New Latin alphabet. Kazakhstan approved the final version of the alphabet in Latin. Goodbye Russia - hello West

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev approved a new version of the Kazakh alphabet based on the Latin script. There will be 32 letters in the alphabet, which the country is to switch to over the next seven years. In the Cyrillic version of the Kazakh alphabet, which was used for almost eighty years, there were 42 of them.

At the end of October, Nazarbayev signed a decree on a phased transition to the Latin alphabet until 2025. Initially, the head of the republic was presented with a choice of two versions of the Kazakh alphabet in the Latin alphabet: in the first, some specific sounds of the Kazakh language were proposed to be denoted using digraphs (combinations of two letters), the second option was to transfer these sounds in writing using apostrophes.

The head of the republic approved the version with apostrophes, but linguists and philologists criticized this version of the alphabet. According to scientists, the excessive use of apostrophes would seriously complicate reading and writing - out of 32 letters of the alphabet, 9 would immediately be written with a superscript comma.

The draft was sent for revision - in the final version, approved by Nazarbayev on February 20, there are no apostrophes, but new diacritics like umlauts (for example, á, ń), as well as two digraphs (sh, ch), are used.

Expensive pleasure

Despite the fact that the authorities agreed to finalize the originally proposed version of the alphabet, the transition to the Latin alphabet itself will be fraught with great difficulties. Critics and scholars warn that older people will find it difficult to get used to the Latin script, which could create a generation gap.

The alphabet of the Kazakh language, based on the Latin script, against the background of the flag of Kazakhstan, Gazeta.Ru collage

Akorda

Another danger is that future generations will not be able to refer to many scientific and other works written in Cyrillic - most of the books simply cannot be republished in Latin.

A potential problem is also the decrease in the interest of young people in reading - at first it will be difficult to readjust to the new alphabet and you will have to spend much more time reading. As a result, young people may simply stop reading.

While the country still uses a slightly modified Russian Cyrillic alphabet, the transition period will last until 2025. New passports and identity cards will be issued to citizens of Kazakhstan from 2021, and in 2024-2025 government agencies, educational institutions and the media will switch to the Latin alphabet - on February 13, such a plan was announced by Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan Yerlan Kozhagapanov.

The process of switching to the Latin alphabet will also be costly. At a minimum, it involves the professional retraining of teachers.

According to data published on the website of the government of Kazakhstan, 192,000 teachers will have to be "retrained" in the next seven years. This pleasure will cost Astana 2 billion rubles, and another 350 million rubles will be spent on reprinting school textbooks.

In September, Nazarbayev said that the first grades of schools would begin teaching in Latin in 2022. At the same time, he stressed that the transition process would not be painful - the president explained that in schools, children study English language and are familiar with Latin script.

Andrey Grozin, head of the department for Central Asia and Kazakhstan at the Institute of CIS Countries, also expressed concern that the high cost of romanization could lead to abuse and corruption. “The allocation of such a volume of funds with a very weak mechanism for controlling costs will lead to a situation where a significant part of the bureaucratic class, especially in the regions, will be tempted to spend money without reporting. The widest field for abuse opens up, ”the expert believes.

Why does Astana need the Latin alphabet: Nazarbayev's version

Nazarbayev first spoke about the introduction of the Latin alphabet in 2012, delivering an annual message to the people of Kazakhstan. Five years later, in his article “Looking to the Future: Modernization public consciousness"The president argued the need to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet by the features of the "modern technological environment, communications, as well as the scientific and educational process of the 21st century."

In mid-September 2017, Nazarbayev even said that the Cyrillic alphabet "distorts" the Kazakh language. “In the Kazakh language there is no “u”, “yu”, “ya”, “b”. Using these letters, we distort the Kazakh language, therefore [with the introduction of the Latin alphabet] we come to the basis,” the head of Kazakhstan noted.

Experts, by the way, argue the opposite: according to them, it is the Latin script that does not cope well with the task of reflecting all the sounds of the Kazakh language in writing - this is evidenced by problems with additional diacritics like apostrophes.

By signing a decree on the transition to the Latin alphabet in October last year, Nazarbayev assured that these changes "in no way affect the rights of Russian speakers, the Russian language and other languages."

Vladimir Evseev, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, notes that there is a certain amount of slyness in such statements. “The money will be spent from the taxes of all citizens, this also applies to the Russian-speaking population,” the expert explained.

The President of Kazakhstan also hastened to dispel fears that the transition to the Latin alphabet signals a change in Astana's geopolitical preferences. "Nothing like this. I will say this for sure. The transition to the Latin alphabet is an internal need for the development and modernization of the Kazakh language. There is no need to look for a black cat in a dark room, especially if it has never been there,” Nazarbayev said, recalling that in the 1920s and 40s, the Kazakh language already used the Latin alphabet.

Until 1920, the Kazakhs used Arabic script in writing. In 1928, a unified alphabet for the Turkic languages ​​based on the Latin alphabet was approved in the USSR, but in 1940 it was nevertheless replaced with the Cyrillic alphabet. In this form, the Kazakh alphabet has existed for 78 years.

At the same time, after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, some other union republics hastily switched to the Latin script - they wanted to thereby indicate their own independence from the former USSR.

In particular, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan tried to introduce the Latin alphabet, although there were certain problems with the use of the new alphabet. In Kazakhstan, such changes were rejected for a long time, since the majority of the population was Russian-speaking. Nevertheless, attempts were also made in the country to designate and strengthen their own identity - in particular, Russian toponyms were replaced by Kazakh ones.

Goodbye Russia - hello West?

Despite Nazarbayev's assurances that ditching the Cyrillic alphabet does not signify a shift in the republic's geopolitical aspirations, many in Russia and Kazakhstan itself believe the move was intended to emphasize "independence" from Moscow.

Astana pursues a "multi-vector policy", that is, it tries to develop relations simultaneously with the countries of the post-Soviet space, and with China, and with the West. At the same time, Kazakhstan is the most developed and richest of the Central Asian republics, the European Union is Astana's second trading partner after Russia. Kazakhstan, in turn, is the main partner of the European Union in Central Asia, although its share in the EU trade turnover is, of course, very insignificant.

According to Vladimir Evseyev, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, it is the desire to emphasize the "multi-vector nature" of one's policy that is the main reason for switching to the Latin alphabet.

“As part of this multi-vector approach, relations between Kazakhstan and the West are developing – for this, Astana is switching to the Latin alphabet. This is necessary, among other things, in order to receive cheap investments, cheap loans, and so on, ”the expert explained.

At the same time, Andrei Grozin, head of the department for Central Asia and Kazakhstan at the Institute of CIS Countries, sees no reason to believe that the transition of Kazakhstan to the Latin alphabet indicates a reversal foreign policy. “Kazakhstan is maneuvering between Beijing, Moscow and Washington, it has always been like this, and it will continue like this,” the expert stated.

Experts interviewed by Gazeta.Ru say that Moscow is not very concerned about the alphabet the Kazakhs will use.

“In Moscow, this decision did not cause much tension and is unlikely to cause, in our country this topic is perceived as abstract, not related to real politics,” Grozin said.

Vladimir Evseev, in turn, notes that Russia is trying to treat this step of Astana with understanding. “It just makes communication difficult. This is the right of Kazakhstan, how to write to them - they can use at least Chinese characters, ”admitted the interlocutor of Gazeta.Ru.

The new Kazakh alphabet is expected to have 32 letters. In principle, this is an arrangement of the standard Latin alphabet in the Kazakh manner, but there are some peculiarities. The most conspicuous is the use of apostrophes to designate specific Kazakh letters, as well as for a number of Russian ones, such as the letter “Sh”, which turned into “S`”. There are nine such letters, and it is not uncommon for more than ten apostrophes to be found in one sentence.

Example: "Julia and Yuri became husband and wife." In the new version in Kazakh Latin, it will look like this: "I`y`li`i`a men I`u`ri`i` ku`i`ey` men a`i`el attandy" (better for them, in in general, do not marry).

In addition, there are other nuances. The letters "e", "u", "i", "ts", "u" are missing. In an interview with the Kazakh website Tengrinews.kz, the director of the Institute of Linguistics named after Akhmet Baitursynuly, Yerden Kazhibek, said that words would be written according to the laws of the Kazakh language, and Nazarbayev had previously said that the letters “e”, “yu” and “ya” never existed in the Kazakh language. , so what is happening now is a “return to the roots”.

And there is also a rather tricky incident of the letter "y". There are three of them - with varying degrees of deafness - in the Kazakh language, so "Ұ" is "U", "Y" is "U`", and "U" itself is "Y`". "U" could have been without an apostrophe, but it is now "Y" in the Kazakh language.

This is the second version of the alphabet, which has become the subject of public discussion. In the first, instead of apostrophes, digraphs were used - that is, two letters denoting one sound. But this method of writing caused the most severe criticism from the inhabitants of the country in September. Largely because of the translation of the word "carrot". In the Kazakh language, it is written as "sabіz", and according to the new version, the word turned into "saebiz". Even Nazarbayev mentioned this, albeit in a soothing manner.

“They say we should read Saebis. Then, maybe, remember how to read the word boeing in English? And how do we read the word "school" in English? In French, for example, it takes ten letters to pronounce one word. Therefore, it is wrong to say that,” Nazarbayev said at his September 14 press conference.

But the new version is no better in this respect. The word "east" - "shygys" - in the new transcription has turned into an obscene analogue of the phrase "have sex." However, this does not seem to bother officials much: the decree was adopted on Friday, and on Monday a sign with the new lettering appeared on the akimat of the city of Aktau in the west of the country. Moreover, Nursultan Nazarbayev's book "Times and Thoughts", written in Latin with apostrophes, was already presented on Monday. The students of school No. 40 in Astana were the least lucky - they were forced to read this book. The kids liked it, though.

Many people are still worried about how words denoting terms will be written, as well as words borrowed from other languages.

In Kazakhstan, at one time, foreign words were translated into Kazakh, which caused the emergence of “dopayak” - “nogoball” (football) or “galamtor” - the Internet. But, as a rule, such translations did not take root, and international terminology eventually returned.

“We are not going to throw it all away. We need to say all this in Kazakh and write in Kazakh. But we can't change everything all at once.<…>For example, we pronounce "log" "borene". "Down jacket" we have "bokebay". "Bed" - "kereuet". The problem is changing the hearing of our people. Some call it an achievement. But in the Kazakh language, all these language rules must be taken into account. We must speak and write according to the rules of one language, ”the media quoted Yerden Kazhibek, the developer of the new alphabet, as saying. Interestingly, eight years ago, Kazhibek's name also flashed in connection with the "language issue": he was suspected of embezzling 3.5 billion tenge (23.2 million rubles at the rate of 2009) while developing an online Kazakh-English-Russian translator of texts. The translator was never created, Kazhibek left for Turkey, and eight years later he convinced Nazarbayev to accept the apostrophic yoke.

Linguistic "capostrophe"

Actually, this is the problem: there were no discussions on the new alphabet in society, and everything was accepted at the level of persuasion of a single person. On the Kazakhstani Internet, they are snarling that Nazarbayev does not have a single apostrophe in his name or surname - why should he worry? But there is something to worry about, says Kazakhstani political scientist Dosym Satpaev: time is playing against the president.

“Formally, there was no rush: the decision to switch to the Latin alphabet was made almost seven years ago. This year, the process has greatly accelerated. The president is trying to go down in history as one of the creators of the new alphabet,” Satpayev told Novaya Gazeta.

This is not only a historical, but also a political game, the expert clarifies: the new Kazakh alphabet can now gain popularity among the Kazakh-speaking audience, which already makes up the majority in the country. “10 years ago, this could not have been done yet,” says Satpaev. However, now, as always, there was a “communication” failure, and no one really consulted with the public, which will speak this language. In the future, some adjustments to the alphabet are possible, including at the request of the public. At least, the political scientist and public figure Aidos Sarym hopes so, who believes that the alphabet approved by the decree is not a dogma after all.

The question of whether the Kazakh alphabet will be translated into Latin graphics was resolved by the President of Kazakhstan positively. On October 26, 2017, a decree was signed on changes in the Kazakh alphabet. So, the Kazakh alphabet is history and its present.

History of the Kazakh alphabet

The alphabet of Kazakhstan has changed twice over the past 100 years.

From the 10th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the Arabic alphabet was officially used on the territory of Kazakhstan. It had 29 letters and the sign "hamza", which denoted narrow vowels. The inscriptions of the letters of the Arabic alphabet were made in the Persian style. The words were written from right to left.

In 1924, it was corrected in accordance with the peculiarities of Kazakh phonetics, and in 1929 it was replaced with the Latin alphabet - yanalif.

This transition was accompanied by heated discussions. The issue of replacing the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet was resolved over the course of 3 years - from 1924 to 1927. A real scientific battle flared up between Arabists and Latinists, not much different from today's disputes. Its essence was to understand whether Latin letters could convey the features of the Kazakh language.

The Arabic script was supported by Akhmet Baitursynov. He was the author of the scientifically substantiated Arabic alphabet of the Kazakh language - "tote zhazu". This alphabet is still used by Kazakhs who moved abroad, mainly to China.

Speaking against the abolition of the Arabic inscription system, Akhmet Baitursynov put forward the following arguments:

1. Latin letters are less suitable for conveying the features of Kazakh phonetics. Of the 26 letters, only 15 can be used without changes and 7 with variations. And the Kazakh alphabet of 1924 used 24 signs of the Arabic system (19 unchanged, and 5 corrected).
2. Kazakh fonts based on the Latin alphabet, prepared for the manufacture of printed materials, had to be changed by a third.

In this discussion, the Latinists also expressed their arguments. Their inspirer, Kazakh linguist Telzhan Shonanov, argued against the Arabic script:

1. Diacritical marks (signs indicating that a sound is read differently than without it) made it difficult to learn the alphabet.
2. The difference in the style of letters depending on their location in a word.
3. Fuzzy outlines of signs, which made it difficult to read.
4. Inability to use Arabic characters for special texts: notes, scientific papers, where there are formulas, etc.

The main evidence of the irrelevance of the Arabic system for the Kazakh language was that it incompletely conveyed phonetic originality and complicated the work of typesetters.

Obviously, the purely practical argument of this dispute forced the leaders of the republic to stop it. Latin begins its difficult path of formation in Kazakhstan. To unify the Latin system for the national language, a special committee was created. In 1928, the Kazakh alphabet in Latin was approved at the conference. It consisted of 29 letters.

In the early 1930s The Soviet government put forward the idea of ​​a universal "Cyrilization" of the state's written language. Kazakh letters are undergoing another transformation. The Cyrillic alphabet was created for almost 10 years.

In 1940, the version proposed by Sarsen Amanzholov was approved. It contained 41 letters: 32 letters adopted in the Russian script, and 9 special characters that conveyed the originality of the Kazakh language.

After 77 years, the transition to the Latin alphabet in Kazakhstan became relevant for the second time. What awaits the citizens? What does the new alphabet look like? How will the translation into Latin take place?

New Kazakh alphabet

The end of October 2017 will be remembered by the people of Kazakhstan because the President approved the new Kazakh alphabet. The question of the transition to the Latin system of writing letters in society has been discussed for a long time.

Great excitement was caused by the fate of 9 special letters that convey the specific sounds of Kazakh phonetics. What will happen to them? How many letters will there be in the Kazakh alphabet? These are the main issues that concern society.

Here are the changes made to the new alphabet:

1. The alphabet will consist of 25 characters.
2. Three methods of sound transmission are approved: 1 sound - 1 sign, 1 sound - 2 signs, 1 sound - digraph system. In the Kazakh alphabet, 2017 is represented by 8 digraphs: Ә - ae, Ө - oe, Y - ue, Ң - ng, Ғ- gh, Ch - ch, Sh - sh, Zh - zh.
3. Specific letters will be written with superscript commas.

Note. A digraph is a combination of two letters that together represent one sound.

The reform of the alphabet does not involve the mechanical replacement of some letters with others, because this will entail the loss of the ability to convey the national specifics of the pronunciation of sounds.

The process of transition to a new alphabet will be accompanied by the adoption of new spelling rules. They will present the norms for the transfer of national lexical units in the Latin alphabet. Now many familiar names will look different.

The transition to the Latin alphabet is planned to be completed by 2025. Such a process of transition of Kazakhstan to the Latin alphabet is due to the dominance of this writing system in the world. Thus, the communication of the state with the world community will be simplified.

October 27, 2017 President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev signed a decree on the phased translation of the alphabet of the Kazakh language into latin graphics. The head of state also named specific terms for the language reform - until the end 2017 years to develop an alphabet standard, with 2018 -go - start training relevant specialists, and the country should completely abandon the Cyrillic alphabet 2025 year.

According to the Kazakh leader, the new alphabet will make it possible to more effectively modernize society, facilitate communication with the outside world, and help children learn English faster.

To the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan: to form a national commission for the translation of the Kazakh alphabet into the Latin script; to ensure a phased translation of the Kazakh alphabet into Latin script until 2025, the text of the document says.

In order to ensure the translation of the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin script, Nazarbayev decided to approve the attached alphabet of the Kazakh language, based on the Latin script and consisting of 32 letters.

In the Kazakh language there is no "u", "yu", "ya", "b". Using these letters, we distort the Kazakh language, so [with the introduction of the Latin alphabet] we come to the basis. This is the most important event. But here it is impossible to rush, we will gradually and thoughtfully approach,” Nazarbayev said.

Children will begin to learn, I think it will happen quickly, because today all children learn English, and there is Latin,” the head of state said.

In Kazakhstan, as well as among the Kazakhs living in the republics of the former USSR, the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet is now used. The Latin alphabet is used by some Kazakh diasporas abroad - in particular, in Turkey. IN PRC and a number of other countries, Kazakh communities use the Arabic script. The intention of the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to translate the Kazakh alphabet into the Latin alphabet has received many different interpretations: both as the republic’s exit from the cultural field of Russia, and as a kind of “civilizational choice”, and simply as a desire for at least some changes. The President of the Republic emphasized:

PTranslation into the Latin alphabet will not only serve the development of the Kazakh language, but also turn it into the language of modern information.

Political scientist Yerlan Karin, who previously headed the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, explained:

The transition to the Latin alphabet is a civilizational choice. A choice in favor of an open and global world,” said Karin.

The translation of the language into Latin script is by no means Astana's know-how, Kazakhstani ideologists use the Soviet experience here. The Turkic languages ​​of the USSR were transferred to the Latin basis in 1920s years, for which it was even created All-Union Central Committee of the New Turkic Alphabet. The Bolsheviks wanted to Latinize the Russian language as well - for example, the People's Commissar of Education advocated for this Anatoly Lunacharsky.

Despite the slogan

There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take,

By the 1930s, the Soviet authorities were convinced that reality was not entirely amenable to experiments. The languages ​​of the Soviet republics could not function as full-fledged communication systems. The department of agitation and propaganda of the Central Committee complained about the poor quality of dictionaries and books, the lack of protocols, and errors in translating the statements of the classics of Marxism and party leaders into local languages. And in the early 40s, the Turkic languages ​​were translated into Cyrillic.

Of course, part of the intelligentsia of Kazakhstan is happy to perceive romanization as a symbolic exit from the cultural space of Russia and "decolonization". And yet, most of the debate about the change of writing in Kazakhstan is rendered meaningless by the fact that in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan And Azerbaijan alphabets have already been romanized. It is difficult to judge what this has done for Turkmenistan due to the closed nature of the country, but the situation in the other two former Soviet republics is clear. In Uzbekistan, it was not possible to completely translate even state office work into the Latin alphabet. The language reform was criticized in 2016 by one of the country's presidential candidates, the leader of the Democratic Party Sarvar Otamuratov. The experience of Azerbaijan is considered more positive, but critics note that total romanization has led to the fact that citizens began to read less - even for an educated person, slowing down the reading process complicates the perception of texts, which will affect the state of the intellectual sphere in the country.

Supporters of romanization consider these problems insignificant. For example, in response to the question of how much it would cost to transfer the country to a new script, the lower house of parliament answered:

Torg is inappropriate here. To go out on the road to the civilized world is always more expensive, but then you go out into the world, -declared deputyAzat Peruashev .

In 2013, after the publication of the thesis on the transition to the Latin alphabet, a group of Kazakh writers addressed the president and government with an open letter:

To this day, almost a million titles of books, scientific works on the ancient and subsequent history of the people have been published in the republic (...). It is clear that with the transition to the Latin alphabet, our young generation will be cut off from the history of their ancestors, the appeal says.

The authors of the letter drew attention to the fact that there is generally a problem of mastering the Kazakh language in the country and in these conditions it is unreasonable to carry out radical reforms. According to experts, the change in writing will affect only the Kazakh society, or its Kazakh-speaking part (ethnic Kazakhs speak not only Kazakh). Russian officials practically do not speak out on this issue, Kazakh officials insistently emphasize that the language reform will not affect relations in any way. Moscow And Astana.

At the same time, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev promised that the citizens of the republic would use the Cyrillic alphabet and would not forget the Russian language and Russian culture:

We will not move away from the Cyrillic alphabet. We will not forget Russian culture and the Russian language. Through the Russian language, we studied world culture and it will always remain with us. Our neighbor is always there and we will always cooperate. The translation of the Kazakh language into Latin script is not a whim, it is a trend of the times,” Nazarbayev said.

According to lenta.ru