«This is a personal point of view and personal initiative. The state did not take or put forward any decisions or initiatives to change the Kyrgyz alphabet. The Kyrgyz alphabet, as before, consists of 36 letters and remains unchanged,» he emphasized.

Daiyrbek Orunbekov also called on the authors of such initiatives to take into account the possible consequences of public outcry before bringing them up for wider discussion.

«Those who make such proposals should remember their responsibility and carefully evaluate their necessity, possible consequences and public interest before introducing initiatives that could cause unreasonable disputes and discontent,» the head of the Information Policy Service said.

A draft of a new orthography of the Kyrgyz language, published for discussion, caused a wide public response. One of the most discussed proposals was the refusal to use the letter «Э» in native Kyrgyz words and replacing it with «E». Some experts consider the changes to be unfounded from the point of view of the phonetics of the Cyrillic script, others call them a step towards simplifying spelling and a possible transition to the Latin alphabet.