A Chat in the Yurt, discussing Central Asia and Europe. Episode XXXII – Central Asian languages

Step into our Yurt and join us for a monthly conversation on Europe-Central Asia developments. In this series of podcasts, we welcome guests from both regions to discuss exciting new research and the latest developments in Europe and Central Asia. Together, we discuss society trends, political developments, economic turns, and cultural highlights while assessing the past and looking ahead to what may unfold. In this episode, hosts Rashid Gabdulhakov and Kamila Smagulova meet with Mahabat Sadyrbek, who is a linguist, writer, and court-certified translator of Kyrgyz, German, and Russian based in Germany. Recently she published the first ever ‘Comprehensive Grammer of the Kyrgyz Language‘. in this episode we discuss languages: how they evolve and are promoted by people and governments. Uzbekistan’s change from Cyrillic to Latin script is argued to have positive impacts in terms of building national identity while it also came at a price of adapting everything to Latin script. Mahabat Sadyrbek also discusses minority languages in Central Asia such as the Dungan language. She is positive on the future as she sees that Central Asian languages are ever more used while they are developing. Meanwhile multilingualism is here to stay and is a strength of the region. In that sense the gain of Central Asian languages does not need to imply a loss of the use of Russian in Central Asia. Join EUCAM in the Yurt via SoundCloud, Spotify, and Apple podcasts. Be part of the discussion by posing questions and sharing your thoughts on our social media: LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Mastodon. EUCAM is a programme of the Centre for European Security Studies (CESS), the Netherlands.