Comments on: Қазақ тілі to become Qazaq tili?

By: Zamir

Zamir — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:56:54 +0000

It is interesting. I’m studying there, at IU.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 17:33:28 +0000

As re: the diacritical apostrophe, my class used to refer to the ‘funny O’ and the ‘funny G’. Very scientific, I know – and I still couldn’t pronounce them properly! (this after having learnt some Arabic and the throat gargling involved in ‘ayn and rayn).

By: Michael Hancock

Michael Hancock — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:55:12 +0000

As for me, I use O’zbek tili like Nathan: I write it in Cyrillic by hand, for the same reason. I was so damn proud when I finally got the handwriting down, I couldn’t stop myself. Also, O’zbek tili is WAY EASIER than Qazaq Tili, alphabetically. The three “Y” characters alone makes me worry how they’ll put it in Latin. O’zbek fortunately uses no markings except the appostrophe, bless them. Anyway, I learned my pidgin Russian and my bar-fight-starting O’zbek here in the Peace Corps.

By: Katy

Katy — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 04:18:55 +0000

I did Azerbaijani at IU and Armenian at UMich.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:38:30 +0000

I think everyone but myself. I have learned at the University of Washington and in a charming little institution known as the kindergarten in the Second Department of the Qibray Tumen of Tashkent Oblast.

By: johnnie b. baker

johnnie b. baker — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:35:41 +0000

did we all learn at iu?

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:08:31 +0000

Nathan, I think there’s a bit of a generation gap between the Uzbek teachers at IU. The teacher for the Introductory class I took preferred the Latin, whereas the teacher for Intermediate/Advanced seems to prefer Cyrillic.

I heard a lovely story at CESS about alphabet shenanigans in Uzbekistan from Malik, the above-mentioned teacher of Intermediate/Advanced Uzbek. His father, born very early in the 20th century could read and write in the old Arabic script; his mother, born a few years later, could read and write in the Latin script (introduced in the 1920s); Malik knew the Cyrillic, of course; and now his kids prefer the Latin!

By: Nathan

Nathan — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:34:39 +0000

Like I said, I prefer to type o’zbek tili in Latin, but write by hand in Cyrillic (though that’s probably because I take great pride in my Cyrillic handwriting). I actually prefer to read printed materials in Cyrillic, but that’s probably because that’s what I see most often. I was reading lots of Latin last year, and it was hard to go back and forth for me.

Nick, how much do you deal with Cyrillic in the classes at IU? We have a student who took the summer course this year who could read Cyrillic fine, but had to make a bit of a transition. (It was probably easier since she is familiar with Russian.)

As for alphabets, for all its inadequacies, I am quite partial to the Uzbek Latin alphabet. It is, after all, identical to the English one (though it lacks use of “c” which I think should be “ch,” making achchiq easier to spell), making it a breeze to type. I imagine though that it will be closer to what I linked above.

By: johnnie b. baker

johnnie b. baker — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:18:55 +0000

I do Azerbaijan dili, and in my research I have to deal with the arabic alphabet (which I don’t know), the old latin script, and cyrillic. From a purely selfish standpoint, i like the modern Latin the best. I can’t stand the Kazakh cyrillic, so I’m all for them changing it! Hope they go with Ataturk’s alphabet like Azerbaijan did!

By: KZblog

KZblog — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:45:21 +0000

I’ve never seen Kazakh transliterated into Latin, so I don’t know how it will be done, (and I can’t read Arabic or Kazakh so I just know Kazakh in Arabic looks pretty!) but there will need to be some extra letters or diacritics I suspect.