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> culturally aligning > themselves with Turkey There are at least some other interesting countries using Latin script from the perspective of every countr

> culturally aligning > themselves with Turkey There are at least some other interesting countries using Latin script from the perspective of every country everywhere. Ability to distinguish between and produce Latin characters is an ability approximately everyone literate I've met in South East Asia has, too, and I suspect that's true of much of South and East Asia.

avodonosov 10y ago
He probably means that the Kazakh language belongs to the family of Turkic languages.
niftich 10y ago
Well yes, but the reference to Turkey is intentional. Kazakhstan is a founding member of the Turkic Council [1][2], and a sort of pan-Turkic alignment helped by sharing a language family is a strategic goal, to create a camaraderie of states along an oblique axis to the economic union Kazakhstan enjoys with Russia, Belarus, and friends [3]. Russia tends to treat Kazakhstan as a sure ally, but no vastly outnumbered sure ally wants to appear like a pushover with no other friends. Definitely, though, the fact that the Latin alphabet eases the consumption of culture, science, commerce from a variety of Latin alphabet countries is a huge plus, but it helps to also understand the local context. [1] http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/general-information/299/308 http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/general-information/299/308 [2] http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/message-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan/299/311/311/314 http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/message-of-the-president-of-the... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union
wsxcde 10y ago
Learning the Latin script isn't particularly hard nor is the script itself that useful in understanding languages like English. Learning scripts, especially the roman script which only has 26 letters takes about a day. Learning a language takes a lifetime. My experience is with rural India, where even barely literate people know the english letters thanks to road names, bus numbers, government forms and the like. (Roads named the IV-A cross or buses numbered 215C are a dime a dozen Bangalore.) I believe the Turkic languages are somewhat similar, so this move will immediately give Kazakhs a route into Turkish media and literature. This is probably a good thing given the decline of Russia and Russian.
- labster 10y ago
  It's not hard to have basic knowledge of a new script with a limited number of characters. But operating with it on a daily basis is another matter. My reading speed in Japanese kana is about one-tenth of that in English (not even counting the kanji, most of which I don't know), where my Spanish reading speed is probably at least half of English. Maybe it would be higher with a more regular exposure to the character set, but it's still liable to be a difficult transition for many people.
  - wsxcde 10y ago
    Sure, going from recognizing letters to actually reading is what I meant by learning language. If you have some degree of familiarity with a language, you're no longer looking at individual letters and pattern matching them with symbols in your head. You're able to take in a word or multiple words at a time. And at least some of the English/Japanese difficulty is due to fact that you're also changing systems of writing, going from an alphabet to a pictographical system. Comparing that with English to Spanish is almost unfair because of the fact that so many English words of French and Latin origin have very similar cognates in Spanish. I'd imagine you'd have similar troubles if you tried to learn Hindi/Devanagari for instance. Devanagari is an abugida, so you'd need to learn all of the letters in the alphabet and a whole bunch of "modifications" to the consonants that denote adjoining vowels.
    - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
      But this isn't like learning a language. These folks are simply learning a new system to express their primary language. The one they are fluent in. It is more like learning how to express english using Russian letters on the page: Difficult at first, but not so bad. Sure, there will be some bumps in learning how to do things like spell and learning the rules, but it won't be that bad. Once the system is learned, it'd be more like writing difficult words by sounding them out.
      - wsxcde 10y ago
        Yeah, I totally agree. I was referring to labster's situation not, the Kazakh situation.
int_19h 10y ago
That's a side benefit (esp. wrt English), but the ability to easily understand other related Turkic languages in written form, at least partially, is the more immediate result. Turkey had historically been trying to unify Turkic alphabets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_Alphabet), and while they haven't been 100% successful in that goal, it certainly did a lot to promote cultural exchange between the nations that buy into it - and thus, indirectly, Pan-Turkism.

avodonosov 10y ago

He probably means that the Kazakh language belongs to the family of Turkic languages.

niftich 10y ago

Well yes, but the reference to Turkey is intentional. Kazakhstan is a founding member of the Turkic Council [1][2], and a sort of pan-Turkic alignment helped by sharing a language family is a strategic goal, to create a camaraderie of states along an oblique axis to the economic union Kazakhstan enjoys with Russia, Belarus, and friends [3]. Russia tends to treat Kazakhstan as a sure ally, but no vastly outnumbered sure ally wants to appear like a pushover with no other friends. Definitely, though, the fact that the Latin alphabet eases the consumption of culture, science, commerce from a variety of Latin alphabet countries is a huge plus, but it helps to also understand the local context. [1] http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/general-information/299/308 http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/general-information/299/308 [2] http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/message-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan/299/311/311/314 http://www.turkkon.org/en-US/message-of-the-president-of-the... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union

wsxcde 10y ago

Learning the Latin script isn't particularly hard nor is the script itself that useful in understanding languages like English. Learning scripts, especially the roman script which only has 26 letters takes about a day. Learning a language takes a lifetime. My experience is with rural India, where even barely literate people know the english letters thanks to road names, bus numbers, government forms and the like. (Roads named the IV-A cross or buses numbered 215C are a dime a dozen Bangalore.) I believe the Turkic languages are somewhat similar, so this move will immediately give Kazakhs a route into Turkish media and literature. This is probably a good thing given the decline of Russia and Russian.

labster 10y ago
It's not hard to have basic knowledge of a new script with a limited number of characters. But operating with it on a daily basis is another matter. My reading speed in Japanese kana is about one-tenth of that in English (not even counting the kanji, most of which I don't know), where my Spanish reading speed is probably at least half of English. Maybe it would be higher with a more regular exposure to the character set, but it's still liable to be a difficult transition for many people.
- wsxcde 10y ago
  Sure, going from recognizing letters to actually reading is what I meant by learning language. If you have some degree of familiarity with a language, you're no longer looking at individual letters and pattern matching them with symbols in your head. You're able to take in a word or multiple words at a time. And at least some of the English/Japanese difficulty is due to fact that you're also changing systems of writing, going from an alphabet to a pictographical system. Comparing that with English to Spanish is almost unfair because of the fact that so many English words of French and Latin origin have very similar cognates in Spanish. I'd imagine you'd have similar troubles if you tried to learn Hindi/Devanagari for instance. Devanagari is an abugida, so you'd need to learn all of the letters in the alphabet and a whole bunch of "modifications" to the consonants that denote adjoining vowels.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    But this isn't like learning a language. These folks are simply learning a new system to express their primary language. The one they are fluent in. It is more like learning how to express english using Russian letters on the page: Difficult at first, but not so bad. Sure, there will be some bumps in learning how to do things like spell and learning the rules, but it won't be that bad. Once the system is learned, it'd be more like writing difficult words by sounding them out.
    - wsxcde 10y ago
      Yeah, I totally agree. I was referring to labster's situation not, the Kazakh situation.

int_19h 10y ago

That's a side benefit (esp. wrt English), but the ability to easily understand other related Turkic languages in written form, at least partially, is the more immediate result. Turkey had historically been trying to unify Turkic alphabets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Turkic_Alphabet), and while they haven't been 100% successful in that goal, it certainly did a lot to promote cultural exchange between the nations that buy into it - and thus, indirectly, Pan-Turkism.