City names written in Latin are disappearing from road signs in Belarus: first the name was Homiel, now Hrodna and even Polish Białystok have disappeared. Only the names written in the Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet remained.

17 comments

1. putin couldn’t annex Ukraine so he annexed Belarus.

2. Least petty dictator

3. I guess it’s a sign of how isolated they have become.

4. I don’t even speak any of the slavic languages, apart from some tourist level Bulgarian and Russian. It took me a few days at most to have almost instant recognition of Cyrillic. It’s the primary alphabet for the local language, I see no problem with removing Latin alphabet (even if the motive was likely pretty dark). People can adapt to Cyrillic characters really quickly from what I’ve seen travelling.

5. Funny because Belarusian is a foreign language to most of them as well.

6. Although Belarusian is and has always been mostly written in Cyrillic,
   due to Polish influence for centuries the Latin alphabet ([Łacinka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_Latin_alphabet)) has also historically been used for the language, including by several influential writers and journals. The text that was erased on the first sign read Hrodna and the text on the second sign read Biełastok, which is romanized Belarusian (Łacinka), not Polish. The Polish spelling for the cities is different, Grodno and Białystok respectively.

   That said, even though Łacinka is part of Belarusian linguistic heritage, they probably did this in order to reduce Polish/Western influence and reinforce Russian influence.

7. Another example of Russia using something inherently innocent for it’s culture wars. Cyrillic alphabet will probably get replaced by Latin in the Ukrainian language sometime in the next decade.

8. It’s Belarus…

9. > City names written in Latin are disappearing from road signs in Belarus: … even Polish Białystok have disappeared

   I don’t see the problem. Are city names in Poland written in Cyrillic?

10. Say you have no tourist industry without saying you have no tourist industry

11. How sad, however didnt specific EU and NATO countries do this too?

12. Aha, but why not go the whole hog and change the BY and PL badges too?

13. This is just a small step for this greater goal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_Arabic_alphabet

14. >first the name was Homiel, now Hrodna

    You are confusing [Gomel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomel?wprov=sfla1) with [Grodno](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grodno?wprov=sfla1).

15. The same thing is slowly happening in serbia too… not tourist friendly at all.

16. Lol

17. Perhaps Lukashenko is scared to be invaded by NATO, so they hide directions… But I’m pretty sure many Ukrainians will volunteer to translate these signs. Also, there is a little thing called GPS 😆