Cyrillic - the basis of our identity, is under threat

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Actually, who am I to write this text? And to whom is it addressed? Who is going to read it? And if he does, then why are these few of them all that is described in him? Do not know. Today an amazing story has become possible - you can write to anyone, write in general, write to nowhere. In the midst of a noisy ball of bubbling information foam, you can stay in almost standard silence. Who reads "mnogobukav" today? And why, in fact, a provincial clouded with everyday life suddenly decided to speculate on these global topics?

I have only one explanation for this pointless activity - I want to fix my ideas about an ideal country. I come up with the right country for myself. I'm interested. Maybe it will be interesting to someone else. Actually, let's play together inventing a wonderful country. What are we losing? (Smile)

I will allow myself immodesty to quote myself at the very beginning:

Today it will not be an exaggeration to say that the Cyrillic alphabet, the basis of our identity, the basis of our singularity and self, in fact, our everything, is under threat:

1. In the 1990s, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have already abandoned the Cyrillic alphabet, and a decision has already been made to switch to the Latin alphabet in Kazakhstan.

2. The transition to the Latin alphabet in Ukraine and Serbia is already being discussed, and in Serbia the creeping romanization is gaining momentum, two newspapers are published in the Latin alphabet, in Montenegro, the Cyrillic and Latin are equal in rights.

3. From time to time in Tatarstan, even in our country, the topic of translation of the Tatar language from Cyrillic to Latin is raised.

4. The most dangerous thing is that the Cyrillic alphabet is rapidly disappearing from the self-presentation of young people, today's young people present themselves mainly in the Latin alphabet, generally in a different discourse, in a different material and visual syntax.

5. No less dangerous tendency - the Cyrillic alphabet is gradually being ousted from city life, city noise - a significant part of the corporate segment is self-presenting in the Latin alphabet, the Latin alphabet coexists on equal terms in the logos and identities of large, medium and small businesses.

Undoubtedly, this is the result of someone and some kind of politics. But there are also some seemingly objective institutional reasons:

1. The very field of using the Cyrillic alphabet is narrowing, today people read less and less, although it must be admitted that we have a rather powerful modern literature, but today we live at the time of the emergence of homo videns (a person of the beholder), more and more often a new one is used in communication hieroglyph (emoji, emoticon, sticker), a fundamental weaning of a person from the ability to imagine, not to collect and evoke emotion with the help of letters, but to “designate” it as a sign, is gaining momentum, the trend of a new archaic, barbarization, is gaining momentum.

2. The Cyrillic market narrowed significantly after the collapse of the USSR. Moreover, there will be no conspiracy theory assertion that anti-Cyrillic politicians exist, are consistently implemented, but there are no Cyrillic politicians. One gets the impression that our government, which is extremely incompetent in humanitarian matters, does not really understand the importance of such policies for our national security.

3. The Cyrillic world has not recently given birth to original solutions for the modernity invented not by us, our language borrows so much from English today that it does not "make" it itself. Moreover, it must be admitted that our language borrows, masters and appropriates words very talentedly and this is not the first time in our history.

4. There are relatively few Cyrillic fonts (especially free and especially beautiful ones) on the market, there are almost a few type designers, and a type community has not been formed. I must admit that today there are more Latin fonts, and they are prettier.

5. A very meager pop culture is emerging from the Cyrillic environment. You need to understand that if a country “does not make” its pop culture, someone else will definitely make it for it.

6. Our humanitarian community is not engaged in word-creation, fixation and codification, motivation and management of word-creation of broad layers of our very talented population.

7. Let's be honest, the Cyrillic environment today does not give rise to original, such cultural "primary sources"; the community of cultural producers is simply not capable of loading, filling the logistics system of modern culture on its own.

The combination of these (and many more) factors creates a rather bleak picture. But it is not all that bad. We have a chance to ride the global trend of de-globalization, regionalization and customization. Also, one cannot but take into account the fact that today many participants in the symbolic market understand that regional, national, private is the necessary fuel for distinction, originality, even for the most ambitious creators. The Cyrillic world, the Cyrillic market is still more than 250 million people today. This is a very serious civilizational asset, this is a very serious market. This is a space of great opportunities. This is the place of residence of the Cyrillic consciousness, a deep civilizational community. This is something that simply needs to be fought for, which means creating a complex of Cyrillic policies. Here are some of them:

1. Organization of impressive, but most importantly - permanent and high-quality, free and widely available, adapted for other Cyrillic countries, font emissions, through a system of grants, direct hiring of type designers - what the hell is not kidding, it would be great if there were state type agency; we just need to create a critical mass of free Cyrillic fonts; today it is extremely wrong to believe that the market will decide everything on its own, that the one who needs it will buy it himself, take part in the creation of the market for Cyrillic fonts; it will not be so; today we are in an almost existential situation, nothing will happen by itself, we need a project effort, an application of will.

2. To motivate the creative community to create a Club of Type Directors, by analogy with similar structures in the Western world, with a regular competition, awarding the best font solutions of the year, and impressive bonuses.

3. To motivate classes in Cyrillic calligraphy, to support Cyrillic exhibitions of calligraphers - in general, somehow this branch of culture needs to be noticed more.

4. In several stages, not in a shock manner, prohibit the registration of large, small and medium-sized enterprises, oriented to the domestic market, with logos in Latin; to develop clear regulations for the use of the Latin version of the logo for enterprises declaring their intention to carry out foreign economic activity.

5. Support initiatives to promote the Cyrillic alphabet among young people, motivate the emergence of Cyrillic self-presentation of subcultures, and achieve the Cyrillization of the cultural scene.

6. Create strict control bodies, a kind of Cyrillic inquisitors to monitor compliance with font regulations.

7. To carry out consistent work on updating the Cyrillic heritage - literary, pictorial, design - the arrays of the irrelevant, but already created, in our culture are so huge that sometimes it is not clear why … why are we so incurious? You just need a state order to update everything that is stored in our libraries, museums and archives … if you wonder how much of everything written in the 18th century has not yet been published, your hair stands on end!

eight. To motivate, codify active word-creation to describe fluid modernity through the supported media institutions “new word of the month”, “new word of the year” - it is necessary to infect everyone with word-formation games, these are not self-incident processes, such games can be launched and maintained; in general, word creation and word fixation is necessary, dictionary games should be removed from only the academic community, the academic community of linguists and philologists should not have a monopoly on this kind of games, especially today, when our certified linguists are monstrously insecure, ready to hand over anything for grants; I am forced to declare absolutely sinful - today, often a diploma or a scientific degree in this field can often become a sign of incompetence, intellectual corruption and other things that are not very good …

Of course, all these are measures that will work when a sovereign pop culture flourishes, when our intellectuals begin to give out truly valuable and relevant, when the drive of a language, word-making game appears, when a community of cultural politicians capable of smart autarchy appears.

Most importantly, we need to understand that language speaks to us. It is the Cyrillic alphabet that is able to tell the world something very important and special. It was in the Cyrillic environment that the great Russian language arose, the language of true freedom, the language of absolute creativity, a language with an amazing ability to shades and details, particulars and intonations, an amazing plasticine for unlimited creativity.

We need to understand the many threats, one of which is the seemingly innocent unnecessaryness of the online language, the kind of legitimacy of permissible, justified illiteracy. The SMS language, the language of social networks and instant messengers, is a hacking of the inviolability of language rules. The world is ruled by a kind of linguistic laxity, sanctioned illiteracy. All this essentially became the erosion of the language. Language rules today are under the blow of "rationalization", "reforms". The very right of language to the intrinsic value of rules, which are increasingly viewed as something optional, unnecessary, superfluous, is already denied.