The intelligentsia draws the speaker's attention to the problem of disrespect for the Azerbaijani language

Baku/10.04.22/Turan: More than 200 representatives of the scientific, creative, pedagogical and media community of Azerbaijan turned to the speaker of the Milli Majlis Saziba Gafarova in connection with disrespect for the Azerbaijani language in the names of trade and service objects, street advertising.

“We are addressing you in connection with an issue that is of concern to our society and the intelligentsia. It is impossible not to see that the Azerbaijani language, one of the main symbols of the spiritual wealth of our people and state independence, is disrespected in our homeland. The streets and avenues of Baku are literally "occupied" by foreign languages. During the monitoring conducted by the Public Association "Center for Philological Research and Language Monitoring", it was found that 70-80 percent of trade and service facilities on the central streets and avenues of the capital do not use the state language," the appeal says.

The authors point out that in the past they have already sent such appeals to the Deputy Chairman of the State Language Commission Anar Rzayev, the Chairman of the Committee for Culture of the Milli Majlis Ganira Pashayeva, the head of the Baku City Executive Power Eldar Azizov and others.

“At best, these letters are forwarded to the State Advertising Agency. And instead of eliminating the problem and requiring business entities to comply with the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan “On the state language in the Republic of Azerbaijan”, it tries to justify the legality of all these violations,” the appeal further says.

Language is one of the important attributes of statehood, a condition for the existence of culture, a specific way of its existence, a factor in the formation of cultural codes, they remind.

“The linguistic landscape observed on the streets of Baku is an unconditional cultural and linguistic expansion, the main goal of which is to weaken the mechanisms of identification of the people with their state. This must be prevented,” the authors of the appeal further emphasize.

The Constitution of Azerbaijan establishes that the Azerbaijani language is the state language. This means that both public and government bodies and private sector entities must communicate with citizens in this language. Objects of trade and services serve citizens, and the inscriptions on these objects are intended for communication with citizens, and it must be in the state language, then the signatories of the appeal to the speaker of parliament indicate.

The law on the state language prescribes signboards in the Azerbaijani language for all institutions and geographical names. However, often, even on signs written in Azerbaijani on the streets of Baku, one can find lexical, spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors.

The authors ask the head of parliament, using his powers, to take appropriate measures to comply with the provisions of the Constitution and the law on the state language. They also ask the speaker to receive representatives of the authors of the appeal for additional clarification of a number of points.—06B-