Kazakhstan And The Alphabets

 

An interesting event is happening in Central Asia that is catching the interest of linguists and language lovers. The government of Kazakhstan has been organizing the change of the alphabet of its state language (Kazakh) from Cyrillic script to a Latin based script.

In January 2015, the government of Kazakhstan has announced that the Latin alphabet will replace the current Cyrillic alphabet. This country has seen different updates regarding the new alphabet and the latest version was officially presented on January 28^th 2021.

Kazakhstan is a big Central Asian country that covers an area of 2.7 million sq kilometres and its population is estimated in approx 18.7 million inhabitants. Since 2019, its capital city is called Nur-Sultan. The official languages are Kazakh and Russian. The Kazakh language is the state language, but Russian is used for business and inter ethnic communication. Most Kazakhs are fluent in Russian. It is estimated that around 70% of the population speaks Kazakh. This country has a multi-ethnic population and is possible to hear other languages in the main cities like German, Turkish, Tatar, Uzbek, Tajik, Ukrainian, Uyghur and Korean. English is becoming popular among younger generations.

Kazakh is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch. Most of its speakers live in Kazakhstan. There are important group of speakers in China, Uzbekistan, Mongolia and Turkey. It is an agglutinative language and it has vowel harmony. The word order is SOV. There are many loan words from Arabic, Persian and Russian. The Language is closely related to Kyrgyz, Nogai and Karakalpak.

It is not the first time that this language switches alphabets. Kazakh used to be written using Arabic script. Some groups of ethnic Kazakhs living in China still use this script. In 1927, Latin script was introduced and finally it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1940. 

In October 2017, the government signed the decree to change to Latin Script. It was expected that the transition to the new alphabet will be completed in 2025.  But the first script presented was heavily criticized due to the excessive use of apostrophes.

On January 28^th the new version of the alphabet was presented. It was announced a new phased transition from 2023 to 2031, when the country will celebrate the 40^th anniversary of its independence. The new alphabet will have 34 letters, 9 of them will be non existent in the English alphabet. Those letters (with their IPA pronunciation) are: Ä, ä [æ]; Ö, ö [WY]; Ü, ü [ʏ]; Ū, ū [ʊ]; Ğ, ğ [ʁ]; Ş, ş [ɕ]; İ, i [ɪ]; I, ı [j] and Ŋ, ŋ [ŋ]. Letters C, X and W are used in foreign words. The letter Ç, ç previously included in other forms of Latin script was excluded from this new alphabet. This new version best adapts to the QWERTY keyboard design. 

Here are some phrases in Kazakh. I show here their representation in Cyrillic, in the new Latin script and the translation in English. For more phrases you can visit omniglot. 

Kazakh (Cyrillic)	Kazakh (New Script)	English
Қош келдіңіз!	Qoş Keldiŋiz!	Welcome!
Қайырлы таң	Qaɪyrly taŋ	Good Morning
Қалайсыз?	Qalaɪsyz?	How are you?
Сен ағылшынша сөйлейсің бе?	Sen ağylşynşa söɪleɪsiŋ be?	Do you speak English?
Рақмет сізге	Raqmet sizge	Thank You
Сау болыңыз	Saw bolyŋyz	Good Bye
Наурыз құтты болсын!*	Nawryz qūtty bolsyn!	Happy Nowruz !*

*Nowruz is the most important holiday for Kazakhs. It is the day of the vernal equinox and it marks the beginning of the new year celebration.

The reasons given for switching alphabets are related to facilitate the integration of the country to global markets. Kazakhstan is trying to follow the example of other countries where Turkic languages are spoken, like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkey itself that switched to Latin script. But it is also said that the country is trying to distance itself from the soviet past. 

Change from Cyrillic to Latin alphabet have advantages. The Latin alphabet is simpler and the spelling rules of the language can be reviewed. Keyboards used to write in Kazakh will be simplified from 42 to 34 keys. In other hand, it is increasingly popular to learn languages like English, that also uses Latin script. It is unknown what will happen with Russian, the other official language, but some people believe it will remain. When Nazarbayev resigned as president of the nation, he said that he projects that in the near future, people in Kazakhstan will be able to speak Kazakh, Russian and English.

But there are many disadvantages as well. In a society with a literacy rate over 99% as per data provided by UNESCO, this change might create difficulties to people who already use the written language, specially those who completed their education (professionals, émigrés who no longer live in the country, elderly people) who will no longer be able to read and write properly in their own language. Someone might argue that Latin and Cyrillic scripts are similar and this adaptation will not take long time. But still, locals are making extra efforts using extra time to learn a new system, time that they cannot dedicate to other activities. We did not mention yet the money that needs to be invested to implement those changes. The government has to spend extra money to change documents, seals, banknotes, new computer programs adapted to the new script, and training teachers and public officers. Business also have to invest money changing logos, invoices, updating documents and adapting to the new reality. Some businesses have already spent money trying to adapt to a new script that was later discarded.

In my opinion, we can name different advantages and disadvantages of switching scripts in a language, but at the end, the main reasons for implementing those changes will be political. And unfortunately, politics will prevail.

But this change will bring some opportunities. Kazakhstan is not the first country that switches alphabets, although in the past, those decisions were mostly taken by strong governments where criticism was not tolerated, there were no public forums debating different ideas (No Internet), education was not massive and high illiteracy rates were the norm. This change is affecting a country with a high literacy rate, high rates of internet penetration and an increasing population of Social media users. There will be very interesting lessons to learn from this event.