At the end of February, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved a new and, most likely, final version of the Kazakh language alphabet based on the Latin script.

In the near future, the office work of government agencies and funds will be transferred to this option. mass media, and Kazakhs will begin to receive documents in which digraphs and diacritics will appear instead of the usual Cyrillic letters. Will Russia and Kazakhstan begin to move away because of this?

The Turks started

The legislative decision to transfer the Kazakh language to a new script was formalized in October 2017, when Nazarbayev signed the corresponding decree. The document put an end to many years of debate about the need to switch to the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Discussions about changing the alphabet in Kazakhstan and other countries Central Asia, which are part of the Turkic world, have been actively carried out since the beginning of the last century. Until the 1920s, they all predominantly used Arabic writing, which over time ceased to satisfy all the needs of the language.

Initially, the Central Asian states, in order to adapt the alphabet to modern times, took a step towards the Latin script. Türkiye turned out to be a leader in this process, which, after the collapse Ottoman Empire set a course for Westernization. The transition to the Latin alphabet along this path, first of all, simplified communication, however, it also had a political background. Thus, Ankara sought to seize influence from Russia in Central Asia.

The USSR also caught the spirit of the times. In the 1920s - 1930s, the Union began a campaign to transfer the writings of the peoples of the country to the Latin script. During this time, 69 languages ​​were romanized, including Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Turkmen and Uzbek. Official status they received according to the 1929 decree.

But the new alphabet did not last long: already in 1936 it was decided to translate the languages ​​into Cyrillic. The transition campaign ended in 1940. The update made it possible to simplify document flow and book publishing, and also made it possible to simultaneously teach Russian and the national languages ​​in schools. Cyrillic writing in the Central Asian republics Soviet Union remained until the 1990s.

It was only with the collapse of the USSR that debate about the most appropriate schedule was resumed. As a result, Azerbaijan was the first to change the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet, then Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan is in the process.

Nazarbayev also thought about the transition for a long time. Back in 2012, speaking with a message to the people of Kazakhstan, the president said that the country could change its alphabet within 15 years. In the signed decree, the head of state specified this deadline - it is planned to transfer the language to a new script by 2025.

According to the head of state, the purpose of the transition to the Latin alphabet is to modernize the economy and develop culture. It is expected that this will help to obtain cheap investments and loans and will provide an opportunity to join a single Turkic cultural space.

As Vladimir Zhirikhin, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, explained in a comment to a Cyrillic observer, the translation of Kazakh into Latin script is, to some extent, a desire to simplify the presence of Kazakhs in the Turkic world and the desire for standardization. However, the expert did not rule out that there is also a political component in the process. However, according to him, in comments on this topic it is clearly exaggerated.

Nazarbayev’s actions, in fact, from the very beginning were regarded as a change in the political vector and evidence of a gradual withdrawal from Moscow’s sphere of influence. But the President of Kazakhstan responded to such interpretations in the same way: they will not stop treating the Russian language with care, we are only talking about the translation of the Kazakh language.

According to data at the beginning of 2017, Russians in Kazakhstan make up 20.2% of the population. This is the second largest national group countries, and Russian is the first language there in terms of proficiency and distribution.

This state of affairs, Vladimir Zharikhin is sure, will continue in the coming decades. At the same time, the latinization of document flow and media in Kazakhstan will not affect the Russian diaspora in any way: the Kazakh language for its representatives, as a rule, is still incomprehensible. Teaching in Russian in the country remains an integral part educational process.

New doesn't mean good

At the same time, the prospect of a quick transition to the Latin script does not please everyone, both in Kazakhstan and in the Turkic world. For example, the President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev, speaking at the Altai Civilization Forum, criticized the Kazakh authorities for abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet.

In his opinion, the old graphics allow you to save historical heritage and be in the same cultural mainstream with Eurasia. Refusal to do so will lead to the destruction of established ties.

The Kazakh authorities and experts warn about upcoming difficulties if the alphabet is translated into Latin. According to generally accepted opinion, a writing reform is always fraught with a generation gap and a loss of knowledge recorded in the previous graph. In addition, the transition will cost money - only in the budget for 2018-2020 600 million tenge (almost 2 million US dollars) were allocated for this.

In addition, there is no unanimity of opinion in answer to the question whether the Latin alphabet will allow all the sounds of the Kazakh language to be reflected in writing. So, in new version The alphabet, approved on February 20, turned out to have 32 letters instead of 42 in the Cyrillic version.

According to some, shortening the characters will avoid confusion and errors in the spelling of certain words. But opponents of character reduction are inclined to argue that it was the diversity of the Cyrillic alphabet that corresponded to the peculiarities of the Kazakh language.

Initially, the developers of the new alphabet tried to smooth out the stinginess of the Latin script with the help of apostrophes - superscript commas or strokes. But the attempt was clearly not successful and was criticized. Therefore, already in the second version of the alphabet, it was decided to abandon additional symbols, but new digraphs and diacritics appeared.

One way or another, in Moscow the attitude towards Kazakh innovations is rather neutral. The Kremlin, unlike the media, did not react to Nazarbayev’s signing of the decree on romanization. Of course, the Russian authorities understand that such a gesture from Astana is an obvious nod to the West.

However, the fact remains: if it is possible to obtain additional investments using the Latin alphabet, then it is unlikely to build allied relations.

Revolutionary reform is coming state language. The Kazakh language will say goodbye to the Cyrillic alphabet and return to the Latin alphabet. The transition to a new graphic dimension will be carried out gradually until 2025.

Since many public figures and linguists have already expressed their views, the site tried to answer the question: “How?” After all, you can’t just go and switch to the Latin alphabet; you need to decide how exactly this or that sound will be transmitted.

Translator, philologist and teacher Anatoly Chernousov, using the example of just one, but very important word “Kazakhstan”, showed us how little we actually know about how to correctly write Kazakh words in the Latin alphabet.

What did Zhamal Omarova sing about?

We are accustomed to the fact that “Kazakhstan” is written in our passports as “Kazakhstan”. And the heatedly discussed English version, proposed by Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in November 2016, looks like Qazaqstan.

However, before the transition to the Cyrillic alphabet, the name of our country was written differently.

“An interesting fact: in the 20s, the word “Kazakhstan” was written as Qazaqьstan, and, most likely, it was pronounced as “Kazakhystan”. To do this, just listen to the recording of the song “Menin Kazakstanym” from 1956 performed by Zhamal Omarova (performer of Kazakh folk songs and songs of the peoples of the USSR - Auto.). She sings “Kazakhystanim” very clearly. By the way, this song is our modern anthem,” says Anatoly Chernousov.

It would be easier to correct the current alphabet

The Kazakh language, if we speak figuratively, like a lady changing her outfits, has changed clothes many times, being translated into one or another graphics system. And not all outfits fit equally well. There are problems with both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet.

“The Cyrillic alphabet that we currently use is quite irrational,” commented Anatoly Chernousov. “It contains many unnecessary letters, such as hard and soft signs and the letter E. And some sounds of the Kazakh language are written very strangely. For example, there is the letter Shch. It is in the Kazakh alphabet denotes the long sound Ш, for example, in the word “ashchi”. While words like “sheber” are written through Ш, although when pronouncing the word, we actually say “sheber”. but the very existence of such strange things suggests that the alphabet is not finalized, it needs to be reworked. In addition, there are studies that claim that the letter I in the Kazakh language has from three to eight different readings. You write I, but you read in. different positions, different sounds. This is a problem that needs to be solved, of course. different languages there are different assumptions. For example, the letter O in Russian is also written and read differently. We don’t write “karova,” although we pronounce it like that, or almost like that. This all needs to be thought through."

According to the linguist, it might be easier and cheaper to simply slightly correct the alphabet that is used for the Kazakh language today.

“From the point of view of time and financial costs, it would be easier to slightly correct the current alphabet than to change the graphics completely. This is serious work. This does not mean that we will say: “That’s it, we’ll throw out these letters and that’s it.” No, of course. This too would have a very strong impact on spelling. Replacing even one letter or abandoning it causes systemic changes in spelling,” says Anatoly.

"Unified Turkic alphabet", developed by the Central Executive Committee of the USSR

Alphabet "on the knee"

Anatoly Chernousov says that many citizens have the wrong idea about the transition to the Latin alphabet. They think that it’s enough to write everything in English letters. IN in social networks even versions of the new alphabet appeared from amateur philologists.

“Many people see the transition to the Latin alphabet as replacing some letters with others. It looks especially funny on social networks, where users post posts like: “I came up with an idea, it will look like this,” commented Anatoly Chernousov. “And they just take the modern alphabet and rewritten in Latin letters, leaving the letter E, for example, which is not found in the Kazakh language at all, or soft and hard signs, or removing unused letters, but leaving the modern order, that is, the alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, but the order is the same as in the Cyrillic alphabet. that is, instead of “A, B, C...” they have “A, B, V...” And not only is B a rather controversial letter, because in the Kazakh language there is no sound B. That is, the presence of this letter in the alphabet. It’s already debatable. Also, the Latin alphabet with the Cyrillic order of letters looks funny. If someone wrote on social networks that he could quickly assemble a hadron collider or on his knees. nuclear reactor, then everyone would be horrified and decide that the person has gone crazy. But when someone cobbled together a new alphabet for the Kazakh language, people say that yes, it’s normal. And they are also beginning to discuss how applicable this is.”

No perfect graphics

If we look more broadly, then the symbols with which we designate this or that sound are relative. If you don’t put a political meaning into them, then it’s just a convention.

“There is an opinion that the Latin alphabet better reflects the sound of the sounds of the Kazakh language,” says Anatoly Chernousov. “In my opinion, this is a rather strange statement. The way it is written and the way it is pronounced, that is, the relationship between graphics and phonetics, is conventional For example, if we agree that the letter A is pronounced like the sound A, then in principle it is considered that this is so. If we decide that the letter A is pronounced like B, for example, then we will write A and say B. This is. “It’s not a question at all. When someone says that the Latin alphabet better reflects the pronunciation of the Kazakh language, the letter Q conveys the sound Қ better than the modern letter - then it sounds at least strange.”

Anatoly Chernousov / Photo Facebook

In principle, there are no graphics that fully reflect the pronunciation of words. This is a utopia. Therefore, the most convenient or familiar option is often adopted.

“The ideal would be graphics that could reflect all the diversity of the implementation of phonemes of a language during speech, but such a language recording system is unlikely to ever be created,” says Anatoly. Modern languages very often they live perfectly well with rather archaic graphics. For example, in English, the writing of words graphically is very different from their sound. Wherein English language- most successful language in the world in terms of the number of people speaking it and areas of use. The graphic and phonetic content of a word are different things. The Kazakh language cannot be required to strive for complete coincidence of graphics and phonetics, since this is impossible in principle."

Disputes and discussions in society, according to Anatoly, are caused by the fact that many people do not know a simple thing: speaking a language and knowing how it functions are not the same thing.

“Everything is not as simple as it may seem to the average person. Changing graphics leads to a change in the rules of writing, that is, the entire spelling. And since we have decided to switch to the Latin alphabet, it is worth noting that a huge amount of work remains. As far as I know, it is underway Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Let’s leave this to Kazakh linguists,” summed up Anatoly.

The question is how to pronounce

Doctor philological sciences Aigul Bizhkenova believes that the spelling options Qazaqstan or Kazakhstan are quite acceptable. And it doesn’t matter that they may not perfectly convey the sound of the word in Kazakh.

“You are right, it is written “Kazakhstan” and pronounced “Kazakhystan”. But this is in any language. This is the assimilation of sounds at the junction,” commented Aigul Bizhkenova. “For example, there is a voiced consonant before a voiceless one, it is deafened - this is the rule of phonetics. And on the contrary, if the subsequent sound is voiced and the previous one is voiceless, it can be reproduced voiced. Colloquial speech different from writing. Written language is more standardized, but oral language can be varied when pronounced; sounds influence each other during rapid speech. For example, the city of Hamburg is spelled "Hamburg", but is pronounced completely differently. Oral speaking is different, there are also dialect variants. The spelling of the word “Kazakhstan” has already, in principle, entered international circulation, so there is no arguing about how it is spelled. The question is how to pronounce it."

Specific letters

Aigul Bizhkenova pointed out to us other difficulties that may await us when switching to the Latin alphabet. For example, in the Kazakh language there are completely unique sounds that are very difficult to identify.

“Transferring specific letters of the Kazakh language is difficult,” says Aigul Bizhkenova. “There are sounds ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ, ү, h, i. Expertise is needed here. There are possibilities for their transmission. There are living European languages, which have consonant phonemes. For example, the same German, there are exactly the same sounds as in the Kazakh language. For example, "h", we have "Gauhar". Another question is that there is a sound “ә” that does not exist in other languages ​​- it needs to be resolved. This is not such a problem, all this is subject to discussion and solution. There is a whole cohort of scientists who can advise on how to write correctly."

Another aspect of the issue is the need to relearn for those who have never dealt with Latin letters.

"Now there is a population that has not studied at all foreign languages. It is very difficult for them to distinguish the Latin alphabet, especially for the elderly part of the population. There are even fears that in the end they will be illiterate people,” says Aigul Bizhkenova. - If they never knew what these letters were, it is very difficult for them to read today's advertising, which is written in English. Therefore, of course, there are certain problems here. But introducing innovations is never without problems; you have to be prepared for everything. As for young people, you don’t have to worry about them at all - everyone is computer literate, everyone has a telephone. They already know Latin letters."

April 12, 2017 Nursultan Nazarbayev: scientists and members of the public should accept single standard new Kazakh alphabet and graphics. At the end of this year, the standards should be ready, and business documentation, periodicals, and textbooks should be translated into Latin by 2025.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved a new version of the Kazakh alphabet, based on the Latin script. The alphabet, to which the country must switch over the next seven years, will have 32 letters. 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 suggested transmitting 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, excessive use of apostrophes would seriously complicate reading and writing - out of 32 letters of the alphabet, 9 would be written with a superscript comma.

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

Expensive pleasure

Despite the fact that the authorities agreed to finalize the initially 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 may have difficulty adjusting to the Latin script, which could create a generation gap.

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

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

A potential problem is also the decline in young people’s interest in reading - at first it will be difficult to adapt to the new alphabet and you will have to spend significantly 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 begin to be issued to citizens of Kazakhstan in 2021, and in 2024-2025 there will be a transition to the Latin alphabet for government agencies, educational institutions and the media - on February 13, such a plan was announced by the Deputy Minister of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan, Erlan Kozhagapanov.

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

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

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

The head of the Central Asia and Kazakhstan department also expressed concerns that the high cost of romanization could lead to abuse and corruption. “The allocation of such a volume of funds with a very weak control mechanism over expenses will lead to a situation where a significant part of the bureaucratic class, especially in the regions, will be faced with the temptation to spend money without reporting. This opens up a wide field for abuse,” the expert believes.

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

Nazarbayev first spoke about introducing the Latin alphabet in 2012, delivering his annual message to the people of Kazakhstan. Five years later, in his article “Looking into the Future: Modernization of Public Consciousness,” the president argued for the need to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet due to the peculiarities of “the modern technological environment, communications, as well as the scientific and educational process of the 21st century.”

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

Experts, by the way, claim the opposite: according to them, it is the Latin script that does a poor job of reflecting all the sounds of the Kazakh language in writing - this is evidenced by problems with additional diacritics like apostrophes.

Having signed 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.”

The deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries notes that there is some 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 unequivocally on this matter. 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-40s the Kazakh language already used the Latin alphabet.

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

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

In particular, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan tried to introduce the Latin script, although certain problems arose there 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. However, the country also made attempts to define and strengthen its own identity - in particular, the replacement of Russian toponyms with Kazakh ones took place.

Goodbye Russia - hello West?

Despite all Nazarbayev’s assurances that the abandonment of the Cyrillic alphabet does not indicate a change in the geopolitical aspirations of the republic, many in Russia and in Kazakhstan itself believe that the purpose of this step is to emphasize “independence” from Moscow.

Astana is pursuing a “multi-vector policy,” that is, it is trying 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 in Central Asia, although its share in EU trade turnover is, of course, very insignificant.

According to the deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, Vladimir Evseev, 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.

“Within the framework of this multi-vector relationship, Kazakhstan’s relations with the West are developing - for this purpose Astana is switching to the Latin alphabet. This is necessary, among other things, to receive cheap investments, cheap loans, and so on,” the expert explained.

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

Experts interviewed by Gazeta.Ru claim that Moscow is not very concerned about the question of what alphabet the Kazakhs will use.

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

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 it at least Chinese characters“, admitted the interlocutor of Gazeta.Ru.

The Latinization of the Kazakh language is a constant subject of debate among linguists, because single option does not exist. The problem is that the Kazakh language has more sounds than letters in the Latin alphabet. It is impossible to draw an unambiguous parallel between sounds and letters, because the Latin alphabet appeared as a written language for Romance languages, and Kazakh belongs to the Turkic languages ​​and has a different phonetic structure.

One of the popular alphabets is the project of Doctor of Philology Abduali Khaidari, better known as the “Latin KazInform” - since 2004, this system of transliteration of Cyrillic text has been used by the information agency of the same name.

Example of text in Latin KazInform

The main feature of the alphabet, diacritics, is very noticeable in the text. These are various hook lines that are added to letters to represent the missing sounds of the language. Diacritics - accents, shorts, umlauts - of course, solve the problem of the lack of letters, but create visual garbage. The laconic text turns into something with a horned tail.

Visually about the problem of diacritics

At the Institute of Linguistics named after. A. Baitursynov's linguistic research continues. Now one of the priority options is:

There are no fundamental differences from the Latin alphabet KazInform. Linguists just replaced some types of diacritics with others: ş → š, and also slightly optimized the letters, excluding those that were inherited from the Cyrillic alphabet: ï (and), x (x). The KazInform version was just a letter-by-letter transliteration of the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet without taking into account the peculiarities of the language.

Looking at these alphabets, it becomes a little sad. The writing reform was conceived not only in order to change some letters for others, this is short-sighted. A language that does not develop is doomed to disappear. It would be wrong to inherit the errors of the Cyrillic alphabet; the new alphabet should be a breath of fresh air for the Kazakh language.

The ABCnet alphabet was developed by Zhanat Aimaganov back in 1999.

Latin ABCnet

This Latin alphabet solves all the problems with the accumulation of diacritics of the two previous options. A very simple move was made - to indicate the missing letters, an apostrophe was added to the existing ones on the right, and digraphs - letter combinations - were introduced. Ш turns into sh, ғ into gh.

Due to the fact that the alphabet contains exclusively standard Latin characters, its full computer support is ensured even on very old equipment.

However, not everything is so good. With such a Latin alphabet, the volume of text increases, the speed of typing slows down, and the ease of perception decreases. Apostrophes visually break the words and the text. From a technical point of view, a word with an apostrophe is not complete. As an example, Uzbekistan, which since 1995 has been using an alphabet similar to ABCnet. Until recently, it was impossible to fully search for Uzbek texts on Google - the search engine considered an apostrophe to be a word break.

Example of text in Uzbek with official Latin script

Uzbekistan cannot be called a good example to follow. More than 20 years have passed, but the main writing system in the country is still Cyrillic. Perhaps the adopted Latin draft played an important role in this.

Let's turn to the past. In the 30s of the 20th century in the USSR there was an experiment to introduce a universal Latin alphabet for the Turkic peoples - Yanalif. In this alphabet, the shortage of letters was resolved by using diacritics and inventing unique symbols that did not previously exist in the Latin alphabet.

Yanalif

The main convenience was that one letter stood for one sound, there were few diacritics, and the text looked quite holistic and beautiful.

Fragment of “Words of Edification” by Abai Kunanbaev on Yanalif

However, using this alphabet now is not the best solution. It contains non-standard characters not found in many computer fonts. And some characters are still not included in the universal international character encoding standard - Unicode, which, according to the creators, should include all the characters of the existing and disappeared scripts of the world.

To take the best ideas of romanization, create a simple, convenient, concise alphabet of a competitive language - this is the goal that the enthusiasts from the project have set for themselves Kazakh Grammar Nazi.

Let's take the phonetics of the Kazakh language as a basis. The table shows the main sounds; in addition, now there are borrowed sounds in the language, for example f, x.

Consonant sounds of the Kazakh language according to the IPA - the international phonetic alphabet

Vowel sounds of the Kazakh language according to IPA

There is no need to think about the Latin designation of some sounds - there are no ambiguities. They will coincide with their designation in the IPA - the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, [m] - m, [p] - p. To avoid digraphs and diacritics, we will try to select convenient symbols that already exist in the standards of Latin graphics.

For the sound denoted in Cyrillic as ң, we take Latin letterŋ. In addition to the fact that this is a solid grapheme, in many languages ​​and even in the phonetic alphabet it denotes exactly the same sound as in the Kazakh language. And this is an additional plus for the perception of the text, especially by foreign speakers.

To replace the Cyrillic sh - the Latin letter c. A simple and elegant move. Why come up with tails and birds over the letter s when you can simply use an unused symbol. This idea is not new - this is how the sound sh was designated in Yanalif.

Kazakh phonetics obeys the law of synharmonism. A word, excluding some borrowings, can only have vowels either front or back, the so-called “hard” and “soft”. In a hard word there are sounds қ and ғ, and in a soft word - k and g. Such sounds are called allophones, that is, they are actually the same, but their pronunciation differs depending on the neighboring sounds of the word. Why create redundant letters? We remove q, the allophones қ and к will be denoted by the same letter k. Also with the pair ғ-г, they will be replaced by one Latin g.

Some believe that because of this decision, the sounds will one day merge into one and disappear in speech қ and ғ. This opinion has no real basis - simply replacing the alphabet does not make sounds disappear.

In Kyrgyzstan in the 40s of the last century, as in Kazakhstan, the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted. A feature of the writing was the absence of separate letters for the sounds қ and ғ. More than 70 years have passed, but these sounds, absent from writing, have not disappeared from the speech of the Kyrgyz people.

Another example of allophones is the sounds l and l. Although these sounds are denoted by the same letter l, it never occurs to anyone to confuse them when pronouncing: kol [kol] - kel [kel].

Many languages ​​can be cited as examples: English and French, where the spelling is very different from the pronunciation, Arabic, which retains vowels that are completely absent in writing.

The so-called “adherents of the Q sect” are against the unification of letters. Some people liked the idea of ​​using the letter q instead of қ once put forward so much that they urgently rushed to rename everything, often without practical need, to please the populists.

Examples of renaming organizations

Such actions have generated a lot of skepticism, irony and sarcasm on social networks. Everything requires reasonable calculation.

You can't do without diacritics completely. To indicate the missing vowels in the alphabet, we use a proven solution - umlauts. In many languages, these signs mean a "softened" version of the vowel sound, which would be a plus.

Designation of vowel sounds

There are many borrowings in the modern Kazakh language, including Arabic, Persian, and Russian. Many terms are already difficult to imagine using only classical Kazakh phonetics. International terms and toponyms contain sounds that are missing in Kazakh phonetics. For example, France. According to the standards of Cyrillization of the Kazakh language, all such words were taken from Russian as is, in the same letter form, with sounds alien to the language. Let's go back to pre-Cyrillic times.

The above image shows the names of the countries as they were written by Yanalif, as adapted as possible to Kazakh phonetics.

Germany - Kerman, France - Pyransy, Italy - Italy, England - Agylshyn, Sweden - Shibet, Norway - Norbeck.

Times have changed, and the Kazakh language does not stand still either. The average person speaking Kazakh has not had problems pronouncing new sounds for a long time. Some of them appeared along with Arabic and Persian borrowings. Therefore, letters can be added to the alphabet to represent these sounds - f, v, h.

It makes no sense to make two different letters for [x] and [h]; in the modern Kazakh language, the line between these borrowed sounds has been erased.

Now let's talk about the rules of transliteration. The most questions may arise with the letters and, in the Cyrillic alphabet. These letters represent several sounds at once.

In the Latin alphabet it will be enough to expand the diphthongs, turning them into one or two separate letters.

Siyr - sıyır, ine - iyne, елік - iyelik, internet - internet

Ru - ruw, aua - awa, kuyysu - kuyısıw, kuyisu - küyisiw

Conversion rules

The letters Yu, Ya are transformed taking into account the fact that they are diphthongs. Ayu - ayıw, yagni - yagnıy.

The letter CH turns into C: check - cek.

Let's look at what happened in the end.

Fragment from Sain Muratbekov’s book “Zhusan Iisi”

Beautiful. There is no big rubbish from diacritics, the text looks organic. Outwardly it differs from the Latin alphabet of other Turkic languages, which ensures its recognition.

Latin Kazak Grammar Nazi

For comparison, let's take the same text in this alphabet and on the graph from the Institute of Linguistics.

Visually, the text on the left looks cleaner. The text on the right is full of diacritic birds.

In addition to the Kazak Grammar alphabet, a prototype keyboard for the new alphabet was developed. All characters are placed on the main keyboard, so the number keys remain untouched. The tenge symbol has also been introduced, which is increasingly used in life.

Latin keyboard layout

Keyboard layouts for the MacOS and Windows operating systems have already been made, they can be easily installed and used in the new Latin alphabet, and applications for smartphones are being prepared. Participants in the Kazak Grammar Nazi project are considering the idea of ​​a program for automatically adapting Cyrillic texts in accordance with all the new rules; perhaps promising and currently popular neural networks will be used for this.

In early April, the President of Kazakhstan recalled that by 2025 it is necessary to transfer the Kazakh alphabet to the Latin alphabet. This intention has received many different interpretations: both as a withdrawal of the republic from the cultural field of Russia, and as a kind of “civilizational choice,” and simply as a desire for at least some changes. I figured out why the country's authorities want to change the writing system, what this has to do with the situation in the country and the discussions of the 1930s in the USSR.

Reset language

Despite the slogan “there are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take,” by the 1930s the Soviet government was convinced that reality was not entirely amenable to experimentation. 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.

Goals are clear, tasks are still the same

Of course, part of the intelligentsia of Kazakhstan happily perceives Latinization as a symbolic exit from the cultural space of Russia and “decolonization.” The irony of history is that here too they follow Soviet ideological patterns. Secretary General Communist Party Joseph Stalin in 1934 set the task for the Bolsheviks in the republics to “develop and strengthen the existing native language court, administration, economic authorities, government authorities.” The tasks, apparently, have not changed 80 years later - the Soviet intelligentsia has been stubbornly withdrawing from the cultural field of Russia for several decades. How successfully she succeeds in this and what relation real, and not imaginary, Russia has to this is a debatable question, to say the least.

Photo: Alexey Nikolsky / RIA Novosti

The most interesting thing is that most of the debate about changing the alphabet in Kazakhstan is rendered meaningless by the fact that the alphabets in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have already been Latinized. 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 obvious. In Uzbekistan, it was never possible to completely translate even government office work into the Latin alphabet. The language reform was criticized in 2016 by one of the country’s presidential candidates, leader Sarvar Otamuratov. The experience of Azerbaijan is considered more positive, but critics note that total Latinization has led to citizens reading less.

People who work professionally with words, writers of Kazakhstan, took into account the experience of their neighbors. In 2013, after the publication of a thesis on the transition to the Latin alphabet, a group of writers addressed the president and government with an open letter. “To this day, almost a million book titles have been published in the republic, scientific works about the ancient and subsequent history of the people (...). It is clear that with the transition to the Latin alphabet, our younger generation will be cut off from the history of their ancestors,” the address said. The authors of the letter drew attention to the fact that there is a general problem of mastering the Kazakh language in the country and in these conditions it is unreasonable to carry out radical reforms.

On the way to the civilized world

It is obvious that Kazakhstan will face significant problems when transitioning to the Latin script. Firstly, this will require significant financial costs - different figures are cited here, from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. But not everything is so simple: for the national intelligentsia allowed to implement the reform, the development of huge funds is an absolute plus. Another thing is that this can slow down the implementation of other projects in the humanitarian and cultural sphere, although, apparently, there are simply no such projects. Secondly, this will create difficulties for those who use the Kazakh language - 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.

Of course, supporters of Latinization consider these problems to be 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 in the spirit of the hero of Ilf and Petrov, “bargaining is inappropriate here.” “It’s always more expensive to go out into the civilized world, but then you go out into the world,” said the deputy. If the reform is finally started, then only victorious reports will come from the ground about the successful mastery of the new graphics by the broad masses of workers.

One of the reasons why Astana needs modernization in the ideological sphere is that the state in the cultural sphere has to compete with the ideologically savvy agents of the theocratic state doctrine - the Islamists. They skillfully use modern means communications and know how to answer questions from the public. If Latinization causes even a short-term vacuum in culture and education, the Islamists will fill it with lightning speed.

It is very important that the change in writing will affect only 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 persistently emphasize that language reform will not affect relations between Moscow and Astana in any way. But why do the republic’s authorities have to dwell on an ideological issue that was 80-90 years old? Apparently, because no other mobilization agenda for societies has been formed (against the backdrop of five-year industrialization plans, this all gives a lasting impression of deja vu). Under these conditions, ideologists, with the most powerful theoretical base, can only copy successful experience marketers - try to give citizens “good emotions,” as the journalist put it. And, of course, “play with fonts” and budget.