the 20th century could read and write in the old Arabic script; his mother, born a few years later, could read and write in the Latin script (introduced in the 1920s); Malik knew the Cyrillic, of course; and now his kids prefer the Latin!
did we all learn at iu?
I think everyone but myself. I have learned at the University of Washington and in a charming little institution known as the kindergarten in the Second Department of the Qibray Tumen of Tashkent Oblast.
I did Azerbaijani at IU and Armenian at UMich.
As for me, I use O’zbek tili like Nathan: I write it in Cyrillic by hand, for the same reason. I was so damn proud when I finally got the handwriting down, I couldn’t stop myself. Also, O’zbek tili is WAY EASIER than Qazaq Tili, alphabetically. The three “Y” characters alone makes me worry how they’ll put it in Latin. O’zbek fortunately uses no markings except the appostrophe, bless them. Anyway, I learned my pidgin Russian and my bar-fight-starting O’zbek here in the Peace Corps.
As re: the diacritical apostrophe, my class used to refer to the ‘funny O’ and the ‘funny G’. Very scientific, I know – and I still couldn’t pronounce them properly! (this after having learnt some Arabic and the throat gargling involved in ‘ayn and rayn).
It is interesting. I’m studying there, at IU.
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