Lawmakers Vote to Ban Rival Alphabets

[David Morris]

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=1747444

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian deputies, in a strong signal to independence-minded
ethnic regions, approved legislation on Friday that will make Cyrillic the only
legal alphabet across Russia. 

The amendments, approved in a third and final reading, directly target
autonomous regions such as rebel Chechnya and Tatarstan, which has changed the
written form of its local dialect from Cyrillic letters -- as used in Russian
-- to Latin. 

The package was supported by 336 members to 15 in the State Duma, the lower
house of parliament. 

"Alphabets cannot be made universal, there is no precedent for this anywhere,"
Tatar deputy Fandas Safiullin said. 

Tatarstan, a mainly Muslim region on the Volga River, has already voted through
its regional parliament to switch to the Latin alphabet for its Turkic Tatar
language. 

The newly amended country-wide bill, if given the final go-ahead by senators,
will make it impossible for regions to scrap Cyrillic letters without a fresh
federal law. 

Alphabets -- Cyrillic, Latin or Arabic -- have long been a politically charged
issue in Russia. 

Czarist-era academics adapted Cyrillic to the needs of the dialects of the vast
Russian empire, while national reformers backed Arabic or Latin script. 

But under Josef Stalin all policies allowing regions autonomy in education and
language were scrapped in favor of promoting the only Soviet lingua franca --
Russian. 

Backers of the Latin alphabet say it is more easily adapted in the age of the
Internet and globalization and allows speakers of Turkic languages to more
accurately express their phonetics. 

The State Duma led its last campaign to protect the Russian language in June,
debating a legislative package which will clampdown on English words gradually
creeping into everyday use. 


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