in other news it will change it's name to Unicodestan.
Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
241–250 of 422 posts
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think their point is that the repression that you're discussing is largely pre-Krushchev; that's not quite a century ago, but it's a world away from what life in the USSR was like by the 1980s.
Krushchev successor, Brezhnev send tanks to Czechoslovakia in 1968.
And the US successfully overthrew inconvenient governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1960, the Dominican Republic in 1961, Chile and South Vietnam in 1963, and Brazil in 1964, but you wouldn't call that evidence for the US being a repressive government, would you?
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turkic languages are split between Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic-based scripts. Kazakhs in Turkey, for example, already write in Latin script. Is there an issue with Turkish scholarship of history since Ataturk pushed Latin-based alphabet?
Literacy rate skyrocketed after switching to Latin from Ottoman Turkish alphabet
I don't think it's the same situation. Arabic alphabet is a particularly bad alphabet to write Turkic languages in (although it's ok, as wel all know since people used it for almost a millenia) but Cyrilic alphabet is already pretty close to Latin. Also, literacy in Turkey skyrocketed in 1930s not only because of alphabet change. It might have been a minor factor, but there were other factors and the government highly emphasized Western education, to the point it was totalitarian in most regions.
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#244Did they seriously go with dotless i, the character that is endless source of fun for any case mapping code. Would í have really been so bad? All the other accented characters are using ´ ffs.
Used dotless, dotted i all my life never had any problems. What endless source of fun are you talking about?
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#245"Munalbayeva Daurenbekovna, head of the National Academic Library" Butchered her name. Latin alphabet didn't help.
For the curious: Үмітхан Дәуренбекқызы Мұңалбаева, which I think is Úmithan Dáurenbekqyzy Muńalbaeva in the new alphabet.
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read it. What you said is this "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages.". This just isn't the case, especially given the duration and the complexity (and contradictions) of policies in use during his tenure. There was certainly Russification. It's hard to point at any period where there was a straightforward "general policy to suppress national languages".
> "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages." It existed in general, but it was especially intense from 1930s until early 1950s. So during Stalin in particular a lot of damage was caused. It's not hard to point out at all. See some references here: https://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1164774/FULLTEXT0... (from page 107).
Even that reference does not say anything close to "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages." There was no such general policy, the thing you link talks about the tension between the desire for centralized (typically Russian) control and the Marxist ideological demands of 'internationalism'.
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages." It existed in general, but it was especially intense from 1930s until early 1950s. So during Stalin in particular a lot of damage was caused. It's not hard to point out at all. See some references here: https://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1164774/FULLTEXT0... (from page 107).
Even that reference does not say anything close to "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages." There was no such general policy, the thing you link talks about the tension between the desire for centralized (typically Russian) control and the Marxist ideological demands of 'internationalism'.
There was no "tension". Formal internationalism was quite effectively replaced with persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, including suppression of languages and education. Internationalists were some groups like Makhno's anarchists. Stalin was the complete opposite.
But I think I'm wasting my time here. If you want to deny historic facts, do it elsewhere.
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#248I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…
> When overwhelming majority of people speak Russian and Russia is the most important trade partner, I think that it's only logical to have Russian as one of the official languages in the country It makes perfect sense if you want to move away from Russia to dramatically broaden your national potential over time. Russia has a very modest economy versus its population size. Canada and South Korea have overtaken it, an…
Exactly, though best thing they can do - better relationship with China.
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not talking about having a discussion on the finer points of Melville here. I personally have some familiarity with Spanish and French and anyway haven't ever traveled to Africa.
> I'm not talking about having a discussion on the finer points of Melville here. No, seriously, the level of English in those countries is sometimes so low that you won’t even be able to obtain the most rudimentary things. In francophone Africa, even French is sometimes limited only to the upper classes. (In Madagascar, for instance, French disappears as soon as you leave the capital city and people generally speak…
Alright, man, you got me. I've never traveled around rural Madagascar. I think you can appreciate the point, though, which is that no other language has the same kind of reach English does. Even Africa, as a whole, has many fluent speakers of English (including many native ones).
Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People have easier time learning English, and it eases the communication a lot Is this really so? Are you sure having a different alphabet would make it harder for people to learn a western language? I am Russian, and I can safely say that pretty much every literate adult in Russia who has at least a basic school education can read Latin letters just fine, because there is no way around it; the alphabet is taught a…
The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. I can only imagine it makes Kazakh even more daunting. I don't think Cyrillic letters pervade American culture in quite the same way that Latin letters pervade Russian culture, so it's not quite the same.
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