Kazakh language

Kazakh
qazaqşa or qazaq tılı қазақша or қазақ тілі قازاقشا or قازاق تىلى
Pronunciation	qɑzɑqˈɕɑ qɑˈzɑq tɘlɘ
Native to	Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Altai Republic (Russia), Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria
Region	Central Asia (Turkestan)
Ethnicity	Kazakhs
Native speakers	22 million (2019)
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Kipchak Kipchak–Nogai Kazakh
Writing system	Kazakh alphabets (Latin script, Cyrillic script, Arabic script, Kazakh Braille)
Official status
Official language in	Kazakhstan Altai Republic China Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture Barköl Kazakh Autonomous County Mori Kazakh Autonomous County Aksay Kazakh Autonomous County Organisations: Turkic Council Collective Security Treaty Organization
Regulated by	Kazakh language agency
Language codes
ISO 639-1	kk
ISO 639-2	kaz
ISO 639-3	kaz
Glottolog	kaza1248
Linguasphere	44-AAB-cc
The Kazakh-speaking world:   regions where Kazakh is the language of the majority   regions where Kazakh is the language of a significant minority

Kazakhstani stamp with Cyrillic Kazakh text

Kazakh is a Turkic language that is mostly spoken in Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia. It, along with Russian, is one of Kazakhstan's official languages.

History

The Kazakh language had been written in the Cyrillic alphabet since the Russian Empire started to occupy that country in the 19th century. In 1917, people began to use the Arabic alphabet, but the Russians were not able to make them use Cyrillic.

The Kazakhs used the Arabic script to write their language until approximately 1929. In the early 1900s, Kazakh activist Ahmed Baytursinuli reformed the Kazakh-Arabic alphabet, but his work was largely overshadowed by the Soviet presence in Central Asia. At that point, the new Soviet regime forced the Kazakhs to use a Latin script, and then a Cyrillic script in the 1940s in an effort to thoroughly Russify them. Today, Kazakhs use the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts to write their language.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly-independent Republic of Kazakhstan allowed the old Latin alphabet to be used, but continued to use Cyrillic as the main alphabet. In 2006, president Nursultan Nazarbayev started a project to introduce a standard form of the Latin alphabet as the official script of his country. A version of the new Latin alphabet, which used apostrophes for certain sounds, was created in April 2017, but was replaced with another one in February 2018 which instead uses diacritics on certain letters. The latest version, proposed in 2021, has been in official use and will be taught in elementary schools starting 2023. If all goes as planned, the Cyrillic alphabet will be fully replaced with Latin by 2025.

Kazakh letters

The last proposed Kazakh Latin alphabet was shown in 2019:

Kazakh alphabet

A a

Ä ä

B b

D d

E e

F f

G g

Ğ ğ

H h

İ i

I ı

J j

K k

L l

M m

N n

Ñ ñ

O o

Ö ö

P p

Q q

R r

S s

Ş ş

T t

U u

Ū ū

Ü ü

V v

Y y

Z z

Other websites

• Website of the government of Kazakhstan Archived 2012-05-19 at the Wayback Machine (in Kazakh)