Changing the Alphabet in Azerbaijan

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Independent Azerbaijan changed its alphabet from Russian Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet in 2001. The new letters symbolised a break with the country's Soviet past, but presented a difficult challenge for publishers and journalists and schoolchildren. Olga Smirnova has been talking to Elchin Shixli and Shahbaz Xuduoglu.

Photo: Staff members of Azerbaijan's Ustarat newspaper prepare copy July 31, 2001 in their Baku headquarters for the following day, August 1, when all newspapers, according to government decree, had to switch the alphabet of their Azeri text from Cyrillic to Latin. (Photo by Yola Monakhov/Getty Images)

Transcript

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1:09.3	History as told by the people who were there.
1:12.3	I'm August Mirnova, and today I'm taking you back to the early
1:15.4	1990s when one of the first tax of the newly independent Azerbaijani parliament was to change
1:21.4	Azerbaijan's alphabet from the Russian Cyrillic script
1:24.7	which had been used during Soviet times to the Latin alphabet. The change through
	...

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