The growing of «Latin» is over in Belarus: Russophiles celebrate victory
The «Belarusian Latin» that flooded the cities of the republic was replaced by a more readable version by the resolution of the State Property Committee today. The old instruction on transliteration of names and geographical objects was canceled and replaced with a new one.
There are two main changes. The first is that the violated equality of the two state languages was restored by the decree. The second change is the removal of numerous diacritical marks on the model of the Polish and Czech languages, conveyed hissing and whistling sounds, and the use of some letters became more logical and closer to the global ones.
The issue of transliteration in Belarus is not only purely philological, but also political. The introduction of the «Latin» and granting it an official status even at the United Nations level was one of the most important achievements and a source of pride for systemic nationalists who registered in government offices.
Approved back in 2000, the «Latin» began to be actively growing for about 10 years. The preparation for the next hockey championship in Minsk and the desire to make the stay of foreigners in the Belarusian capital more comfortable was chosen as a plausible pretext. The championship passed, the tourists left, and the «Latin» did not even think of disappearing – it spread from Minsk to other cities and began to fill the public space.
It is clear that the real target audience, for which the whole adventure with the «Latin» was started were not foreigners, but nationalists. Its introduction roughly coincided with the activation of the «soft Belarusization» campaign.
The main argument of the nationalists is «Latin», Belarusian, having historical roots. But here the devil is in the details. Historically, the Latin alphabet was actually used in the Belarusian lands, but the Cyrillic alphabet appeared much earlier. The dominance of the «Latin» fell on the period when the territory of modern Belarus was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, later it was used by troublemakers like Kalinovsky and frond intellectuals, mostly of Catholic faith and, either ethnic Poles, or simply sympathizing more with Poles than Russians.
The «Latin» is a symbol of the polification and catholicization of the Belarusian lands, and the political purpose of its planting was to separate Belarusians from the Russian world and involve a new «big brother» with Warsaw as its capital in the orbit of influence. A lot has been done in this direction, and in the summer of 2020 we observed the result of this policy.
The defeat of the 2020 rebellion hindered the nationalists’ plans. Of course, the nationalists did not like the new version of transliteration, but now they did not listen to their opinion. Supporters of the Russian World in Belarus are celebrating victory today, but the correction of nationalist distortions of previous years must continue
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