Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 11 – Russian law
prohibits the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation from using any
alphabet except one based on the Russian (Cyrillic) one. Some non-Russian
republicss resent that – particularly the Turkic ones – but none has challenged
Moscow on this point.
But if the republic governments have
not, there may be a shift away from Cyrillic from below, with non-Russians who
make use of the Internet on a regular basis coming up with their own Latin
scripts because there are as yet no keyboards in their Moscow-imposed Cyrillic alphabets
and the Russian government is loathe to promote that for obvious reasons.
Kirsan Kovorov, a Kalmyk commentator
who says he uses the Internet more than regular mail to communicate, has come
up with Latin scripts not only for his own native language but for Buryat as
well. These will allow those with QWERTY keyboards to communicate with each
other in their native languages (asiarussia.ru/blogs/22711/).
He says that “the main goal of
shifting to the Latin script is an increase in access and convenient of correspondence
in the Kalmyk language.” And it will prove especially useful “for people who
want to write through a telephone or computer in their native language without
distortions” or who seek to avoid the difficulties of importing software to
deal with the Cyrillic scripts.
“I sincerely hope that this initiative
will NOT be punished,” Kovorov says.
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