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[YAKUT LATIN SCRIPT] Sehenner [i.e. Andersen’s Fairy Tales]

Andersen, H.C.

Item #546

Yakutsk: GIZ, 1937. 56 pp.: ill. 26x20 cm. Original cardboards. Loose, some pages are detached, stains on the spine, boards are slightly rubbed. Overall a good internally clean copy. Stamp ‘signalny ekzempliar’ on the title page suggests that this copy was a proof copy. We couldn’t find a copy of this book in any Russian or Western libraries, so it is possible that the edition was stopped after the proofs were produced. There are historical reasons for that.

In 1917 Semyon Novgorodov (1892-1924), Yakut linguist and politician, created Yakut script in latin characters. He used the principles of International Phonetical Alphabet that he thought did reflect the language better.
In 1926 in Baku the first all-Union Turkic Congress was held. It was agreed that all Turkic languages should unify its alphabets and use Janalif, the new Turkic alphabet. As a result Yakut script was changed, but the version created was the compromise of the Novgorodov’s system and Janalif.
This book is printed in that version which existed till the second half of the 1930s. After 1935 the tendency changed, and the Soviet officials saw the threat in the number of latin scripts throughout the country. By 1939 all of them were changed to completely new scripts that are used till this day.
All books printed in latin characters in Yakutia are very rare.

No copies in libraries.

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