New Belarusian spelling rules to come into force in 2010

The Ministry of Education of Belarus will next week post on its official web site the text of a draft legislation on the rules of the Belarusian spelling and punctuation, Uladzimir Zdanovich, the Chairman of the Education, Culture, Science and Technical Progress Commission at the House of Representatives told the European Radio for Belarus on August 1. "Yesterday we received the final draft with all those amendments that we had introduced together with the Ministry of Education and the Institute of Linguistics at the National Academy of Sciences. As a result, we decided to post the text of the legislation on the web site of the Ministry of Education," he said.

In the view of Zdanovich, this will be done to reach out to every person who will wish to comment on the draft. Worthy remarks will be studied and possibly included into the draft.

The law is planned to come into force in 2010 only. But 4-5 years more are envisaged as an adaptation period. The legislation will be discussed by lawmakers at the upcoming fall session after the summer break.