Comments on: We can dance, we can read

By: Central Asia » Blog Archive » Destination: Turkmenistan’s vacation paradise

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:15:43 +0000

[…] reading: RFE/RL interview with Paul Theroux Another, shorter post by Abdulgamid on Joshua Kucera’s trip through Turkmenistan The International Labour Organization of the […]

By: John

John — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:00:12 +0000

This is exactly the problem–they don’t publish anything without mention of Beyik Serdarymyz, altyn asyr (golden age) or other, overused and meaningless phrases. But where else can people that are really only fluent in Turkmen get real information than word of mouth and the govt television/papers? They’re not improving the quality and breadth of local reporting and stifling Russian language education and materials. English is supposedly the next language that all Turkmen should know, but they are a long way from that.

By: Parahat Mele

Parahat Mele — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 06:27:48 +0000

The guy is reading newspaper “Turkmenistan”. Which I am pretty sure that full of praises like “Merhemetli”, “Beýik” and etc. Do you think people need to read this praise to one man. I studied journalism and I never read a news written with “inverted pyramid” style on Turkmen papers. Do you think “Merhemetli” or “Beýik” is most important thing for people? And how long are we going to continue to read/watch materials in foreign language to get decent information?

By: John

John — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:16:26 +0000

There is also a serious lack of decent reading materials in Turkmen. The government controls everything that is published there and prints stuff that is boring, irrelevant and mostly “propagandaish.” Russian papers and books are available, but the selection is rather small and many (and a rapidly increasing proportion) children don’t know Russian well enough to enjoy a book in that language.

By: Begenc

Begenc — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:35:37 +0000

We dont read papers on the streets… we do that at home or in the office… We dont spend hours waiting for a bus or a metro, we just take a taxi, pretty fast