BISHKEK, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev Friday delivered a congratulatory speech to celebrate the national Kyrgyz Language Day.
The Kyrgyz president said "Language, as a means of communication, unites people and nations, strengthens friendship. Our common goal is to support the positive trends that contribute to the popularization of the state language."
Kyrgyzstan has two official languages: Kyrgyz and Russian.
The Kyrgyz Language Day is celebrated annually on Sept. 23 in honor of the adoption of a law which officially recognized the Kyrgyz language as the state language in 1989.
Kyrgyzstan is one of the two former Soviet republics in Central Asia that retain Russian as an official language. Kazakhstan is the other one.
Kyrgyz is a Turkic language. It was written in the Arabic alphabet until the 20th century. Latin script was introduced and adopted in 1928, and was subsequently replaced by Cyrillic script in 1941.
Out of 6 million people of Kyrgyzstan, nearly 4.1 million people speak Kyrgyz as native or second language and 2.5 million speak Russian as native or second language.
