New Law on rules of Belarusian orthography came in force

• 1.09.2010, 11:51

A draft of a new version of rules, prepared by the Ministry of Education, aroused an ambiguous reaction in the society.

On September, 1 the new law on rules of Belarusian orthography and punctuation adopted in the year of 2008, came in force, BelaPAN reports.

Basic changes come to specification of word hyphenation rules, way of writing small and capital letters, to the distribution of writing of non-syllabic u, as well as to the distribution of the principle of “akanye” for the majority part of loanwords.

The rules of Belarusian orthography and punctuation have been functioning in Belarus since the year of 1959. In the year of 1993 a state commission on specifying of Belarusian literature language headed by a people’s poet of Belarus Nil Hilevich was established. In the year of 1994 the commission recommended the National Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education to prepare a new version of rules.

In August, 2006 Alyaksandr Lukashenka, playing host to Minister of Education Alyaksandr Radzkou, entrusted to speed up the development of the new version of rules.

A draft of the new version of rules, prepared by scientists and employees of the Ministry of Education, aroused an ambiguous reaction in the society; it had been reconciled for a long time and gained the force of a law only in the year of 2008.

The representatives of Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society are convinced that any changes of the Belarusian language spelling are possible only after returning to it the status of the only state language. They pay attention to the fact that the new law does not precipitate a change in unsatisfactory situation with the use of Belarusian language in different spheres of social life.