Minister of Education Calls Classic Belarusian Language “Unlawful”
Today the Chamber of Representatives passed the Law “About Rules of Belarusian Orthography and Punctuation” in the first reading. Minister of Education Alexander Radzkou gave a speech in Belarusian Language to the members of parliament. He explained, the law is needed primarily to avoid the current discord and to bring clarity to some issues of Belarusian language.
The Minsiter of education finished his speech the following way: “The Law will become an effective means to stop unreasonable, and, in essence, unlawful usage of the so called tarashkevitsa (classical spelling) in mass media”.
Head of the parliamentary commission for education Uladzimir Zdanovich explained to his colleagues why it was good to have a Law, and not just a ruling of the government: “The law provides for punishment for violation of the language rules. Without a punishment everything will remain as it is. This is not politics, this is legal responsibility”.
The changes in the orthography will be discussed in the second reading. It is interesting that the commission suggests capitalizing not only the word “president”, but also “minister”, and “prime-minister”.
