The President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev instructed the government to start preparation for transition of Kazakh alphabet to Latin. About it the President said in the article for his authorship in the newspaper “Egemen Kazakhstan”.
“We will start the preparatory work. The government should draw up a timetable for the transition of Kazakh language to the Latin alphabet,” the article quoted Nazarbayev Interfax news Agency.
“Until the end of 2017, after consultation with scientists and members of the public should be developed a uniform standard of the new Kazakh alphabet and charts in the Latin alphabet,” writes the President.
The transition to the Latin alphabet is scheduled for completion by 2025. According to Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s transition to Cyrillic in 1940-m to year were political in nature.
“The Latin alphabet was used from 1929 to 1940. In 1940, 13 Nov adopted the law on the transfer of the Kazakh language to the Latin alphabet the alphabet based on Russian script. Thus, the change of the Kazakh alphabet on a particular alphabet wore a political sense,” writes the President.
“Today children in school learn English and without problems learn Latin letters. So for the younger generation will have no problems. […] We should, in 2018, to begin training for learning the new alphabet and start to prepare the textbooks in the Latin alphabet. In the next two years we must carry out organizational and methodological work”, — concluded the President.
Today the Latin version of the Kazakh alphabet used by the Kazakh Diaspora in Turkey and several Western countries, however no official status has not. There is also the Kazakh Arabic alphabet, which is also used mainly by emigrants from Kazakhstan.
A variant of the Latin alphabet used in Kazakhstan from 1929 to 1940, known as Yanalif or the New Turkic alphabet. It was developed by the Committee on the new alphabet with the CEC of the USSR. The transition to the Latin alphabet in Kazakhstan began to discuss in 2007 at the initiative of the President.
