Iradi language revival

The Iradi language revival (Iradi: tilge kaytuu, "return to the language") is the shift toward the Iradi language among urban Iradis born between about 1997 and 2012, together with the cultural trends associated with it. Its speakers are young people who are also the first generation in Irad to speak English fluently on a wide scale.^[1]^[3] Sociolinguists often compare the revival with that of the Irish language in Ireland. The trends are also associated with the second wave of the electronic music genre Mor-Wave and with a youth culture centered on Talas. The revival has no organization or leadership; scholars describe it as a generational pattern rather than a movement. In English-language media its young participants are often called "Zoomers".

Name

Scholars and the Iradi press call the shift tilge kaytuu, "return to the language", a phrase taken from the title of a 2016 essay series in the Talas Herald's Iradi pages, and in English the "Iradi language revival", by analogy with the Irish and Welsh revivals. English-language commentary since the late 2010s has also used "Zoomers", slang for Generation Z, for the young people involved, and the borrowing zumerler is heard in Iradi, often ironically; the article was formerly titled "Iradi Zoomer Movement". These names are applied mainly to urban young people. Their contemporaries in the Autonomous Tribal Regions, who have always spoken Iradi and largely reject both English and Russian, are rarely included.^[1]

Language

Unlike their parents and grandparents, many of whom grew up speaking Russian, urban young people have increasingly adopted Iradi as a first or main language. The 2022 Urban Language Survey of the Talas State University Institute of Sociology found the following among respondents aged 18 to 25, compared with those over 60:^[3]

Iradi was the main home language of 52 percent, against 34 percent of those over 60. Russian was the main home language of 29 percent, against 61 percent.
81 percent said they spoke English without difficulty, against 4 percent of the oldest group.
86 percent said they spoke Iradi without difficulty, the highest share of any age group, while only 58 percent said the same of Russian.

The shift is also visible online. A study of about 1.2 million public social-media posts by users in the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) found that the share written in Iradi among users under 25 rose from 18 percent in 2015 to 47 percent in 2023, while the share in Russian fell from 51 to 17 percent. English accounted for most of the remainder.^[4] Young speakers mix English freely into Iradi and have coined new slang. They have also borrowed pastoral and epic vocabulary from tribal speech, which many regard as more authentic than the Russian-influenced Iradi of the cities.

The "Gaelic parallel"

Sociolinguists at Talas State University and elsewhere have compared the revival with that of Irish. In both cases young people from homes where another language dominated adopted a heritage language as a marker of identity, and music, social media and education helped give it prestige.^[1] Critics point out a less flattering side of the comparison: in Ireland many more people report an ability to speak Irish than use it daily, and some researchers argue that the Iradi revival may likewise be concentrated in culture and private life. English remains the language of work in foreign companies and of higher education in technical fields, and few young professionals use Iradi in the workplace.^[4] Supporters reply that, unlike Irish, Iradi has never ceased to be the everyday language of a large population in the tribal regions.

Culture

Music. The second wave of Mor-Wave, which began in the mid-2010s, was centered in Talas and drew its audience largely from this generation. The founding duo tüntolk re-formed in 2014, and their album White Stallion in Fog (2017) was played on the youth channel that IradOne launched after Alikhan Toktarov became its chairman in 2015. An annual Mor-Wave festival has been held in converted textile warehouses in Talas since 2016. Writers on the movement credit tüntolk, who wrote all their lyrics in Iradi, with helping to make the language fashionable.^[2]^[6]
Fashion and design. Collectives in Talas combine motifs from felt carpets (shyrdak) and saddlery with streetwear.
Film. Screenings of restored Soviet-era Iradi films at the Talasfilm Archives and Film Preservation attract young audiences. The director Beknur Karimov, who was banned from Soviet filmmaking in 1983 and whose Zalmax’s Dominion (1977) was restored in 2011, has a cult following among them.
Online satire. Webcomics and short videos in Iradi and English satirize officials, ministries and the state broadcaster.

Politics

Young urban Iradis have been more willing than older generations to protest. Students and couriers, most of them in their late teens and twenties, made up most of the participants in the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, which began in October 2023 after a municipal licensing surcharge and were dispersed by police and Gendarmerie units. The commentator Jason Ilyasov, whose criticism of the surcharge on television preceded the protests, has his largest following among university students and young professionals.^[5] Students also took a leading part in the demonstrations against the 2025 Trump Remarks on Irad, after which favorable views of the United States fell most steeply among respondents under 30.

Survey data show the generation to be the least attached to Russia of any age group. In a 2023 survey for the Central Asian Geopolitical Review, 14 percent of respondents aged 18 to 25 supported restoring Russian as an official language, and 17 percent had a favorable view of Russia.^[5] Young people are also prominent in environmental campaigns in the Talas Alatau, including opposition to mining in mountain watersheds. Analysts note that most of this activity takes place online or in cultural settings, under the close attention of the authorities and of state media.

References

^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2022). 'The Iradi Linguistic Spring: Youth Culture in the ISEZ.' Vol. 14, pp. 45–64.
^ Talas Music Chronicle (2021). The Sound of the Night Fox: Youth Subcultures and Mor-Wave, pp. 88–106.
^ Talas State University, Institute of Sociology (2022). Urban Language Survey: Talas, Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl. Talas State University Press.
^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2024). 'Language Choice on Social Media in the ISEZ, 2015–2023.' Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 23–49.
^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2023). 'Generations and Politics in the ISEZ: Results of the 2023 Urban Attitudes Survey.' Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 77–102.
^ Central Asian Music Review (2020). 'Mor-Wave and Post-Soviet Electronic Music in Irad.' Vol. 12.