International Journal of Philology

Recently, the ideas of the transition of the Ukrainian language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet have become more and more popular in Ukrainian society. Thus, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin offered to discuss the possible usage of Latin alphabet alongside the Cyrillic alphabet. The purpose of research is to analyze the possibility of transition of Ukrainian language from Cyrillic to Roman alphabet. Results of research. Transliterations of the language used by the inhabitants of the middle Dnieper were first mentioned four centuries ago. In the first half of the last century, Turkey switched to Latin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the transition from Cyrillic to Latin was carried out in Moldova, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan plans to switch to Latin for the Kazakh language by 2025. The reason for such a transition seems to be the noblest: to bring the Ukrainian language out of the Russian cultural space. However, there is an opinion that now is not the best time for it. Only recently - in the last 10 years - the rapid growth of book publishing in the Ukrainian language has begun. But this trend is still quite fragile, and it is easy to break. The transition to a new written language will cause a blow to publishers, from which they may not recover - many old books will remain unsold, and the promotion of new ones will take time - until people get used to the new letter, decades may pass

Cyrillic alphabet; Latin alphabet; cultural space; reform; spelling