Institutional features of the transition of the Kazakh language to the Latin script

Abstract

This article provides a diachronic description of the main stages in the transition of the Kazakh language to the Latin script. Since 1991, no variant of the alphabet has been officially approved, nor has the Latin script been integrated into education and official documents. Linguistic specialists respon-sible for the transition to the Latin script regularly make errors in creating the alphabets. In particular, vari-ous options featuring digraphs and diacritical marks have been proposed. The alphabets are constructed based on already established variants in Turkic countries, as well as by taking into account the experience of European countries. In total, about 40 variants of the alphabet using the Latin script have been developed. The outcome of this prolonged pro-cess is a diverse set of alphabet variants documented in studies of Kazakhstan’s linguistic landscape.