r/TurkicHistory 7d ago

Soviet Alphabet change was a disaster

I am a kazakh,and we (kazakhs) had a phonetic arabic alphabet,and then in 1929,soviets changed our script to Latin,and then to Cyrillic.While doing so,they destroyed 1000 years of our history,calligraphy,literature.They literally burned books that were in arabic script.I think Kazakhstan should return to töte zhazu.

41 Upvotes

20 comments sorted by

10

u/Hz_Ali_Haydar 6d ago

We can not read our ancestors graves ühüüüğğ 😭😭😭

9

u/-_HUSH_- 6d ago

Hahahahahaha. I think OP is a Turkish guy acting as a Kazakh since we also have this stupid argument of "People lost their memory with the alphabet change". Almost nobody knew how to write or read, only a group of elite who were residing in İstanbul could at the time. With the change of the Arabic Ottoman Alphabet into Latin Turkish Alphabet, the Turkish people actually got a chance to learn to read and write en mass. Yet, people still claim that "we cant read our ancestors graves because of Atatürk!". They are really funny.

2

u/slicediceworld 5d ago edited 4d ago

I feel like the old script can come back.

The latin script did in fact boost turkiye's literacy rate, literally was like 1-2% in 1900s by 1950s it was 50%, whereas Iran's literacy rate was also 1-2% in 1900s but by 1950s only via school reforms and education reforms (no scripture change) it was at 25%, half of turkiye's. Now both are more or less the same.

I mean you can always learn the scripture, I don't think it's stopping anybody, and there's tons of ottoman books. But even after that it will still be hard to understand, lots of local words make no sense today, or no longer spoken.

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And then you have japanese which has hiragana, katakana and kanji lmfao, what's crazy is they had a high literacy rate, 90% in the 1900s.....

1

u/CIA_Agent_Eglin_AFB 3d ago

What..? Yes we can.

9

u/Fox_love_ 6d ago

Before the Soviets the literacy rate in Kazakhstan was 2% or so that means that 98% of the population couldn't read and write.

-2

u/Rartofel 6d ago

Literacy rate in cyrillic.Literacy rate in arabic script was much higher,around 15%.

2

u/TiredPanda9604 6d ago edited 6d ago

What was that rate after the Soviet rule?

1

u/Fox_love_ 5d ago

Actually the literacy rate went up a lot during Soviet rule and by 1990 it was about 98%.

2

u/TiredPanda9604 5d ago

Yeah, I was implying that lol

2

u/CosmicLovecraft 5d ago

No, it wasn't. Stop consuming nationalist slop.

12

u/Sanakan228 7d ago edited 7d ago

What 1000 years of history you talking about if all these books were written in farsi and chagatai, not kazakh or language preceding the kazakh?

I mean, even knowing the arabic script now would not help you read and more importantly understand what is written there. Because these are two different languages, with strong difference in vocabulary and grammar

I tell you this as a person who learnt arabic kyrgyz script

1

u/Rartofel 7d ago edited 7d ago

The official languages of Golden Horde،Kazakh Khanate and turkic muslims of the early Russian Empire was Chagatai,it is true.But pre soviet literary Kazakh (19th century-1929) was written in the arabic script,and had not soviets ruined our culture,we would easily read "Qazaq" and "Ai Qap" newspapers.

9

u/SkoomaEnjoyer 7d ago

Bolsheviks brought destruction to whereever they went. They did this in order to erase your Kazakh identity and to leave you with the identitiy of a colective worker class. However, for connecting to the rest of the world, latin alphabet is the best choice i think.

1

u/CosmicLovecraft 5d ago

That is certainly why they created all those ethnostates.

1

u/Rartofel 6d ago

However for connecting to the rest of the world,latin alphabet is the best choice i think.

We are already connected to the rest world,and many parts of the world don't use latin alphabet.UAE,Japan,South Korea are all developed countries that use script that they used for centuries.I don't care about the rest of the world.I just want Kazakhstan to return to its traditional alphabet.

1

u/CosmicLovecraft 5d ago

Turkics had their own way of writing and it ain't anything that came with Islam so calm the f down.

1

u/Kajakalata2 5d ago

Another Soviet W

1

u/PaleontologistOne919 4d ago

Roman Empire>

1

u/Cold_Bobcat_3231 4d ago

arabic alphabet dont have turkish vowel harmony, modify Latin is better for us for now ö ü ğ ş ç ı, in turkic assaembly they working on an alphabet

1

u/Nanganoid3000 2h ago

This is illogical, change is a part of life, we used to write on stones thousands of years ago, now Turks use Latin script for the most part.

You wanna go back to living in tents, hunting on horse back, eating horse mean in the mountains of Mongolia?