Kazakhstan will draft a new Orthographic Dictionary of the Kazakh language — the previous edition dates back to 2013, meaning the document has not been updated for 13 years. The announcement was made by Deputy Prime Minister Yerlan Karin on his Instagram page, according to infohub.kz.
According to him, disputes over the spelling of the words "qyrküiek" and "qyrgüiek" have reached the state apparatus. And since Kazakh has now become a full-fledged language of official record-keeping, the debate over word spellings also involves officials.
Karin noted, however, that the state will not intervene in how a particular word should be spelled. That task will be assigned to the heads of agencies responsible for language policy and to renowned scholars. The authorities will merely coordinate the process.
"First, a special working group will be formed from among authoritative scholars, which will prepare a draft of the dictionary. Then the submitted work will be reviewed and approved by an interagency commission," he explained.
The Deputy Prime Minister added that the Orthographic Dictionary was last published in 2013. However, since then a huge number of new words have come into active use, and it is these that give rise to disagreements.
Karin called for treating the preparation of the new edition as a national project — not to rush, but also not to drag out the process.
Earlier, "Kursiv" wrote about how Kazakh is taught for free in Astana.