President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree on phased translation of the Kazakh alphabet into Latin script.

This is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the decree, published in state media on Friday, October 27.

"The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan: to form a national commission for the translation of the Kazakh alphabet into Latin script; to provide a phased translation of the Kazakh alphabet into Latin script until 2025, "the document says.

In order to ensure the translation of the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin, Nazarbayev decided to approve the attached alphabet of the Kazakh language, based on the Latin script and consisting of 32 letters.

Nazarbayev said that the Cyrillic alphabet distorts the Kazakh language. In particular, according to him, in the Kazakh language there is no "ni", "yu", "I", "i". He added that teaching Latin in the first grades of schools will begin in 2022.

In Kazakhstan, as well as among the Kazakhs living in the republics of the former USSR, the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet is now used. The Latin alphabet is used by some Kazakh diasporas abroad, particularly in Turkey. In the PRC and a number of other countries, Kazakh communities use Arabic script.