Fast Food Signs and Script Playfulness: The Landscape of Languages and Scripts in Uzbekistan

February 02, 2019

Fast Food Signs and Script Playfulness: The Landscape of Languages and Scripts in Uzbekistan

Introduction

Uzbek Dictionary and Phrasebook

In October 2018, I went on a tour of Uzbekistan, equipped useful dictionary and phrasebook; I’ll write separately about the more normal sights of Uzbekistan; and Uzbek and Turkish.

Today I’m writing about linguistic environments with more than one script and more than one language. I’m an Aegean prehistorian involved in the Sphakia Survey, a diachronic archaeological project in SW Crete (from the later Stone Age until the end of the Turkish period). In addition to ancient and modern Greek and some Linear B, I have a basic knowledge of Turkish, including a very little bit of Ottoman, and of Russian.

Multi-script languages include Greek (Linear B; Greek alphabet, adapted from NW Semitic); Turkish (Old Turkic [‘runes’]; Arabic alphabet; Latin alphabet); and Uzbek (Arabic, Cyrillic, Latin alphabets). I don’t know if there is a reliable way of measuring how well a script fits a language, and I’d be really interested to hear if there is. But I can suggest that some script-to- language fits may be better than others. And just to put this out there, Linear B, in my view, seems like custom-design for Greek, compared to the Arabic script for Turkish!

There are two things that I want to consider in this blog: 1. Uzbek and its scripts; and 2. The unexpected things that people who live in a world with multiple scripts (Latin and Cyrillic) and languages Uzbek, Russian, English) sometimes do with them.

Uzbek and its Scripts

Uzbek, the main language of modern Uzbekistan, is a Turkic language, first written in the Arabic script. The Cyrillic alphabet for Uzbek was introduced when Uzbekistan became a republic of the USSR in the 1920s. After independence from Russia in 1991, the new Republic of Uzbekistan introduced the Latin alphabet for all official uses; please see the end of this post for these alphabets.

As I suggested above, the Arabic script for Turkish, and by extension Uzbek, was probably always problematic in terms of fit, because of the huge differences between Semitic and Turkish languages (sounds and letters needed, grammar, vocabulary, you name it). The Cyrillic and Latin alphabets needed relatively few modifications to make reading and writing Uzbek much simpler (important if mass literacy is a goal). In fact the Latin alphabet needed exactly three changes for Uzbek: the elimination of c as a separate letter (k/q and s work perfectly well for those two sounds); the re-purposing of x for the sound of ch at the end of loch; and the introduction of the apostrophe to indicate the gap after o and g, as required. Existing Latin letters were used for Uzbek ch, sh, and ng; k and q covered both front and back k-sounds (which the Cyrillic script had not done).

In Uzbekistan today both Latin and Cyrillic scripts are used, the latter mostly for Uzbek, but sometimes still for Russian — which makes for some disconcerting moments when you see Cyrillic, and then have the additional task of figuring out have which language it’s actually being used for.

The sign below shows two alphabets and three languages: (Uzbek and Russian (Cyrillic) and English (Latin).

Fast Food Signs and Script Playfulness: Two Examples

This Good Burger outlet (Example 1, below) has signs mostly in the Latin alphabet (Coca Cola, hot-dogs [sic]), and one sign in Cyrillic advertising KФC, or KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Now, in the Cyrillic script, these letters don’t entirely work as meaningful initials (K for Kentucky [Кентукки, Kentookki] is OK, but Фfor fried and C for chicken are not). Nor do the letter nameswork in Russian — KФC would be Ka Eff Seh, not Kay Eff See.

Good Burger outlet with KFC in Cyrillic

A brief digression — Modern Greek has an interesting mixture of the same thing, in terms of sounds. The letters of the Greek alphabet have names, but sometimes alternative letter-names are used, as in the case of the Communist Party of Greece, Kommounistiko Komma Elladhas (KKE), which ought always to be called Kappa Kappa Epsilon but is commonly known as the Kou Kou Eh — and its adherents as KouKouEdhes). Similarly, Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (known as Em Bee Ess in English) is sometimes called Mou Bou Sou in Greek, even though those letters too have perfectly good Greek names. (Plus Mou Bou Sou doesn’t work for Arabic or English letter names.)

But many people in Uzbekistan are still very familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet, and would know that these Cyrillic letter names and sounds wouldn’t jibe with the English ones. So what I take from this is that it doesn’t matter if the initials KFC aren’t quite right, visually and aurally/orally, as English-speakers know them – what does matter is the ability to show knowledge of foreign ways – in this case American fast foods.

In Example 2 (see below), there are signs at a fast food outlet selling shawarma (Arabic name for an originally Middle Eastern wrap); the word is written twice in Cyrillic ( шаурма, transliterated it would be shaourma). It’s the big sign at the top that’s interesting here. The sh- sound at the beginning, which has its own letter in Russian (sha, ш) is represented by the golden arches of McDonald – inverted to turn them into a sha! Moreover the use of the arches has been done with the clear understanding that everyone can read the sign AND

simultaneously get the visual pun – this is fast food however you spell it, and the sign-makers again are showing their familiarity with American fast food symbols, wherever they are from, including McDonald’s, while counting on potential customers to do the same.

Shawarma outlet with golden arches…

A Conclusion and A Question

The shift from Cyrillic to Latin involved significant will, on the part of the new Uzbek government, to make it work. There may well be a difference in approach between choosing to change to, and possibly adapt, a script; and having a script imposed upon your language, possibly with minimum concessions to your language. In this case, the small number of modifications could suggest a good script: language fit (Latin alphabet: Uzbek).

People in the midst of more than one script (and/or language) will fiddle with them, play with them, joke with them, get up to all sorts of script improv and mischief visually and aurally/orally – based on the assumption of shared knowledge of foreign ways and preferences. This script bricolage includes manipulating the lookof what is written, and crossovers from multiple languages. I’m going to end with a question:are there things we can learn from all this which could apply to ancient scripts and languages as well?

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THE THREE UZBEK SCRIPTS, from https://www.omniglot.com/writing/uzbek.htm