President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan (hereinafter President Nazarbayev) announced in May 2017 that Kazakh, currently written in Cyrillic, would be switched to the Latin alphabet. He stated that Latin letters would first be introduced in schools in 2018, with the aim of fully transitioning Kazakh writing to Latin by 2025. Accordingly, the country name, previously written in Cyrillic as Қазақстан Республикасы, will also be changed to the Latin spelling Qazaqstan Respy’blikasy. Why change the current script, what background lies behind it, and will the change succeed? This article explores these questions.

Created based on Caucasus central asia political map

Kazakhstan’s language and script: their history

Currently, Kazakhstan’s official languages are Kazakh and Russian, and Russian is often used in government and business settings. However, as respect for the Kazakh language has grown, in recent years Kazakh has come to be used more than Russian. Kazakhstan is a multilingual country where as many as 117 different languages are spoken, and among those, Russian serves as the main means of communication for speakers of languages other than Kazakh. A 2009 survey found that 85% of the population was fully proficient in Russian, whereas for Kazakh the figure was 62%, according to these results.

This is not the first time in its history that Kazakhstan has changed the script it uses. Originally, Kazakh is a Turkic language used by nomadic peoples who did not have their own writing system, but with the introduction of Islamic culture it came to be written in Arabic script. In the early 20th century it began to use Latin letters, and after the 1917 Russian Revolution the Soviets encouraged the use of Latin. However, between 1938 and 1940, as part of the Soviet promotion of Russian culture, Kazakh had to be written in Cyrillic.

A shop sign in Almaty, a city in Kazakhstan (Torekhan Sarmanov/ flickr) [ CC BY 2.0 ]

Why change the script?

Why, then, switch from the Cyrillic script that nearly the entire population is accustomed to, to the Latin alphabet? Several factors are at play. One is that the Cyrillic introduced into Kazakhstan by the Soviet regime is said to be rather unwieldy. Cyrillic has 42 letters and includes characters not pronounced in Kazakh, whereas the newly introduced Latin alphabet is planned to use the existing 26 Latin letters plus nine additional letters created by combining apostrophes with Latin letters to represent Kazakh sounds. This may make it easier to write Kazakh. Officially, the change of script is also said to prepare Kazakhstan for the digital era. Under the current orthography, one has to use even the number row on the keyboard to type certain characters, but using Latin seems to solve this problem. There is also an economic backdrop: with rapid growth since 2000, the need to communicate with Western countries has increased, making it necessary to learn English and adopt the alphabet.

Keyboard currently used in Kazakhstan (GaiJin) [ CC0 1.0]

The political background behind the script change

Beyond the reasons mentioned above, there also appear to be economic and policy motives behind the change. After the collapse of the Soviet regime, neighboring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan quickly switched from Cyrillic to Latin. Kazakhstan, however, unlike those countries, has taken a cautious stance toward its relationship with Russia for political reasons since independence in 1991. At the same time, President Nazarbayev has pursued long-term modernization of the country while balancing relations with Russia, Western countries, and China, promoting a plan known as “Kazakhification” (Kazakhification) to restore national identity by developing the Kazakh language and traditional Kazakhstani culture. The policy also reflects an intention to cast off the Soviet past—marked by ongoing Russian influence and an economy dependent on oil exports—and to transform into a country with a more developed economy.

This script change appears to be part of such modernization policies. In this way Kazakhstan has gradually distanced itself from Russian cultural and political influence. Specifically, the language used in education and government has been shifting from Russian to Kazakh; in foreign-language education Russian and English have been placed on an equal footing; and films and TV programs in Kazakh have been produced to highlight national culture.

Although Kazakhstan has been gradually putting distance between itself and Russia—which continues to wield influence in Central Asia—compared to its neighbors it has pursued more Russia-sensitive policies. Why, then, change the script now? Some point to Russia’s recent actions. In recent years Russia has taken an active hand in other countries’ affairs, intervening in Ukraine, Georgia, and Syria. In response to these international moves by Russia, Central Asian states that were formerly under the Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan, fear a renewed surge of Russian influence, and it is said that such concerns may also lie behind the script change.

President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and President Putin of Russia (Presidential Administration of Russia) [ CC　BY　4.0]

President Nazarbayev paid his first official visit to Washington in 12 years since 2006, and a meeting with President Donald Trump (hereinafter President Trump) was held at the White House. The two leaders resolved to strengthen their countries’ strategic partnership and to deepen cooperation in politics and security, trade, and investment. This too can be seen as a sign of Kazakhstan’s intention to move closer to the West economically and politically.

Will the script change work?

Given these various backgrounds, will the shift from Cyrillic to Latin go smoothly? It appears that the change in Kazakh orthography itself enjoys broad support domestically. That said, there are likely to be people who are disadvantaged by the change. Kazakhstan is home to ethnic Russians, the second-largest ethnic group after ethnic Kazakhs, and they have voiced opposition to the change in the Kazakh script. As noted earlier, countries such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which switched to Latin before Kazakhstan, also have ethnic Russian populations. But Kazakhstan has a far larger number of ethnic Russians than those two countries, and it will likely need to consider their concerns going forward. There are also worries such as people not knowing how even to spell their own names, and that past documents written in Russian will fall into disuse— concerns of this sort have been raised. In response, President Nazarbayev has said that it is the Kazakh language that will switch to Latin, and that Cyrillic and Russian will not disappear from Kazakhstan. He has tried to allay these concerns by saying that although there are many anxieties, Kazakhs learned about world culture in Russian and that memory will not vanish, and that the country intends to continue cooperating with its neighbors. How will things develop?

There is also the question of whether all Kazakh sounds can be represented in Latin letters in the first place. President Nazarbayev seeks to address this by making extensive use of apostrophes in combination with Latin letters. Linguists, however, say that heavy use of apostrophes makes writing cumbersome and hard to read, and they oppose it. Others have also pointed out that frequent apostrophes would make Kazakh unsearchable on the web and prevent the use of hashtags on social media.

Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan (Ninara/ flickr) [ CC BY 2.0]

Because of such problems with apostrophes, some linguists argue that, instead of relying heavily on them, Kazakhstan should adopt diacritics modeled on Turkish, and in fact in August 2017 linguists proposed creating pronunciation marks using Turkish as a model. President Nazarbayev, however, did not adopt this plan. Since independence from the Soviet regime, Nazarbayev has remained president for 26 years, and there is little room to challenge his policies, so the heavy use of apostrophes has been pushed forward. That said, while he does not heed opposing views, the president is sensitive to the mood of public opinion, and a legislator close to him stated in December that no final decision had yet been made on whether to make extensive use of apostrophes to write Kazakh, indicating that other methods of supplementing Latin letters may yet be considered.

There seem to be various aims and issues behind Kazakhstan’s script change, and it will be interesting to watch how the transition proceeds and what devices are adopted to represent Kazakh.

Writer Yumiko Yoshida
Graphics: Hinako Hosokawa