
Kazakhstan spells out plans for alphabet swap - gscott
http://www.dw.com/en/kazakhstan-spells-out-plans-for-alphabet-swap/a-38407769
======
int_19h
The current script was political, of course, but so is the decision to change
it.

Basically, their choices are keeping Cyrillic, and therefore implicitly
culturally aligning themselves with Russia (or, to phrase it in a different
way, exposing themselves to Russian cultural dominance); or switching to
Latin, and implicitly culturally aligning themselves with Turkey.

It's not a question with a single definitive good answer. Different ex-Soviet
republics tackled it in different ways. The article points out that Azerbaijan
and Uzbekistan switched, for example, but e.g. Kyrgyzstan did not.

The other problem with every switch (including the previous ones) is that it
affects all existing written materials, especially books and textbooks. When
Soviets originally switched most Central Asian republics from Arabic to Latin
back in 1920s, they used it to great effect to control what kind of materials
the new generations would have access to, very similar to what Ataturk did in
Turkey. Same thing applies today: switching the alphabet allows the new
governments of these countries to define the majority of the written corpus
that their citizens will have ready access to.

~~~
diminish
Political and maybe ultimately economical. Latin script isn't much attractive
due to southern Europe but mostly due to the enormous economic success of USA
following the British Empire. Kazakh or any other nation want their children
to learn English as it matters the most in addition to their mother tongue.
Russian children too want to learn English for most. So any other secondary
power in the world is shadowed by English. Slowly people don't want to learn
French or German or Russian because they are those Nationals themselves
striving to learn English as the business academic and travel language.

So the success of American economy drives the success of English and Latin
script. Imho.

~~~
adrianN
English is also the language of pop culture. Most popular movies are made in
the US. So is a lot of pop music. The most popular science fiction authors
write in English. Large parts of the Internet are English.

~~~
progre
Not saying you are wrong but there may be a bias if you are English speaking.
As a person with a another language as english as my first, lots of the
internet I see is in my native language. Lots of new music and movies is as
well.

~~~
throwaway7645
What is your first language if i may ask? Curious what other languages have a
lot of movies? Hindi?

~~~
smitherfield
Many countries dub Hollywood movies.

~~~
throwaway7645
Ah, was curious as I didn't think Czechoslovakia or now the Czech republic had
a film industry.

~~~
vetinari
Actually it has a movie industry. Many movies from Czechoslovakia period are
being considered "classic" and are still popular, with quotes from them being
used all the time.

For foreign movies, there were also cases, when the dubbed versions were
better (sounded better) than originals - for example Louis de Funès movies or
MASH.

------
avodonosov
It's not something new, Kazakhstan plans this for several years already.

BTW, in USSR in 1920s-1930s 66 languages were latinised (including Kazakh):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_Union)

Latinization of Russian language was also planned, (wikipedia in Russian):
[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA...](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0)

Later all that was canceled and Cyrillic was used instead.

~~~
donatj
> Later all that was canceled and Cyrillic was used instead.

Was something else used for Russian prior to Cyrillic?

Also here is an English language version of your Wikipedia link:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_U...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinisation_in_the_Soviet_Union)

~~~
int_19h
It was always Cyrillic. What OP meant is that there were plans to switch all
Soviet languages, including Russian, to Latin at one point - this was
considered beneficial by "first wave" Bolsheviks, who believed in worldwide
communist revolution in near future, and unification in a single world state,
and assumed that Latin would be the common script of that state.

Later, when Stalin ditched all that, and came up with "socialism in one
country" and revival of imperial patriotism, these attempts were scrapped, and
Cyrillic became the common script for all Soviet languages instead (even those
that were already Latinized). This was in line with the new national policy,
which presented the Russian nation as the "bigger brother" of other
ethnicities, e.g.:
[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945/05/24.htm)

~~~
bonzini
Not exactly all of them. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia retained Latin script
for their languages, and I think Armenia (which is now using its own alphabet)
used it during Soviet times too, though I am not 100% sure.

~~~
pandaman
Armenian and Georgian had their scripts. So at least 5 SSRs out of 15 had
their official language in non-Cyrillic script, who knows how many other
languages did too.

------
red-indian
Cyrillic is nice since it has extra letters that were added for central asian
sounds. Spelling is more clear than when you use latin letters. With latin
letters some single letters get replaced with double letters, or multiple
sounds are overloaded onto a single letter.

It's a pity they don't switch to Orkhon script instead of Latin given their
roots. There's a movement already to learn Orkhon as it's the traditional
writing of the area and already developed with the sounds of the Turkic
languages. (As an example, here's a Kazakh music video with subtitles in both
Orkhon script and Türk alfabesi
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUE05sRwrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNUE05sRwrA)).
As long as they are going to the trouble of switching orthographies they
should make it more meaningful than simply replacing Russian influenced
letters with western european ones.

~~~
playing_colours
_With latin letters some single letters get replaced with double letters, or
multiple sounds are overloaded onto a single letter._

Or you can add diacritical marks to letters: Č/č for "ch", Š/š for "sh", etc.

------
Waterluvian
Is this a form of rebranding? Has a nation ever undergone a significant
attempt at rebranding?

I was joking with my colleague about how Russia probably just wants Ukraine to
add a buffer between the West and Moscow. He educated me on the meaning of
"Ukraine" being essentially "borderland." Got me thinking about the seemingly
absurd concept of disregarding all national history and focusing exclusively
on "brand". Find a great sounding country name, a cool memorable flag, a
catchy national anthem, a relatable alphabet.

If you look at nations as brands, many (most?) are pretty forgettable.
Countless flags that look randomly generated and lots of anthems that don't
linger in your ear.

~~~
SerLava
>He educated me on the meaning of "Ukraine" being essentially "borderland."

Incidentally, this is why they've been getting people to stop calling it The
Ukraine - because Ukraine is more like a normal country name, while "The
Ukraine" is like saying "The Borderland (of Russia)"

~~~
cynwoody
In Google Translate (English to Russian), "Ukraine" and "the Ukraine" both
give the same result, namely "Украины". Not surprising, given Russian lacks
the definite article "the".

However, "the Outskirts" translates to "окраины", which when pronounced,
sounds very close to "Украины". "Uh cra eena" vs "Oo cra eena".

Translating Russian to English involves interpolating articles, definite and
indefinite. I now have an inkling of how this controversy arose.

~~~
int_19h
There's actually an equivalent of the distinction between "Ukraine" and "The
Ukraine" in Russian. As you rightly note, it doesn't have the definite
article, but the distinction does show up in prepositions instead.

In Russian, when you speak of a named geographic region, the preposition for
"in" (as in "10 million people live in ...") is used - in Russian, it's "v".
On the other hand, if it's not a name, but rather a descriptive designation
like "borderlands", then the preposition for "on" is used - in Russian, it's
"na".

So, English "in Ukraine" becomes "v Ukraine". But English "in the Ukraine"
becomes "na Ukraine". In modern Russian, both are considered acceptable, but
the latter is generally considered normative, and is what most people use.
Needless to say, Ukrainians strongly prefer "v", even when speaking Russian
(it's unconditionally "v" in Ukrainian, where the same distinction exists).
This is a regular cause of flames and edit wars on the Net between Russian and
Ukrainian users.

~~~
varjag
> In Russian, when you speak of a named geographic region, the preposition for
> "in" (as in "10 million people live in ...") is used - in Russian, it's "v".
> On the other hand, if it's not a name, but rather a descriptive designation
> like "borderlands", then the preposition for "on" is used - in Russian, it's
> "na".

Except that there is no "rule" for that, other than established use, and even
that is not consistent. People who insist on "na Ukraine" would somehow never
say "na Serbskoi Kraine" or "na Khabarovskom Krae".

~~~
codedokode
There actually is a russian phrase "на чужбине", "на чужой земле" (in a
foreign land) where "на" is used when talking about another country. I guess
using different prepositions is something historical, so "на" is not used
anymore, but it is left in some set phrases.

------
kodfodrasz
Their current alphabet has 42 letters. Transitioning to Latin will either use
variable length encoding for some sounds, or will eventually be reduced to the
mere 26 letters. Thus I don't see using accent a good direction.

In Hungarian I see this a lot, and it is a shame. We have for example o ó ö ő
for variations of the sound O in "lonely". We have a mixed model of variable
length and accented characters.

ASCII and QWERTY are (the unintended) cultural equivalent of the Little Boy
and the Fat Boy. Poor globalization throughout the IT industry made people
adapt to it, instead of challenging it. This makes only variable length
survive the "loss in translation".

Now when globalization is better, it became "cool" somehow in some subcultures
(eg. UNIX related, programming related), as many ancient tools (Unix, C) lack
proper support.

~~~
low_battery
Current Turkish alphabet is mostly enough to convey sounds of Turkic languages
(with few exceptions like Ng sound), Azeri alphabet 3 more letters for non
Turkic sounds, I am Sure Kazakh people will find a way, there are already
working examples.

~~~
gkya
Current turkish alphabet is bad at representing educated Istanbul turkish, and
worse at anatolian dialects. For one, palatalisations, which are distinctive
in many cases are either not represented or represented by a circumflex on a
nearest vowel, but the diacritic also signals long vowels, even though they do
not necessitate palatalisation, which is a quality of the consonants anyways.

~~~
low_battery
Which alphabet represents local accents and dialects fully?? Lets be realistic
here.

------
wldlyinaccurate
Some of these old Eastern Bloc countries have had fascinating changes in
language and written script in the last hundreds years or so. Uzbekistan is
another interesting one, which currently uses Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic
(actually Nastaleeq) scripts despite Latin being the official script since the
90's. I had a really fun time building the BBC Uzbek website which had to
support all of these:

\- [http://www.bbc.com/uzbek](http://www.bbc.com/uzbek) (Cyrillic)

\- [http://www.bbc.com/uzbek/lotin](http://www.bbc.com/uzbek/lotin) (Latin)

\-
[http://www.bbc.com/uzbek/afghanistan](http://www.bbc.com/uzbek/afghanistan)
(Arabic)

------
jl6
Language change that shifts populations away from their historical niche and
towards global systems conflicts me.

One the one hand I find it sad that whole bodies of literature will pass out
of understanding.

On the other hand this seems like it will make it slightly easier for the
Kazakh people to interoperate with the rest of the world.

In the end I believe the greater good comes from enabling more people to talk
to each other.

(I know, it's "just" a script change, not a new language, but I feel the two
are sufficiently related that the point stands).

~~~
vbezhenar
Everyone already knows latin alphabet. It doesn't make it any easier to learn
language. Nor it would make it easier for foreigner to understand anything in
latinized Kazakh language, this language is completely different from English.
I guess, it has some common words with Turkey language, so may be for them it
would be a tiny bit easier.

Honestly I'm seeing it as a pure political decision and huge waste of money,
not something, that would have any real benefit. Making Russian and English as
an additional official government languages — now that would be useful.
Currently almost noone except highly educated people knows English and a lot
of people don't know Russian or know it very poorly and it's sad. For
Kazakhstan, Russia is a most important neighbor and it's very important to
keep common cultural values.

~~~
Symbiote
It probably is 99% political, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a waste
of money.

Cyrillic is/was a big part of Russia/USSR's identity from the west -- see
things like "BORДT", faux Cyrillic [1], cheap exported Russian vodka, "СССР"
on t-shirts, etc.

If Kazakhstan wants to appear less Russian, swapping the alphabet from
Cyrillic to Latin will be very effective.

(I know the Latin alphabet but only a few letters of the Cyrillic one. It's
far easier for me to read signs in Viet Nam than it is in Russia, even though
I can probably pronounce Russian much better than Vietnamese. When I don't
understand a word written in Cyrillic, it takes me 20 times longer to type it
into my phone's dictionary.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_Cyrillic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_Cyrillic)

------
dimitar
I think the implications of switching a script are fewer than people imagine,
especially between Cyrillic and Latin. These two are closely related
alphabetical writing systems. People will not lose the ability to read old
books, they will not change their political positions. Usually, the "new" and
"old" characters correspond one to another perfectly.

I think what is more important is the "drive for expanded international
recognition for the Central Asian nation that formed part of the Soviet Union
until gaining independence in 1991." that is mentioned in the article. As you
can see every foreign article still believes its to be necessary to mention
the Soviet union, 26 years after it ended. So it might not change people's
lives much, but it will change the perception of what Kazakhstan is.

------
taylorexpander
Does this only affect the Kazakh language or also the Russian language they
speak there? I know a small handful of people from Kazakhstan, who identify as
"Kazakh" nationally but as "Russian" ethnically, and they only speak Russian
(+ English). The general response about Kazakh the language I remember is that
they learned it at school, but as they lived in a heavily Russian speaking
area they just never cared much about Kazakh and instead focused more on
English when they got the chance.

------
esfandia
I hope this question is relevant enough to the thread to ask here: what
language did the people of Turkey, and by extension most of the Turkic-
speaking countries, speak before the Mongolian invasion? Are there traces of
that former language in their current one? I know that there's definitely
plenty of Arabic and Persian words still in use, and since Ataturk there's
been a lot of French/other latin languages added as well.

~~~
wtbob
> I hope this question is relevant enough to the thread to ask here: what
> language did the people of Turkey, and by extension most of the Turkic-
> speaking countries, speak before the Mongolian invasion?

The people of Anatolia spoke Greek before the Turks invaded.

~~~
mda
You mean, Greek among others and many other languages before Greek, right?

------
sAbakumoff
So, the alphabet of Kazakh language has 42 letters, 33 of them are borrowed
from Russian language and 9 are unique. The modern Latin alphabet has 26
letters. It's quite unclear how they are going to convert between these 2 very
different sets.

~~~
my_first_acct
Wikipedia gives the form of romanization currently used on Kazakh government
websites [1]. This extends the standard 26-letter Latin alphabet by adding
diacritical marks to some of the letters (the way many other languages do,
that have more sounds than 26 letters can express).

I seem to recall reading that as part of the romanization effort, Kazakhstan
will also consider spelling reform, so that there will probably not be an
exact one-to-one correspondence between the current Cyrillic spelling and the
new Latin spelling.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_alphabets#Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_alphabets#Latin)

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Actually most languages have more sounds than letters. Some use diacritical
marks, others use multiconsonant groups ("ch" in Spanish, "th" in English),
and another option is just not to care (in English most letters can represent
various sounds and the mapping is often arbitrary, requiring one to know the
word in order to know how it's pronounced).

~~~
ptaipale
At this point it may be appropriate to remind of the ortographical reform
proposal for English, attributed to Mark Twain (though probably not really
written by him).

[http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm](http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm)

------
gragas
That's too bad. Cyrillic, especially in the context of Russian, has always
seemed compact and almost _cute_ to me.

The alphabet is very regular; it's easy even for non-fluent speakers to
perfectly guess the spellings of words.

~~~
gspetr
> Russian, has always seemed compact

Russian here, I can assure you it decidedly is anything but compact. It
frequently annoys me how verbose some things in it are compared to English.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

~~~
pandaman
He or she probably means the script, not the terseness of Russian. If you look
at English and Russian text you will notice that Russian has longer streaks of
letters of the same height/depth compared to English.

~~~
gragas
That is indeed what I meant.

------
perlgeek
What does the population of Kazakhstan think about that?

~~~
nathan_f77
Russian is still the most important language in Kazakhstan, although that
could shift in the future.

My wife is from Kazakhstan, but her ancestors are from Ukraine, and they moved
to Kazakhstan during the USSR. Her family only know a few words of Kazakh, and
this is relatively common for people who were born and grew up in the USSR.
Right now, you cannot get a good job in the city unless you are fluent in
Russian, although there is a lot of pressure to move everything to the Kazakh
language.

In the past, the pressure was so strong that some official government forms
were only made available in Kazakh. But they have reverted that decision, so
now everything is still available in both Russian and Kazakh.

~~~
Markoff
and what exactly has Ukraine to do with Russian language? it may come to you
as surprise but Ukrainians speak Ukrainian, not Russian

------
Markoff
and now only if China wish to join a party and went full pinyin with accents
like in Vietnam, that would make life in China and tourism much easier for
everyone, after all they already simplified characters anyway, so let's not
pretend current writing system has some historical value being younger than my
grandma

------
ryenus
Would qwerty become history sometime? I tried Dvorak several times, but it's
not that easy as it sounds like.

------
rangitatanz
I keep reading 'alphabet soup'

------
seesomesense
Erdoğan must be delighted at this move towards Pan-Turkism

~~~
darkhorn
Erdoğan is not pan-Turkist. He is pan-Ottoman. Today might be the last day of
the republic.

~~~
kodfodrasz
Yet while others approach hime as if he was a pan-türkist, with the idea of
joining, this is also acceptable for him, I guess.

------
MK_Dev
One step closer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-
Turkism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Turkism)

------
sbmthakur
Promoting the use of English will be a better option as far as international
recognition is concerned.

~~~
johnnydoebk
Why is this downvoted? It's true, isn't it? And as far as I know they had
plans to make English the 3rd official language (along with Kazakh and
Russian).

