KAZAN, Russia — Experts from the region and beyond are gathering in Kazan to discuss how to preserve Turkic languages in a rapidly globalizing world, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.
The three-day international Turkology conference is scheduled to open on October 22 in the capital of Russia’s Tatarstan republic.
The conference is devoted to the 85th birthday of prominent Tatar Turkologist Dilara Tumasheva.
Experts from Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, as well as from Moscow, the Republics of Chuvashia and Bashkortostan, and Perm Oblast, will participate.
The conference will also focus on ways to teach Turkic languages using modern technology.
Fakhima Khisamova, a linguist at Kazan Federal University, told a press conference on October 21 that preserving languages is becoming one of the most important tasks of contemporary linguistics.
“To learn or know a language is, of course, important, but currently, we are focusing on the issue of language preservation,” Khisamova said.
Khisamova said the conference will also focus on the history of the Turkic languages, structural changes in the Turkic languages, and their grammatical peculiarities.
Read more in Tatar here