Turkmem, Azeri

1. I have an interest in languages.
2. Oh yeah, so you like this?
1. Yes. I see Armenian.
2. Yes.
1. What about Arabic?
2. Of course man, it’s got to be here. There. Iqra, Read.
1. Yes.
2. How about the former Soviet Union languages?
1. Yes that’s Russian. That’s Belarusian. I don’t know Belarusian.
2. Yeah it looks close to Serbian, or actually Ukrainian as well. Well interesting stories about the Turkmen, Azeri [later I learned Chechen] and regions of the former Soviet Union.
1. Right.
2. When it came into power, they wanted to unify the country with the same Cyrillic script. These languges, Azeri and them from that area, actually used Arabic script.
1. No way.
2. Yeah. But in the span of a life time, it went from using Arabic, to Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
1. Why’s that?
2. Well because the people now, when these Republics became independent, they wanted to distance themselves from the Cyrillic soviet alphabet…

The Chechen language (Нохчийн мотт / Noxçiyn mott / نوٓخچیین موٓتت (Arabic orthography before latinisation); Medieval Chechen: نوًچین موت) is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, mostly in Chechnya and by Chechen people elsewhere. It is a member of the Northeast Caucasian languages.