Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree to change the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet, reports RIA Novosti.

This was the start for the third 100 years of linguistic reform.

The Kazakh, Turkish language, used the Arabic script until the 1920s, when the Soviet Union briefly introduced the Latin alphabet. Later it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in 1940.

The current Cyrillic alphabet in Kazakhstan has 42 letters, making it hard to use with digital devices.
Although Kazakh has been the official state language since Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, only 62 percent of the population said they know both written and spoken Kazakh during the last national census in 2009.

Russian is more widespread, with 85 percent saying they are using it daily. Russian is recognized as an official language in Kazakhstan.

Several other Turkic states, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, also switched to the Latin alphabet.

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