Kazakhstan spells out plans for alphabet swap

[Thelurker1234]

[quote]
In an article published Wednesday in the state-owned "Egemen Kazakhstan" newspaper, the Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev asked the government to start "preparatory work" and "create a schedule for the switch."
He also laid out a timetable for the transition from the currently used modified Cyrillic alphabet with 42 letters to the more internationally used Latin one, with the first deadline set for the end of this year.
"By the end of 2017, after consultation with academics and representatives of the public, a single standard for the new Kazakh alphabet and script should be developed," the 76-year-old president wrote.

He also said that as of 2018, education specialists need to be trained to teach the new alphabet and provide educational textbooks.
The move is part of Nazarbayev's push for modernization and a drive for expanded international recognition for the Central Asian nation that formed part of the Soviet Union until gaining independence in 1991. He dismissed fears that the alphabet swap-over would render large sections of the population illiterate.[/quote]

Seems to be some justified nationalism. This country has been dominated and fucked over by Russia for quite a long time.
You could say they should go back to the arabic alphabet. But they're kind of a distant language from any of the arabic speaking nations or even Persian.

[url]http://www.dw.com/en/kazakhstan-spells-out-plans-for-alphabet-swap/a-38407769[/url]

[Tamschi]

Here's hoping that they figure out a consistent phonetic spelling standard and keep that updated, since that's pretty important for facilitating literacy. Considering they use 42 letters right now, the change is going to be interesting either way though.

Since the article mentions Kazakh is Turkic:
How consistent is Turkish spelling? Turkey moved to Latin script in 1928 by the looks of it, so I'd assume it's at least somewhat up to date.
If they went with something similar to what the other countries with that language family use, that would most likely help with some language barriers.

[Thelurker1234]

[QUOTE=Tamschi;52099917]Here's hoping that they figure out a consistent phonetic spelling standard and keep that updated, since that's pretty important for facilitating literacy. Considering they use 42 letters right now, the change is going to be interesting either way though.

Since the article mentions Kazakh is Turkic:
How consistent is Turkish spelling? Turkey moved to Latin script in 1928 by the looks of it, so I'd assume it's at least somewhat up to date.
If they went with something similar to what the other countries with that language family use, that would most likely help with some language barriers.[/QUOTE]
Turkish is perfectly phonetic and most letters correspond with just one sound IIRC
[sp]mechanically I love turkish. incredibly regular grammar and spelling whilst having interesting features like vowel harmony[/sp]

kazakh is a little more distant from turkish tho.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipchak_languages[/URL]
it's a part of this group. It's closest relatives are nogai and karakalpak, the former uses cyrillic, the latter officially uses latin but not all use it.

Although that map actually does remind me of a few issues, Kazakhstan is a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan#Demographics"]diverse country [/URL]so this could be problematic. Only 64% speak kazakh natively according to wikipedia.