Vice President of Kazakhstan Yerlan Karin announced that a new orthographic dictionary of the Kazakh language will be developed in the country. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
He discussed the issue during a meeting with scholars. "The debate over 'qyrküiek' and 'qyrgüiek' reached us as well. In reality, this is not only a matter for linguists and the literary community. Since the Kazakh language is the state language, the pronunciation and spelling of every word directly affect the daily work of the state apparatus. After all, the Kazakh language has now become the language of office work. Therefore, one aspect of this issue concerns us too," Karin said.
According to him, the state cannot and will not interfere in how a particular word should be written. This is the work of industry specialists and scholars, he said. "Our task is to effectively coordinate this work. That is why we gathered the heads of institutions conducting language policy in the country and well-known scholars and exchanged views on this topic. During the discussion, we came to the decision that a new Orthographic Dictionary of the Kazakh language needs to be developed," the vice president said.
First, a special working group will be formed from well-known scholars, and the new dictionary will be prepared. The submitted work will be reviewed and approved by an interagency commission. According to the vice president, the orthographic dictionary was last published in 2013. Since then, many new words have entered usage.
"There should be no haste in this matter, and there is no time to drag it out either. Just as with the development of the multi-volume academic collection of Kazakhstan's history, we must treat the new Orthographic Dictionary as a national project," Karin said on his social media page.