AZERBAIJAN SWITCHES TO THE LATIN ALPHABET

Under the decree of the Azeri President Heydar Aliyev, today the whole of Azerbaijan is switching to the Latin alphabet. All official documents, commercial signs and outdoor advertising, as well as Azeri-language newspapers, magazines and books, must change to the Latin alphabet.

CNA was informed in the Presidential administration that the law on switching to the Latin alphabet was adopted yet 10 years ago after proclaiming the independence of Azerbaijan. However, the law did not come into force as of instable domestic and external situation in the state.

In fact, it is the third change of script in the past century. Azerbaijan has been slowly moving toward the Latin alphabet since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but previous decrees lacked strict requirements and concrete deadlines. The Azeris, who for centuries wrote in the Arabic script, had to use Cyrillic for most of Soviet rule, except for a 1929-39 experiment with Latin.

Alphabet switches aren't new to this part of Asia. Turkish, to which Azeri is closely related, went from the Arabic alphabet to Latin letters in 1928. In the past decade, the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, whose languages are also part of the Turkic family, have adopted the Latin alphabet, which linguists argue is better suited to Turkic phonetics.