17 September 2024 | 14:39

What changes for Kazakhstan with unified Turkic alphabet

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Tengrinews.kz - A representative from the Baytursynov Institute of Linguistics, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor Kurai Kuderinova, discussed the advantages and potential challenges of implementing a unified alphabet for Turkic peoples.

Tengrinews.kz - A representative from the Baytursynov Institute of Linguistics, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor Kurai Kuderinova, discussed the advantages and potential challenges of implementing a unified alphabet for Turkic peoples.

Recently, during the third meeting of a specially created commission under the Organization of Turkic States in Baku, a decision was made to introduce a common alphabet for Turkic countries. The new unified alphabet will consist of 34 letters, although its final version has yet to be published.

Kurai Kuderinova explained that, with mutual consent, there should be no difficulties in implementing the common alphabet.

"The decision made in Azerbaijan is the result of more coordinated work by the commission compared to previous meetings. Based on this, each country will be able to adapt the alphabet to its national characteristics," Kuderinova noted.

According to her, the common alphabet does not require the use of all 34 letters in every language. Each country will only use the characters that correspond to sounds in its language. For instance, the letters "с" and "j" will only be used in languages that have the sounds "ж" and "дж." For the Kazakh language, one letter "j" suffices.

Kuderinova emphasized that the common alphabet does not cover all phonemes of each Turkic language but rather provides a general framework. Turkic countries can use this framework to align their national alphabets.

"After adjustments, there should be no difficulties," the professor added.

She also reminded that differences in the writing systems of Turkic languages can complicate understanding.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, Eldos Omarov said: 'The Turkic peoples speak the same, but write differently.' Indeed, Turkic languages, divided into Oghuz, Kipchak, and Karluk groups, share many similarities. For example, the Kazakh language is close to Karakalpak, Nogai, Bashkir, and Tatar, but differences in writing create barriers. In Kazakh, the letter 'қ' is written with a 'leg,' while in other languages, the letter 'k' has a rounding sign added. Or for 'ә,' the letter 'a' is modified with a softness sign. The common alphabet will simplify the understanding of written texts in closely related languages," she asserted.

However, adapting to the new alphabet may be a challenging task. For instance, Turkish has used the Latin script since 1928, while Azerbaijanis and Uzbeks only made the switch in the 1990s.

"Changing familiar spellings always poses challenges, even if they contain errors," Kuderinova noted.

One of the contentious issues in developing the alphabet, according to the expert, was the use of characters for the sounds "ы," "y," and the letter "ı" without a dot, as well as the choice between the letter "ә" and "a" with two dots above (umlaut). However, a consensus was reached after discussions.

"The idea of creating a unified alphabet was first proposed in 1991 at a meeting of Turkic peoples in Istanbul. At that time, the countries agreed to use the modern Turkish alphabet as a basis. However, in some languages, such as Turkmen and Karakalpak, there are distinct differences, so the issue of creating a unified Turkic alphabet was revisited," Kuderinova concluded.

Turkic world countries agree on unified latin-based alphabet

Turkic Kazakhstan Latin alphabet language Kazakh

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