Nazarbayev orders transition to Latin-based alphabet

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev inked an executive order telling his government to prepare the Kazakh alphabet for a transition to Latin letters from Cyrillic ones.

"The government of Kazakhstan is to set up a national commission to change the Kazakh alphabet to Latin script; organize a gradual switch to Latin script by 2025," the document reads.

"The transition of the Kazakh language to the Latin-based script does not in any way affect the rights of the Russian-speaking citizens, the Russian language and other languages. The use of the Russian language in Cyrillic script remains unchanged," Sputnik cited Nazarbayev as saying.

The new latin-based alphabet will reportedly comprise 32 symbols with some new slight alteration of sounding and pronunciation features