Minister of education said the using of tarashkevitsa «unlawful»

Today the “house of representatives” has adopted the law “On rules of Belarusian orthography and punctuation” in the first reading. Minister of education Aliaksandr Radzkou, speaking Belarusian, explained the “deputies” that the law is necessary first of all to avoid the now existing “jumble”, to clarify the problem of Belarusian language.

Radzkou ended his speech in such a way: “This law will become an efficient means of stop the practice of unconsidered and as such unlawful using of so called tarashkevitsa in press”, - Radio Svaboda reported.

Uladzimir Zdanovich, head of the parliamentary education commission explained his colleagues why it is reasonable to pass a law, not a government decree: “Law provides punishment for the violation of the language rules. And without punishment nothing will change. It is not policy, it is legal responsibility”.

The direct changes in spelling will be discussed during the second reading. It is interesting, for example that the commission offers to write with a capital not only a word “president”, but also “prime minister” and “minister”.

The independent experts are against the amendments. “Settling the new redaction by laws, we are running the risk, because it is crude and premature today. It is not the revival of tarashkevitsa became that “Genie” impeding the further development of the language. The problem is that the normalized in 1930-th spelling is not perfect, and these shortcomings are leaking in new spelling, which they want to fix by law”, - said Vintsuk Viachorka, linguist, the BPF Party (Belarusian Popular Front) leader.