Re:Kazakhstan spells out plans for alphabet swap
by Symbiote on Sunday April 16, 2017 @05:08AM
(#14125033)
It probably is 99% political, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a waste of money.
Cyrillic is/was a big part of Russia/USSR's identity from the west -- see things like "BORДT", faux Cyrillic [1], cheap exported Russian vodka, "СССР" on t-shirts, etc.
If Kazakhstan wants to appear less Russian, swapping the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin will be very effective.
(I know the Latin alphabet but only a few letters of the Cyrillic one. It's far easier for me to read signs in Viet Nam than it is in Russia, even though I can probably pronounce Russian much better than Vietnamese. When I don't understand a word written in Cyrillic, it takes me 20 times longer to type it into my phone's dictionary.)
Cyrillic is/was a big part of Russia/USSR's identity from the west -- see things like "BORДT", faux Cyrillic [1], cheap exported Russian vodka, "СССР" on t-shirts, etc.
If Kazakhstan wants to appear less Russian, swapping the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin will be very effective.
(I know the Latin alphabet but only a few letters of the Cyrillic one. It's far easier for me to read signs in Viet Nam than it is in Russia, even though I can probably pronounce Russian much better than Vietnamese. When I don't understand a word written in Cyrillic, it takes me 20 times longer to type it into my phone's dictionary.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_Cyrillic