Iradi alphabet

The Iradi alphabet (Iradi: Irad alfaviti) is the Latin-based alphabet of 32 letters used to write the Iradi language. It was introduced in 1992, given its present form by the 1995 Latin Orthography Revision and confirmed, with minor changes, by the Language and Education Reform Act of 1997. It is the official script of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) and is also used in the records of the Iradi Freedom Society Chancellery in the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR).^[1]

Iradi has changed script three times in a century. It was written in Arabic script until 1928, in a Latin alphabet from 1928 to 1941 and in Cyrillic from 1941 to 1992, before the return to Latin in 1992. Older forms survive in particular uses: the Old Turkic runic script appears in the motto of the national flag, Syriac script in church inscriptions, and Cyrillic in the handwriting of many older Iradis.^[1][2]

History

Early scripts

A group of short Old Turkic runic inscriptions has been found in the Talas valley, and Christian gravestones of the wider Semirechye region bear Turkic texts written in Syriac script. Iradi scholars regard both as written evidence of the ancestors of the language, although the link to modern Iradi is debated. Turkic written in Syriac script also appears on the carved gypsum panels of the Church of St. Janyl (1727) in Iyık Janyl.^[2][3]

From the late Middle Ages Iradi was written in the Perso-Arabic script used for Chagatai and later Uzbek. Texts copied at Iyık Janyl, including the eighteenth-century vita of Janyl, used it. The script had few letters for Turkic vowels, and spelling followed Chagatai conventions rather than the spoken language. After the creation of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925, the republican press briefly used a reformed Arabic orthography with letters for all the vowels, similar to the reforms adopted for Kazakh and Kyrgyz in the same years.^[2]

Latin (1928–1941)

The 1928 Latinization Decree replaced the Arabic script with a Latin alphabet, as part of the Soviet campaign that gave most Turkic languages alphabets based on the Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet (Yañalif). Iradi made the change in the same year as Kyrgyz. Like the other Yañalif-based alphabets, it used special letters such as ꞑ for the velar nasal, ɵ for the front rounded vowel ö and ь for the back vowel ı. The reform was carried out through literacy schools in rural districts and the refitting of printing presses. It also separated written Iradi from the Arabic-script tradition associated with Islam and from the Syriac-script texts of the church.^[4]

Cyrillic (1941–1992)

The 1941 Cyrillic Mandate replaced the Latin alphabet with Cyrillic in the press, schools and administration, at the end of the all-Union shift from Latin to Cyrillic in 1938–1941. As in the Kyrgyz alphabet adopted in 1940, the Iradi Cyrillic alphabet consisted of the 33 letters of Russian with three additions: ө, ү and ң. Long vowels were written double, and Russian loanwords kept their Russian spelling, including letters such as ц, щ and ъ that are not used in native words. The abridged 1958 edition of The Epic of Janyl was printed in Cyrillic.^[1][5]

Latin (since 1992)

The Provisional Government and the territorial administration restored a Latin alphabet in 1992. Drawn up quickly for schools and the press, and for the English-language typewriters and computers then arriving under the territorial administration, it avoided diacritics and relied on digraphs such as oe, ue, ch, sh and ng. Spelling varied widely between publications.^[1]

The 1995 Latin Orthography Revision, a law of the Territorial Legislature of Irad, was drafted by a commission of linguists from Talas State University and territorial educators. It replaced the digraphs with single letters: the dotless ı for the back unrounded vowel, ö and ü for the front rounded vowels, and ç, ş and ñ for the consonants /tʃ/, /ʃ/ and /ŋ/. It also set rules for writing loanwords and proper names. The resulting 32-letter alphabet was confirmed by the Language and Education Reform Act of 1997, whose changes concerned mainly the spelling of loanwords and the capital forms of i and ı. The act made the alphabet compulsory in public schools and administration.^[1][6]

The new alphabet spread fastest among the young. In 1993 the Syro-Iradi Council of Hierarchs approved Iradi translations of the liturgy, printed in the Latin alphabet, for use alongside Classical Syriac, and the complete edition of the 1938 text of The Epic of Janyl was published in Latin script in 2001. Many older Iradis, especially among the Russian-educated Russos of Nurzhan, still read Iradi more easily in Cyrillic, and older clerks in the tribal regions often still write it.^[1][7]

Letters

The alphabet follows the order below. Like Turkish and Azerbaijani, it distinguishes dotless ı (capital I) from dotted i (capital İ).^[6]

Long vowels are written double (aa, ee, oo, öö, uu, üü), as in too "mountain". The uvular pronunciations of k and g next to back vowels are not marked in writing; q survives only in a few established names, such as the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line. The letters c, f, h, v, x and ä occur mainly in loanwords.^[6]

Romanization in English

Iradi names and words in English-language publications, including government documents in English, often do not follow the official alphabet. Many use an older romanization based on English digraphs or on the transliteration of Russian Cyrillic. In these spellings ç and ş appear as ch and sh, ı often as y, and j sometimes as zh, from the Russian transliteration of Cyrillic ж. The patronymic kızı ("daughter of") is thus usually written kyzy in English, and the title of the film Desert Sun’s Rebellion, officially Çöl Künü Kötörülüşü, is usually given as Chöl Künü Kötörülüshü. Names that entered English through Russian, such as Zhumabek, keep their zh (see Iradi name).^[1][7]

The distinction between dotted and dotless i caused problems with early software and with the English-language keyboards common in the ISEZ, and many writers still use i for both letters in informal writing.^[7]

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Descriptive Grammar of the Iradi Language, pp. 112–148.
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Scripts of the Talas Valley: From the Runic Stones to the Latin Reform. Talas, pp. 9–96.
3. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana, pp. 112–140.
4. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas, pp. 23–311.
5. ^ Grenoble, Lenore A. (2003). Language Policy in the Soviet Union. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
6. ^ Territorial Legislature of Irad (1995). Latin Orthography Revision: Official Text and Schedule of Letters. Talas.
7. ^ Talas State University Institute of Sociology (2022). Language Use in the Cities of the ISEZ: Survey Report. Talas.