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How
did Azerbaijan transition from Arabic to Latin script in the
1920s? And how will it transition from Cyrillic to today's Latin
script? Anar, one of Azerbaijan's foremost writers and
the President of the Writers' Union, spurred us on to examine
these two fascinating questions. He even provided us with a rare
stenographic transcript of the 1926 Turkology Congress in Baku.
Anar currently chairs the Parliament's Committee on the Usage
of Language and Alphabet. |
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Medical
Historian Farid Alakbarov has devoted much of his career
to studying the ancient texts found at Baku's Institute of Manuscripts.
As an expert in medieval Azeri, Farid "bent over backwards"
to help us cover ancient and medieval Azeri scripts and to identify
what primary sources are available at the Institute. He also
pulled together valuable information on one of Azerbaijan's first
alphabet reformers, Mirza Fatali Akhundov. |
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Hours
and hours of work went into researching Azerbaijan's font problem.
Rovzat Gasimov tirelessly helped us obtain as well as
sort through the chaotic array of existing fonts in terms of
their keyboard layouts and ASCII code assignments. He also helped
us identify which government offices are using specific fonts.
Rovzat is a student in the Master's degree program at the Institute
of Foreign Languages in Baku. |
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To
find out what Azerbaijanis in the early 20th century were saying
about alphabet change, we turned to Madina Valiyeva, Director
of the Department of Country Study and National Bibliography
at the Akhundov Library in Baku. Thanks to her persistence and
familiarity with card catalog resources, we were able to understand
popular attitudes and concerns towards Early Latin in the 1920s
and 1930s. |
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Mazahir
Panahov
has been a vital part of Azerbaijan International since its inception
in 1993. He has a Ph.D. in Physics and currently heads the Physics
Department at Baku State University. Mazahir is particularly
interested in issues related to Azerbaijan's transition from
Cyrillic to Latin scripts and the trend from the usage of the
Russian language to Azeri. We couldn't have done this issue without
him. |
