'Kazakhstan's new alphabet good for Turkic literature'

By Aliia Raimbekova

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AA) - A move by Kazakhstan to change its alphabet to the Roman script would contribute to Turkic literature, an academic said Thursday.

The country is set to switch from Cyrillic to a Roman-based script by 2025.

Darkhan Kydyrali, president of the International Turkic Academy, said they were working on a literary canon book aimed at promoting the classics of Turkic literature.

The book, which will be written in Kazakh in the Latin alphabet, will mainly cover folklore, tales and epics from all Turkic cultures and is due to come out this year, he said.

"As an academy, we would like to popularize literary works and develop a familiarity with literary heritage by translating collective works into other branches of Turkic languages,"

Kydyrali is also overseeing a project for a common alphabet of 34 letters for Turkic languages in order to build bridges between literature. He said writing works in a common alphabet would bring people closer together.

Kazakh, with its three dialects – Western Kazakh, Northeastern Kazakh and Southern Kazakh -- is a Turkic language. It is very close to Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Turkmen -- the languages of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan -- and is spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union

Under Nazarbayev's decree, the country is set to switch from the Kazakh alphabet, which is Cyrillic, to a Roman-based script by 2025.

Nazarbayev said on April 12 last year that by 2025, Kazakhstan will start publishing workflows, periodicals, textbooks and everything else in the Roman alphabet.

He said Kazakhstan previously used a Roman alphabet from 1929 to 1940 but later replaced it with the Russian-based Cyrillic one.

In a speech last October, Nazarbayev said the transition to a new alphabet will make learning the Kazakh language easier.

He added that the transition would not affect the rights of the Russian-speaking people or Russian and other languages.