Tag Archives: apostrophe

Qazaqstan: Adios to the Apostrophe

20 Feb

19 February 2018

Astana has announced a new version of Qazaq’s latin alphabet using 32 symbols and ditching the much maligned apostrophe version launched last year.

Despite only unveiling the new alphabet in October last year, the Leader of the Nation has now changed his mind and the apostrophe-heavy alphabet has now been strangled before its birth in 2025 in favour of a diacritic-laden version.

Adios to the short-lived apostrophe
Welcome diacritics

There was an immediate reaction on social media with the Twitter hashtag #A’po’s’t’rof’dunS’a’qtap’Qal’  (#SaveTheApostrophe) getting at least three likes as pro-apostrophe fans defended the October version of the alphabet.

 

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Qazaqstan Latyn A’lipbi’ine Qol Qoiydi

27 Oct

Qazahi’a’ is pleased to announce that after many minutes of public consultation, President Nazarbayev has decided in his wisdom that Qazaqstan’s Latin alphabet will look like this:

Screen Shot 2017-10-27 at 12.44.53

The idea behind the switch from Cyrillic to Latin for the Qazaq language was motivated by a desire to make modern technology more user-friendly for Qazaqs. The Cyrillic alphabet currently uses 42 characters, making it awkward to use on tech devices as it uses up all the keyboard including the space usually used for numbers.

The president’s solution is a slimmed-down 32 letter alphabet using ‘ to modify letters so, for instance, ‘ch’ (a sound imported from Russian) becomes ‘c” and ‘sh’ becomes ‘s”.

Here at Qazahi’a’  we’re not convinced that apostrophes are the way forward, but who cares about that – it’s all been decided, as usual, from the top down.

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