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</p><div class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/">Home</a> > Kazakhstan: The ABCs of the Alphabet Debate</div>
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<h1 class="">Kazakhstan: The ABCs of the Alphabet Debate</h1>
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<span class="">April 3, 2013 - 11:49am</span>, by <span class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/1356">Joanna Lillis</a> <span class="">[1]</span></span> </div>
<div class=""><ul class=""><li class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kazakhstan" rel="tag" title="">Kazakhstan</a> <span class="">[2]</span></li><li class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/3279" rel="tag" title="Receive weekly updateson the notable eventsin Central Asia.">EurasiaNet's Weekly Digest</a> <span class="">[3]</span></li>
<li class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/3234" rel="tag" title="">Kazakh Politics</a> <span class="">[4]</span></li><li class=""><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/taxonomy/term/4074" rel="tag" title="">Language Politics</a> <span class="">[5]</span></li>
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<span class="">April 3, 2013 - 11:45am</span> </div>
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<p>News that Kazakhstan is proceeding with plans to switch the alphabet
used for the Kazakh language from Cyrillic to Latin is stoking a furious
public debate. </p>
<p>The battle lines cross the linguistic divide and reveal divisions
lurking beneath the surface of society. The discussion goes beyond
linguistic questions into thorny territory such as Kazakhstan’s
multiethnic, multicultural society; its geopolitical priorities; and the
colonial legacy.</p>
<p>Kazakhstan has been mulling the alphabet change since the 1990s, and
pursuing stop-start plans to switch since 2006. Last December President
Nursultan Nazarbayev broached the sensitive topic again, announcing that
written Kazakh will switch to Latin letters – but not until 2025. The
change, he argued, would provide “an impulse for the modernization of
the Kazakh language” and promote “our global integration.”</p>
<p>While many Kazakh speakers welcome the news, others express outrage.</p>
<p>One group of 66 prominent intellectuals – including writers,
academics and journalists known for their vigorous promotion of
Kazakh-language interests – have penned an open letter to Nazarbayev
against the planned change.</p>
<p>“Won’t damage thus be done to the unity and integrity of the people?” the <a href="http://abai.kz/content/latyn-elipbiine-koshuge-karsymyz" title="" target="">Kazakh-language letter</a> <span class="">[6]</span>, published on the Abai.kz website on February 13, speculated.</p>
<p>These intellectuals argue that the switch would strengthen the
linguistic divide in Kazakhstan, where, for historical reasons, Kazakh
is – to the chagrin of many Kazakh speakers – not spoken by everyone,
including <a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62424" title="" target="">some ethnic Kazakhs</a> <span class="">[7]</span> whose first language is Russian. Kazakhs make up roughly two-thirds of the population, Russians around a quarter.</p>
<p>“We are surprised that many people do not understand that a language
that is in a difficult position gets weaker every time with a change of
alphabet,” the intellectuals fretted.</p>
<p>They suggested the switch would turn Russian speakers off from
learning Kazakh, further dividing Kazakh and Russian speakers in a
country where language disputes are increasingly common.</p>
<p>Kazakh has the legal status of state language; Russian is the de
facto lingua franca and enjoys a constitutional status allowing its use
in state bodies. Kazakh speakers are particularly resentful that – over
two decades after independence – Russian remains overwhelmingly the
language of government.</p>
<p>“Openly dividing Kazakhs in two on the basis of alphabet is
tantamount to a criminal act,” the intellectuals concluded dramatically.
They expressed concern that a huge body of Kazakh-language literature
in Cyrillic would be lost to young people, leaving them “detached from
their ancestors’ history.”</p>
<p>In fact, many in Kazakhstan already use both alphabets. Switching
Kazakh to Latin will not erase knowledge of Cyrillic when it is
government policy to retain excellent knowledge of Russian, while
improving the public’s command of Kazakh. </p>
<p>Reliable figures on linguistic capability are hard to come by, but
according to the last census in 2009, only two-thirds of citizens
claimed a decent command of Kazakh, while 94 percent understood Russian.
Astana aims to get 95 percent of citizens speaking Kazakh by 2025,
preserving fluency in Russian at around 90 percent. This would
distinguish Kazakhstan from other Central Asian states, where knowledge
of Russian has declined since independence.</p>
<p>On both sides of this polarized debate, the arguments are hyperbolic.
Keeping Kazakh in Cyrillic would “be dangerous for the language
itself,” Anar Fazylzhanova, deputy director of the Akhmet Bayturnsynuly
Linguistics Institute, <a href="http://www.z001.kz/article/view?id=143" title="" target="">argued to Interfax-Kazakhstan</a> <span class="">[8]</span>
in January. She is among linguists suggesting that Kazakh needs to be
distanced from Russian because of Russian’s semantic and syntactic
influence on a language that sometimes struggles to make itself heard in
its home country. Although Russian is a Slavic tongue and Kazakh is
Turkic, “Kazakh sentences are often constructed according to the rules
of Russian syntax,” a feature article in the Russian-language Alau
magazine said in January. </p>
<p>Another popular argument in favor of Latin is that it is more
convenient in a hi-tech world – one of “many advantages” of switching,
Layla Yermenbayeva, a Kazakh-language lecturer at Almaty’s KIMEP
University, told EurasiaNet.org.</p>
<p>Linguists are divided on whether Latin or Cyrillic more easily
transmits the sounds of Kazakh, and on which form of Latin to adopt
(Turkic states using Latin such as Turkey, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and
Turkmenistan use a variety of scripts). There is even a movement afoot
lobbying to abandon Cyrillic in favor of the runic script used for
Kazakh in ancient times.</p>
<p>Latin replaced the Arabic script for Kazakh in Soviet Kazakhstan in
1929; then in 1940, Cyrillic was introduced as a common alphabet for all
republics.</p>
<p>A commission is to be set up by September 1 to explore moving to Latin – not for the first time. One <a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav111706b.shtml" title="" target="">commission </a> <span class="">[9]</span>created in 2006 <a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav090407.shtml" title="" target="">reported back</a> <span class="">[10]</span> in 2007 with suggestions for alphabet change phased over 12-15 years, costing $300 million.</p>
<p>That strategy ended up on the backburner for unexplained reasons: the
global financial crisis may have been one, but geopolitics could also
have been at play. </p>
<p>In remarks guaranteed to raise eyebrows in Moscow, that 2007 <a href="http://www.zakon.kz/4452604-predvaritelnaja-analiticheskaja-spravka.html" title="" target="">report </a> <span class="">[11]</span>argued
that alphabet change “means for Kazakhs changing the Soviet (colonial)
identity, which still largely dominates the national consciousness, to a
sovereign (Kazakh) identity.”</p>
<p>Nazarbayev – a staunch Russian ally – said this January that alphabet
change was unrelated to “geopolitical preferences” – yet many in
Kazakhstan see it in those terms.</p>
<p>Support for Cyrillic is tantamount to “opposition to our national
interests” by people unwilling to reject “colonization,” argued an
anonymous commentator in an<a href="http://abai.kz/content/latyn-elipbiine-koshuge-karsymyz" title="" target=""> online debate </a> <span class="">[6]</span>conducted
in Kazakh and sparked by the intelligentsia’s letter. A supporter of
Cyrillic, also anonymous, countered with an appropriate analogy in a
country where the horse is a national symbol: “The alphabet is not a
horse that tires or dies of old age. The alphabet builds written culture
for centuries. Written culture builds a nation.”</p>
<p>A third unnamed commentator offered an equally equine riposte:
Cyrillic supporters should “be given unsaddled horses to gallop…
backward to the 20th century.”</p><p><a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/print/66778?utm_source=Weekly%20Digest&utm_campaign=6a10a0ec9e-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email">http://www.eurasianet.org/print/66778?utm_source=Weekly%20Digest&utm_campaign=6a10a0ec9e-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email</a><br>
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