Draft:Law on languages of peoples of the Russian Federation

The Law on a Unified Graphic Base is the federal law of December 11, 2002 No. 165-ФЗ “On Amendments to Article 3 of the Law of the Russian Federation ‘On the Languages ​​of the Peoples of the Russian Federation’”, which established the Cyrillic script as the only possible script for all peoples of the Russian Federation. Formally, the law allows for other graphic bases, which can be established by "federal laws", however, the law was adopted precisely in order to prevent the government of the Republic of Tatarstan from translating the Tatar language from Cyrillic to Latin.

The emergence of the law was due to the revival of the Tatar national movement in the early 1990s.

The law was aimed at suppressing attempts at national and cultural revival and further Russification of the Tatar population. It became another act of the Russian government's chauvinistic policy aimed at strengthening the national oppression of the Tatar people.

The trend that is increasingly being used in the practice of Tatar nationalist organizations — the use of the Latin alphabet when writing texts in the Tatar language — is worrying. As is known, this is one of the pan-Turkist projects aimed at alienating Turkic ethnic groups from the Russian socio-cultural paradigm. — National security — No. 2(31), 2014

The bill was introduced by the deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Nationalities, Kaadyr-ool Bicheldey, who sharply criticized the idea of ​​switching the Tatar language into Latin. […] According to Bicheldey, the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Tatarstan would threaten the overall security and integrity of Russia, and the precedent could create conditions for similar trends to emerge in other regions of the country. — lenta.ru

Of course, Tatarstani President Mintimer Shaimiev shows considerable political independence [...] The ultimate goal of the reform is undoubtedly political. It brings Tatars closer [...] with their brothers from the independent countries of Central Asia and the Muslims of the Middle East. And most importantly, it destroys one of the few factors of unity of the Russian Federation: the use of the same alphabet, which allows easy access to the Russian language. This law, which is disturbing in itself, may become an example for other peoples in the Federation. — Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

Overview of Turkic writing

• Historically, Turkic languages ​​have used a variety of "graphic bases." The original purely Turkic writing system was the Turkic runes, and there is now some interest in them and even attempts at revival.
• Arabic script was used for many centuries.
• The Old Uyghur script was used locally.
• The Krymchaks and Karaites used Hebrew script.
• The Urums used Greek script.
• Crimean Armenians used the Armenian script. Moreover, it was in the Armenian script that the first Turkic printing was made in Lviv.
• The Yakuts and Kryashen Tatars had a certain Cyrillic tradition .
• Since the beginning of the 20th century, Latin has been gaining popularity. However, the famous Codex Cumanicus of the early 14th century was written in Latin by Western European missionaries.
• Nowadays, it is common for different scripts to coexist. For example, Kazakhs in China write in Arabic, and in Kazakhstan in Latin or Cyrillic. Azerbaijanis in Iran also write in Arabic, and in Azerbaijan in Latin. For example, an inscription in Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic, and runes: https://tt.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Tatar40.pdf.
• It can be said that the Turkic Cyrillic script is limited to the Russian Federation. For example, Tatars in Finland use the Latin script, as do Crimean Tatars in Romania and the unoccupied part of Ukraine.

The current state of the Turkic Latin alphabet in the territory of the Russian Federation

Despite the ban, in Tatarstan, Arabic and Latin scripts can be officially used under the guise of "transliteration". Latin is also studied in schools as an optional subject. In occupied Crimea, the quarterly women's magazine "Nenkecan" continues to be published - the only printed publication in the Latin alphabet in the Russian Federation.

Linguistic remarks

The introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet was carried out in the wake of Stalin's terror and repressions against linguists and the curtailment of the policy of "indigenization" . The sole purpose of this reform was Russification. Therefore, for example, the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet fully reflects the spelling of Russian words, which are written and pronounced like Russian, but are considered "Tatar", however, this Cyrillic alphabet does not convey such Turkic features as agglutination and synharmonism and causes difficulties in writing Tatar words, since it was not intended for this.

The iotated diphthongs "я", "ю", "е", "ё", characteristic of the Russian language, are uncharacteristic of the Tatar language, but are used in the Tatar Cyrillic alphabet even for writing Tatar words. At the same time, each such pseudo-diphthong means a synharmonic pair, and its pronunciation should be guessed. For example, in the word "юләр" "ю" should be pronounced as [yü], and in the word "юлбарыс" - as [yu]. In the word "сәгать" "а" means that "г" is read as [ğ], and the soft sign means that "а" is read as [ä].

The form of the word "may" (butter), "mayım" (my butter) in Cyrillic will be written as "маем", that is, "e" here means [yı] and not [ye].

As a result, even Turkic words begin to be pronounced according to Russian phonetics (which is reinforced by bilingualism), as Aleksandr Garkavets noted regarding the Crimean Tatar language.

Chronology of events

In the fall of 1999, the State Council of Tatarstan adopted a law on the transition of the Tatar language to the Latin alphabet. Experimental teaching was introduced in some schools, newspapers began to be published, and books appeared in the Latin alphabet.

On November 27, 2002, the State Duma of Russia adopted amendments to the law "On the Languages ​​of the Peoples of the Russian Federation", thereby repealing the Tatar "Law on the Restoration of the Tatar Alphabet Taking into Account the Latin Script". According to the new legislative norm, on the territory of Russia, the alphabets of the state language of the Russian Federation and the state languages ​​of the federal republics, are built on the graphic basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Deputies Safiulin and Khusnutdinov called the new law an attempt to “create a problem out of thin air” and appealed to the Constitutional Court.

In 2004 the court rejected the appeal.

Farid Mukhametshin made it clear that the issue is not closed and that after some time Tatarstan will seek the adoption of a law at the federal level on the possibility of translating Tatar graphics into Latin.

See also

• Ems Ukaz
• Lithuanian press ban
• Cyrillization of Polish
• Newspeak
• Marxism and Problems of Linguistics

External links

• Tatarstan: Russia rejects republics bid to switch alphabet, The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), Nov 23, 2004 Archived 2013-10-03 at the Wayback Machine
• NATION, LANGUAGE, ISLAM Tatarstan's Sovereignty Movement, Helen M. Faller, Central European University Press, Chapter 3. Creating Soviet People: The Meanings of Alphabets Archived 2022-03-22 at the Wayback Machine
• Experience of the Turkic countries in switching to the Latin alphabet | Опыт тюркских стран по переходу на латиницу Archived 2021-05-19 at the Wayback Machine
• As is well known, the capture of Crimea in 1783 by Russia led to a major decline in cultural life on the peninsula: many ancient manuscripts were barbarously burned, and many architectural monuments were destroyed. | Как известно, захват Крыма в 1783 году Россией привел к большому упадку культурной жизни на полуострове: варварски были сожжены многие древние рукописи, разрушено немало архитектурных памятников. Archived 2022-03-20 at the Wayback Machine
• Burning of the high culture of the Crimean Tatars | Сожжение высокой культуры крымских татар
• Questions of graphology and intralinguistic conflict of Crimean Tatar phonetics and orthoepy | Вопросы графологии и внутрилингвистический конфликт крымскотатарской фонетики и орфоэпии. Рустемов О. Д. УДК 81»1:81"246.3
• Crimean Tatar alphabet. The way to Latin