The Supreme Tradition of Spelling Bees

To the extent there's a trend at all, it is away from cyrillic.
Moldova and Azerbaijan have both (officially) dropped cyrillic in favour of latin based scripts although cyrillic is still in everyday use among older people and in pockets. I can see how the Russians would be sensitive about this.

I suspect the inconsistent implementations of cyrillic in turkestan is just a cock-up rather than a divided and conquer strategy. See section 4 of this paper for an interesting discussion of these points.
http://cahiers.gutenberg.eu.org/cg-bin/article/CG_1998___28-29_32_0.pdf

Although new alphabets look daunting, learning a new alpabet is quick, much less effort than learning a new language. Its taken me years to get reasonably proficient in Russian but the alphabet took only a few hours. In the former Yugoslavia where serbian and croatian differed principally in the alphabet, the entire population quickly became proficient in both latin and cyrillic alphabets. I'd expect the same to happen eg between Tajik and Persian.

You could waste a lot of time chasing down interesting links in the Language Log post I linked to above. I know; I have. The one on Birlashdirilmish yangi Turk alifbesi, the New Unified Turkic Alphabet was good, and so was this on Kazakh banknotes, and this and this on the name Bishkek. Others tempt me to give Gravity's Rainbow a go again. But I've already promised myself to reread War and Peace within the next year, and I think one 1500-page novel a year is probably enough.

Language-related story from the Metropolitan Diary:

DEAR DIARY: Serving in the Army during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, I spent a year in Washington learning Laotian. Since the United States was not officially in Laos at the time, I was sent to a linguist holding company at Fort Hood in Texas for the remaining two years of my enlistment, ready to ship out should the need arise.

Fortunately, my life was never in danger. It was, however, something of a disappointment not to be able to put my training to use.

Decades later, in a taxi going down Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, I am intrigued by the driver’s name on the ID card on the partition between him and me.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“I am from Laos.”

“Chow pak pasaa Lao dai bo?” I ask. (“Do you speak Lao?”) At last!

The driver turns to look at me, incredulous. He is smiling broadly.

“Nine years I am in America. This is the first time someone speaks to me in Laotian!” He is exultant.

The cab has strayed from the lane. We are hurtling straight toward the guardrail. Horns blare. The driver recovers at the last minute, and I narrowly escape being a casualty of the conflict after all.

Sam Goodyear

We used to have fun with "Bishkek," "Pishpek" and "Frunze" where I worked in the mid-1990s, Vinny. They all sounded vaguely like dessert toppings to one of my colleagues. (It was an odd crowd.)

Shilgia and I had a nobly traditional, if sparsely attended, Indian meal last night in the East 20s. A good time was had by both. And shilgia passed the bar exam, of course, in case anyone around here had any doubt. I don't think the information was embargoed. Congratulations!

Congratulations, Shilgia.

Chris, biszkopt is a kind of cake in Polish.

So my colleague was on the right track after all...

We are in countdown mode for Thanksgiving around here. It will be the usual large crowd on Thursday. I wish K could be here, as she has never yet witnessed a Thanksgiving. On Friday my distended belly and I will get on the plane back to icy Dushanbe.

Thanks, bjd!

Yes, a good time was had by all, at Sunday night's chris-shilgia pissup. Chris had Dushanbe-related news, too, but I'm not sure whether that information is embargoed . . .

??

My life is an open book...

It looks as though we'll be leaving Dushanbe pretty soon, for the brisk midwinter of Helsinki.

Congratulations, shilgia. And Chris, too.

And a happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate.

Happy Thanksgiving! Biszkopt for everyone!