Kazakhstan will become Qazaqstan (REVIEW)

President Nursultan Nazarbayev issued the Decree "On Amending the Decree of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan of October 26, 2017 No. 569" on the transition of the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic to the Latin script", which was introduced to replace the Cyrillic one in October. The main change is the removal of apostrophes used to denote sounds in Kazakh and their replacement with diacritical signs above letters. Many Western news outlets comment on a new version of the Kazakh alphabet in Latin.

The British newspaper The Times in the article "Apostrophe Catastrophe" writes that "the apostrophes were a catastrophe. They obliged to do many additional strokes on a keyboard, and some words became longer than twice".

According to the American journal Newsweek, the stated purpose of the move is to make Kazakhstan a more recognizable brand internationally.

"Nazarbayev plans the transition to the new Latinized Kazakh script to be complete by 2025. The stated purpose of the move is to make Kazakhstan a more recognizable brand internationally, but it will also appeal to patriotic Kazakhs", "Newsweek" writes.

Another article of Newsweek "This country is changing its Stalin-imposed alphabet after 80 years" gives a historical overview of the use of different spelling of the alphabet in Kazakhstan in the last century.

"Among the eliminated letters is a derivative of the Cyrillic "K" which means Kazakhstan’s own name will change, likely to "Qazaqstan". Notably, the alphabet will also adopt the Western practice of using two letters for both the "Sh" and "Ch" sounds, dropping the single Russian letters previously used for each sound. Nazarbayev has repeatedly stated that his desire to stop using the alphabet introduced under Stalin is not directed against Russia, which remains the main partner for his own regime", Newsweek writes.

"Russian is more widespread, with 85% claiming fluency in the same census. Russian is recognized as an official language in Kazakhstan. Several other Turkic nations, including Turkey and the former Soviet states Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have also switched to Latin alphabets", The Guardian states.

Saltanat Suraganova

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