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They are actually shifting back to (one of) the original alphabets. > Nazarbayev described the use of the Cyrillic script as "political," noting that the Latin

They are actually shifting back to (one of) the original alphabets. > Nazarbayev described the use of the Cyrillic script as "political," noting that the Latin alphabet had previously been used from 1929 until 1940. Prior to 1929, the Arabic script had been used. "In 1940 … a law was adopted transferring the Kazakh language from the Latin alphabet to one based on Russian script," Also: > The Kazakh language belongs to the family of Turkic languages, whereas Russian is a Slavic language. Other countries with Turkic languages, such as Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, currently use the Latin alphabet. At the end of the day, this is not really about interoperating with the rest of the world. It's about pride and national identity.

int_19h 10y ago
The traditional alphabet in this case is Arabic. Latin was also pushed on them from the outside, and never broadly used prior to that, so it's also "globalizing" in that sense (remember how it was introduced in Turkey, and why?).
- pseingatl 10y ago
  Arabic is a Semitic language; Turkish and the other Turkic are not. Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing, that is not the case with Turkish. Yes, you can write Turkish (more properly, Osmanli) using Arabic script. For that matter you can write Spanish using Arabic script and for many years many people did. But in both of these cases, you're shoehorning a language into a script that really isn't appropriate for it.
  - alnitak 10y ago
    > Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing. Are you an Arabic speaker? This claim is a bit stretched. Yes, short vowels are written as diacritic symbols on consonants, which are often dropped from mass publications. However, long vowels are an essential part of the language and they are indeed present as their own letters in Arabic.
  - Koshkin 10y ago
    But the Arabic alphabet is already being succesfully used in Iran and Pakistan, to give a couple of examples, for languages that are very different from Arabic.
  - gotchange 10y ago
    > Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing, That's an orientalist claim. Vowels do exist in Arabic but some foreign learners of the language don't get the distinction between short and long vowels and how the letters "ا و ي" have dual role as consonants and vowels as well. > you're shoehorning a language into a script that really isn't appropriate for it. Here's a phonetic transliteration of your first sentence in Arabic "Arabic is a Semitic language; Turkish and the other Turkic are not." "أَرَبِك از أَ سِمِتِك لانجوِﭺ، تِركِش أَند أَذَر تِركِك أَر نَت" By the way, this is the Egyptian convention since the "g" sound is missing in Modern Standard Arabic.
    - mysterypie 10y ago
      Great example! I had the misconception that Arabic had no vowels. I fed your Arabic transliteration into Google Translate[1], clicked on the "speak it" icon for the Arabic, and I could hear a comprehensible English sentence: https://translate.google.com/m/translate?hl=en#ar/en/أَرَبِك%20از%20أَ%20سِمِتِك%20لانجوِﭺ،%20تِركِش%20أَند%20أَذَر%20تِركِك%20أَر%20نَت%22 https://translate.google.com/m/translate?hl=en#ar/en/أَرَبِك... If Arabic had no vowel sounds then this should have been impossible! [1] Ignore the English translation which is meaningless and irrelevant. In this case I'm using Google Translate for speech synthesis, not for translation.
    - Mediterraneo10 10y ago
      That vowels are an afterthought in Semitic scripts is not an “Orientalist claim” at all, it’s completely mainstream archaeology. The use of some consonant letters to denote long vowels (as so-called matres lectionis) was a development subsequent to the use of a purely consonantal writing system. With regard to Turkic, one of the challenges with using the Arabic script is not just that Turkic has a larger vowel inventory than Arabic or Persian, but the frontness/backness of vowels plays a major part in the morphophonemics. The Orkhon script that was the first used for Turkic languages was designed to reflect this, but when the Arabic script was introduced in towards the Middle Turkic era new strategies had to be thought up to reflect frontness/backness, e.g. the use of Arabic emphatic stops versus non-emphatic ones. However, the solutions that were found left a lot of room for ambiguity. I often read Kazan Tatar documents in the old Arabic script, and I can understand how the plethora of rules and exceptions confused the masses prior to the introduction of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. (The Cyrillic script now in use is hardly better than the Arabic script, though)
  - int_19h 10y ago
    I don't really know enough about Turkic languages to say whether Latin is a better fit for them than Arabic, or not. I would expect modern Turkish alphabet to be better at it, if only because it was specifically designed for that purpose, and not just organically adopted the way Arabic was. But my point wasn't about which one is a better fit, but rather which one was historically used for that particular language first, and for the longest period of time, and used to produce the most past cultural artifacts. And in this case, it would be Arabic.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  But Arabic is, obviously, also not a native script.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    What is a native script, though? If you mean the one that is completely original, then very few languages could claim such a thing - most cultures borrowed their writing systems from someone else, and then adapted them to their needs. Most people would say that Cyrillic, for example, is a "native script" for East Slavic languages, but it's clearly derived from Greek (and its historical version more so than the modern one). For Kazakh and their predecessors, the script in use before Arabic was Orkhon. But it was also derived from other scripts.
    - smitherfield 10y ago
      I agree, like many things, it's a continuum rather than a binary, but if we are going to draw a line somewhere, my heuristic would be when the script is named after a foreign language, it isn't native. So, for example, the "Arabic," "Chinese" and "Latin" scripts are native, respectively, to Arabic, Chinese dialects and Romance languages, while in Farsi, Japanese and English they are in customary use, but are not of native origin.

int_19h 10y ago

The traditional alphabet in this case is Arabic. Latin was also pushed on them from the outside, and never broadly used prior to that, so it's also "globalizing" in that sense (remember how it was introduced in Turkey, and why?).

pseingatl 10y ago
Arabic is a Semitic language; Turkish and the other Turkic are not. Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing, that is not the case with Turkish. Yes, you can write Turkish (more properly, Osmanli) using Arabic script. For that matter you can write Spanish using Arabic script and for many years many people did. But in both of these cases, you're shoehorning a language into a script that really isn't appropriate for it.
- alnitak 10y ago
  > Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing. Are you an Arabic speaker? This claim is a bit stretched. Yes, short vowels are written as diacritic symbols on consonants, which are often dropped from mass publications. However, long vowels are an essential part of the language and they are indeed present as their own letters in Arabic.
- Koshkin 10y ago
  But the Arabic alphabet is already being succesfully used in Iran and Pakistan, to give a couple of examples, for languages that are very different from Arabic.
- gotchange 10y ago
  > Vowels are an afterthought to Arabic writing, That's an orientalist claim. Vowels do exist in Arabic but some foreign learners of the language don't get the distinction between short and long vowels and how the letters "ا و ي" have dual role as consonants and vowels as well. > you're shoehorning a language into a script that really isn't appropriate for it. Here's a phonetic transliteration of your first sentence in Arabic "Arabic is a Semitic language; Turkish and the other Turkic are not." "أَرَبِك از أَ سِمِتِك لانجوِﭺ، تِركِش أَند أَذَر تِركِك أَر نَت" By the way, this is the Egyptian convention since the "g" sound is missing in Modern Standard Arabic.
  - mysterypie 10y ago
    Great example! I had the misconception that Arabic had no vowels. I fed your Arabic transliteration into Google Translate[1], clicked on the "speak it" icon for the Arabic, and I could hear a comprehensible English sentence: https://translate.google.com/m/translate?hl=en#ar/en/أَرَبِك%20از%20أَ%20سِمِتِك%20لانجوِﭺ،%20تِركِش%20أَند%20أَذَر%20تِركِك%20أَر%20نَت%22 https://translate.google.com/m/translate?hl=en#ar/en/أَرَبِك... If Arabic had no vowel sounds then this should have been impossible! [1] Ignore the English translation which is meaningless and irrelevant. In this case I'm using Google Translate for speech synthesis, not for translation.
  - Mediterraneo10 10y ago
    That vowels are an afterthought in Semitic scripts is not an “Orientalist claim” at all, it’s completely mainstream archaeology. The use of some consonant letters to denote long vowels (as so-called matres lectionis) was a development subsequent to the use of a purely consonantal writing system. With regard to Turkic, one of the challenges with using the Arabic script is not just that Turkic has a larger vowel inventory than Arabic or Persian, but the frontness/backness of vowels plays a major part in the morphophonemics. The Orkhon script that was the first used for Turkic languages was designed to reflect this, but when the Arabic script was introduced in towards the Middle Turkic era new strategies had to be thought up to reflect frontness/backness, e.g. the use of Arabic emphatic stops versus non-emphatic ones. However, the solutions that were found left a lot of room for ambiguity. I often read Kazan Tatar documents in the old Arabic script, and I can understand how the plethora of rules and exceptions confused the masses prior to the introduction of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. (The Cyrillic script now in use is hardly better than the Arabic script, though)
- int_19h 10y ago
  I don't really know enough about Turkic languages to say whether Latin is a better fit for them than Arabic, or not. I would expect modern Turkish alphabet to be better at it, if only because it was specifically designed for that purpose, and not just organically adopted the way Arabic was. But my point wasn't about which one is a better fit, but rather which one was historically used for that particular language first, and for the longest period of time, and used to produce the most past cultural artifacts. And in this case, it would be Arabic.
smitherfield 10y ago
But Arabic is, obviously, also not a native script.
- int_19h 10y ago
  What is a native script, though? If you mean the one that is completely original, then very few languages could claim such a thing - most cultures borrowed their writing systems from someone else, and then adapted them to their needs. Most people would say that Cyrillic, for example, is a "native script" for East Slavic languages, but it's clearly derived from Greek (and its historical version more so than the modern one). For Kazakh and their predecessors, the script in use before Arabic was Orkhon. But it was also derived from other scripts.
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    I agree, like many things, it's a continuum rather than a binary, but if we are going to draw a line somewhere, my heuristic would be when the script is named after a foreign language, it isn't native. So, for example, the "Arabic," "Chinese" and "Latin" scripts are native, respectively, to Arabic, Chinese dialects and Romance languages, while in Farsi, Japanese and English they are in customary use, but are not of native origin.