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Lukashenka signs law governing Belarusian spelling, punctuation rules

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has signed a draft law governing Belarusian spelling and punctuation.
The text of the law was published by the state newspaper Zvyazda on July 26.

The law, which will take effect on September 1, 2010, will apply to both the official and unofficial use of the written language.

The established spelling and punctuation rules will most likely spread to online texts.

Among the proposed changes are new hyphenation rules, a wider use of labialized "у," the use of "а" instead of "о" in borrowed words, new spellings of compound and abbreviated words, and the requirement that the names of certain governmental agencies, organizations, enterprises, ranks and positions should be always capitalized.

Mr. Lukashenka ordered the government to come up with a law governing the spelling and punctuation of the Belarusian language in August 2006.

An independent reporter expressed fears earlier this year that the law may become another means of putting pressure on the non-state press.

“The overwhelming majority of people in the House of Representatives don’t speak Belarusian in daily life and don’t have philological training,” Andrey Skurko, editor in chief of the private weekly Nasha Niva, a publication that uses Tarashkevitsa (the traditional version of the written Belarusian language replaced by a Russianized version in 1933), told BelaPAN.

Belarusians will eventually develop a uniform spelling system that will be result of a consensus among the real carriers of the Belarusian language, he predicted. “A uniform spelling system would eliminate the artificial division between the intelligentsia and the rest of the public,” Mr. Skurko said.