Kazakhstan wants to change the alphabet to Latin

Kazakh is the official language of the ninth largest country in the world in terms of area, Kazakhstan. It is spoken by approximately 16 million people around the world (the largest number, of course, in Kazakhstan, although it cannot be said that all its inhabitants know it). Currently, it is written in a modified Cyrillic script, but for many centuries the Arabic script was used – both in its classical version and modified to take into account the sounds found in the Kazakh language. In 1929, the Latin alphabet was introduced, but in 1940, by order of the Soviet authorities, it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet, which is still in use today.

READ ALSO: The oldest written sentence ever discovered

In 2017, the then president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, announced plans to return to the Latin alphabet. This was dictated by the desire to strengthen cultural ties with the Turkish nations, many of which already use the Latin alphabet: Türkiye since 1929, Azerbaijan since 1992, Turkmenistan i Uzbekistan since 1993. On his orders, the government has developed several variants of the new alphabet, but so far none of them has been approved.

– The thing is that Kazakhs never had their own alphabet – noted the former director of the Institute of Linguistics in an interview with Radio Svoboda. A. Bajtursynuly, famous turkologist, prof. Jerden Każybek.

He recalled that at the beginning of the 20th century, the great Turkologist Radlov created the Cyrillic alphabet and a multi-volume dictionary of Turkish dialects. – If we had switched to the modified Cyrillic alphabet, it would have been good, (…) but unfortunately, instead, under the rule of the Soviet regime, the Russian alphabet was simply imposed on us and we were forbidden to change even one letter, (…) at least half of these letters it doesn't fit the Kazakh language at all, Kazhibek said.

– Of course, it was impossible to write the language using this alphabet, so we added nine more letters to it and we have twice as many letters in the alphabet as sounds. This is an exaggeration, he says.

In 2024, scientists from countries belonging to the Organization of Turkic States developed a common Turkic alphabet, based on the Latin alphabet. Gradually, it is intended to enable common communication between citizens of Member States whose national languages ​​are similar. He only submitted a votum separatum Kyrgyzstanwhose language is still based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Kazakhstan plans to officially switch to this alphabet by 2031. The problem is that linguists cannot reach an agreement and develop a single, canonical version of it, in which the letters would correspond to the sounds of the Kazakh language.

READ ALSO: Cats can learn new words no worse than babies

This problem is actually visible on the streets of Kazakhstan's cities. Although some government buildings and institutions have signs and inscriptions in the Kazakh language, written in the Latin alphabet, disputes as to its “correctness” continue. This can also be seen in the example of such a simple word as “shop” – on the streets of the capital Astana you can find at least four variants of writing this word in Kazakh in the Latin alphabet. There are also discrepancies in the name of the country – there are at least two versions – “Kazakhstan” and “Qazaqstan”.

Some people take matters into their own hands. Qazaq Grammar, a team of language activists founded by musician Nursultan Bagidollah, developed its own version of the alphabet in 2012 and has since then popularized it – mainly on social media – also using new communication techniques, such as memes. According to Bagidollah, it is thanks to such forms of communication that the prestige of the Kazakh language can be raised after decades of treating it as a “language of the past.”

The Kazakh language is the only official language in Kazakhstan, although at least a dozen or so percent of the population does not speak it. Russian, spoken by almost everyone, has official status. A political scientist who wishes to remain anonymous explains it as follows: – Representatives of the highest levels of power in Kazakhstan are mostly Russian-speaking Kazakhs, who may be afraid of Russian pressure, which is why they are afraid of promoting the Kazakh language as the only language in force. (…) The Russian-speaking inhabitants of the country do not want this either, (…) because they are fluent in only one language – Russian.