Russian Tatars not allowed to use Latin alphabet

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

MOSCOW — Russia's highest court has judged that Tatars living in the federal state of Tatarstan may not apply the Latin alphabet to their language without permission from the federal government in Moscow. The Tatars had instituted legal proceedings because their Turkic language differs greatly from Russian, the BBC reports.

The law banning all alphabets but Cyrillic has been one in a long range of regulations and restrictions, claimed by officials to be designed to protect Russia's linguistic heritage. The Russian federal government has been cited to consider the use of a non-Cyrillic alphabet by federal states a 'separatist tendency'.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

"Russia court sticks to letter law" — BBC News, November 16, 2004

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.