Azerbaijani Script Policy Analysis
Azerbaijan is a small country situated in a border zone between several different countries and cultures. It is a buffer between Turkey and Iran, and neighbors Georgia and Russia as well. Given its location in this cultural nexus, Azerbaijan has felt these influences infiltrate past all of its borders, and often they are found to be in a form of competition. The nation does, however have its own distinct character, including a majority ethnic group along with distinct minorities and one of the most defining features of a culture, its own language, which is a Turkic related language. But while their language and cultural identity have remained secure stable and unthreatened, the script used to express the language through writing has had an exceptionally volatile history, particularly over the past one hundred years. In the 20th century, Azerbaijani has been written using three different scripts. As of 2001, the oil-rich capital of Baku, positioned on the Caspian Sea, was in the midst of a severe case of trigraphia, the use of three different scripts to express the same language. Shopkeepers use these three scripts, and then maybe Russian too, to attract customers and simply communicate basic information to their consumers, cluttering their windows and overhangs, bombarding passers-by with redundant information. Newspaper headlines are written in using Roman scripts, as per national law, while their accompanying article are written using Cyrillic. Children in confusion write Russian using Roman script, and possibly fail to read birthday cards from their own grandparents. The Azerbaijani people have dealt with this problem several times before, and by now should be professionals at converting national scripts, but nonetheless there have been problems in the most recent script shift 15 years ago. This paper will review the history of Azerbaijani scripts and the policy tools used to make these decisions, as well as offer commentary and criticism of script choices and subsequent status and corpus planning.
Earliest signs tell us that Azerbaijani was, prior to the 11nth century, written in a Runic script. In the 900’s, the Persians’ conquest in the area brought the Shi’ia branch of Islam, which was quickly adopted. Throughout the new Islamic territories, Arabic became a sort of lingua franca. The widespread use, and fundamental existence as a written language suggested Arabic as a script to express Azerbaijani and the rest of the Asiatic Languages. The Azeris developed a very rich literature using Arabic, but I became clear by the 1800’s that the script was insufficient to express Azerbaijani and the other Asiatic tongues. Arabic only has three vowels, which are expressed as dots, appended to consonants. Azerbaijani, on the other hand, has 10 (?) vowel sounds. By the late 1800’s some prominent Azeris proposed either changes to the script or it abolishment and replacement. One camp suggested eliminating the dots that marked vowel and replacing them with newly developed characters. Different language groups, such as the neighboring Persians, and the Turkish used alphabets that innovated several of their own letters, but not changing something as fundamental as the vowel. Others called for a dumping of the Arabic script completely and the adoption of Roman script. For some this was motivated out of an atheistic rejection of Islam, and for others it was a matter of attempting to join in with Europe and its rapidly growing economy. Interestingly, these very concerns would persist into the 1990s. However, it was not until 1929 that Azerbaijan would switch its scripts to Roman, in a move condoned by the Soviets, of which Azerbaijan was a party to, and in was done solidarity with the script switch made by soviet comrade Turkey, in a decision made at the _____.
The Soviets were approving of the decision as the saw it drove Azerbaijan away from the Persian sphere of influence and away from Islam. But, just ten years later, Stalin would change his mind, and make Cyrillic the official script of Azerbaijan. This had a dual purpose. First, it was stated to be an attempt at bringing the people of the Soviet Union together. Also Russian was the sole official language at that time—it was the only language in which official business was to be done, so the change to Cyrillic may have also been to facilitated ease in regard to technology and efficiency. Second, Stalin was trying to drive the Turks away from one another. Stalin feared a pan-Turkish movement. Turkey was allowed to maintain its Roman script, while Uzbekistan was made to change to Cyrillic as well, but the correspondence of sounds to the letters represented by them was not the same in Uzbek as in Azerbaijani, making written communication between these two mutually intelligible languages with what seems the same script impossible.
Interestingly, several other Caucasian languages were left to state sovereignty, with their own languages as well as script intact, namely, the Armenian and Georgian languages. Some suspect that these languages were left alone because they are spoken in states composed of Christians, whereas Turkey, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan are Muslim countries. Others speculate that deference was given to Georgia because Stalin himself was of course a Georgian, Russian in fact being his second language. Also one of his closest advisors was an Armenian. These two languages also utilize independent scripts that are only used by writers of the respective languages. So whereas Roman and Arabic are scripts used by some of the enemies of the Soviet Union, the Georgian and Armenian alphabets are politically neutral in this regard.
The Soviet Era is considered by Azeris to have been a painful stretch of time. People were killed for no reason, and then later, sent away to Siberian work camps for no reason. Azeris still look back with dread at the era. Brutal force was among the Soviet’s chief political instruments, and they used it in the enforcement of language policy. When the switch was made to Cyrillic, all books written in Arabic were burned (with the Latin script in use for only ten years, there was not very much to burn). Arabic remained the language of Azerbaijan’s great literary past, so to destroy and ban these texts was like destroying and banning Azeri history.
Despite Soviet repression (or maybe because of it) Azerbaijan carried on its literary tradition, albeit with the Cyrillic alphabet and in struggles with Soviet censors. After the death of Stalin in 1957, Azerbaijan even managed to get Azerbaijani accepted as an official language in Azerbaijan, although Russian remained the language of the elites. The Soviet Union pursued and extensive literacy campaign, making Azerbaijan a highly literate society with a 98% literacy rate. A great number of books were written in this era.
After the dissolution of the Soviet union in the late eighties, Azerbaijan was faced with the question of whether to stick with Cyrillic, or if to choose a new script, and if so, which script to choose. This is a major decision for a newly autonomous state to make given the extensive planning it takes and enormous energy and funds it takes to successfully change a script. There was pressure from all sides, with everyone campaigning for their own script preferences. The three seriously considered scripts were the ones that had been used previously, Arabic, Roman, and of course Cyrillic (sadly, Runic could find for it no champions). Each script had compelling arguments for why it should be chosen, and equally compelling reason why it should not.
What are the reasons for changing a script? In socio-linguistic planning, there are three reasons for why language policy is done, and the first two are almost the same. First, it can be to identify themselves with another group. A version of this is when the Soviets established the central government in its satellite states, and the only language they used was Russian. In order to engage in the government, which many people had to do, they needed to learn Russian. This is only a version of this base reason; it is not necessarily the case that the former out-group are allowed to keep their former language, as was the case in the USSR. The second reason is an inverse of the first: to distance themselves from another group. An example of this is when Azerbaijan shed Russian as an official language. There remain regulations barring use of the language officially. As a result, many ethnic Russians felt put off by this result and subsequently emigrated, which of course seemed to be the intended result of the measure. Third, to participate “in developments on a broader scale.” (Fasold, 1983) This is essentially the question of how to best become involved in technology and external relations, if at all. This is a more complicated motivation, because it is not understood whether language choice really has a great affect or if technology is becoming more accommodating to different language, or to what extent of the population the language policy needs to include in order to benefit. Unseth argues that these motivations established by Fasold apply also to script policy, though he adds a fourth motivation that specifically applies to script policy—linguistic considerations. He writes, “Just as a sentimentally disfavored language may be chosen for utilitarian motives (more suited for discussing commerce, technology) a preferred script can be trumped by linguistic consideration.” (Unseth, 2005) This was the argument originally used against Arabic before the initial script change. Groups, such as many of those in Africa, who have only a spoken language have frequently used this criterion in the past. Often they will look for outside linguistic resources to fill the written expression of the language. In Azerbaijan all of these concerns were taken into consideration. Often the problem was that there were too many concerns; both which group to exclude and which too include, and then negotiating these socio-political decision with economic and technological concerns, and with linguistic viability playing a factor. This is to say, although presented as four simple motivations, they are actually incredibly complex choices that for every positive aspect, represent a negative one on the other end.
Arabic had the smallest contingent of supporters. It was the longest used of the Azerbaijani scripts, and was the script of all national literature before 1929, though many copies of such texts, again, were burned. There were Azerbaijani literary scholars in favor of going back to Arabic if just to remain connected to these texts. The majority of Arabic supporters were so for the religious importance of Arabic. In the religion of Islam, the Koran is given directly from Allah, and in Arabic, so the language particularly, and to a lesser extent the script, remain holy and integral to the religion. Azerbaijan remained a Muslim society throughout Soviet control, though a more progressive one a la Turkey. Some of the major advocates for the return to Arabic were actually from Iran. The Iranian state had an interest in sharing a script with Azerbaijan, in terms of economics and as a Muslim country. Azerbaijan is a split nation, divided neatly in two by the Azar River, with the Southeastern side under greater influence from Iran, and the North Side more Turkish and western influenced, and with greater economic development and the greater share of oil wealth. So the question of scripts is also very prominently a matter of class and culture, and we see it played out in terms of economic and political power. But the influence of the Iranians was diminished due to Iran’s suppression of the Azerbaijani language within Iran. A significant portion of Azeris live in Northern Iran, and this group were discouraged, to say the least, from using their ethnic tongue. Among the Turks, and in general, culture is often more powerful than religion; in fact religious unity is often misunderstood cultural cohesion. Bitterness towards the Iranians, particularly in regards to linguistics, diminished their role in script policy.
Arabic was also the script used before the involvement of the Soviet Union. Remember that the switch to Roman scripts was during the Soviet era and was condoned and encouraged by Moscow. However, the dissatisfaction with the Arabic language had been hanging about for at least 50 years before the change actually occurred. The Arabic used by the Azeris was incongruous to the sounds and expression of vowels in the language. However, if the Azeris were to change over to the Arabic script they could have developed a modified version of it that expresses vowels with characters instead of dots. The Arabic script used and developed by the Ottomans, which included Azerbaijan, had added several characters to express consonants not represented in Arabic. The script could be modified to be effective with little more effort than would be expended in changing the scripts to anything.
The Roman script had the most supporters, or at least the most powerful supporters. Roman was the script that the then septuagenarian president grew up learning. One can’t help but suspect that perhaps sheer sentimentality affected the discourse over script choice. Turkey also used the Roman script since 1929. Turkey and Azerbaijani are mostly mutually intelligible languages. Turkey of course then considers Azerbaijani only a dialect of Turkish. This is a powerful fact. It would make sense, given this, to use a mutually held script with a country with whom they share such closely related languages, and with whom they share a Turkish culture. Roman was already once before by Azerbaijan over Arabic and Cyrillic. This was not only because of Turkey’s influence in the matter, but also the agreement among linguists of the fit between the letters available and the Azerbaijani sounds. Another important benefit, though perhaps unforeseeable in 1992 when this decision was made, but prescient nonetheless, was Roman script status as the lingua franca among science and particularly technology, such the internet. At this time, Roman script was certainly considered the script of economic development, though the mechanism for this may not have been apparent, or even existent at all. We can see Japan has had no problem engaging in a global market economy despite the great difference between their scripts and ours in the west. However there are great differences form Azerbaijani and Japanese societies and economies, from education, development, natural resources, capital, and access to markets.