Kazakh is a

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

of the

Kipchak Kipchak may refer to: * Kipchaks, a medieval Turkic people * Kipchak languages, a Turkic language group * Kipchak language, an extinct Turkic language of the Kipchak group * Kipchak Khanate or Golden Horde * Kipchak Mosque, a mosque in the villa ...

branch spoken in

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

Kazakhs The Kazakhs (Kazakh language, Kazakh: , , , ) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia and Eastern Europe. They share a common Culture of Kazakhstan, culture, Kazakh language, language and History of Kazakhstan, history ...

. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

, and has official status in the

Altai Republic The Altai Republic, also known as the Gorno-Altai Republic, is a republic of Russia located in southern Siberia. The republic borders Kemerovo Oblast to the north, Khakassia to the northeast, Tuva to the east, Altai Krai to the west, as well ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It is also a significant minority language in the

Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in northern Xinjiang, China. Its capital is Yining, also known as Ghulja or Kulja. Covering an area of 268,591 square kilometres (16.18 per cent of Xinjiang), Ili Prefecture shares ...

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, and in the

Bayan-Ölgii Province Bayan-Ölgii ( ) is the westernmost of the 21 Aimags of Mongolia, aimags (provinces) of Mongolia. The country's only Islam in Mongolia, Muslim and Kazakh people, Kazakh-majority aimag, it was established in August 1940. Its capital is Ölgii (cit ...

of western

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

. The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(some 472,000 in Russia according to the

2010 Russian census The 2010 Russian census () was the second census of the Russian Federation population after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the census began in 2007 and it took place between October 14 and October 25. The census The cen ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, and

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is an

agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of language that primarily forms words by stringing together morphemes (word parts)—each typically representing a single grammatical meaning—without significant modification to their forms ( agglutinations) ...

and employs

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

. Kazakh builds words by adding suffixes one after another to the word stem, with each suffix expressing only one unique meaning and following a fixed sequence. ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'' recognizes three mutually intelligible dialect groups: Northeastern Kazakh—the most widely spoken variety, which also serves as the basis for the official language—Southern Kazakh, and Western Kazakh. The language shares a degree of mutual intelligibility with the closely related Karakalpak language while its Western dialects maintain limited mutual intelligibility with the

Altai languages Altai or Altay () is a set of Turkic languages spoken officially in the Altai Republic, Russia. The standard vocabulary is based on the Southern Altai language, though it is also taught to and used by speakers of the Northern Altai language as w ...

. In October 2017, Kazakh president

Nursultan Nazarbayev Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev (born 6 July 1940) is a Kazakhstani politician who served as the first president of Kazakhstan from 1991 to 2019. He also held the special title of Elbasy from 2010 to 2022 and chairman of the Security Council of ...

decreed that the writing system would change from using

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

by 2025. The proposed Latin alphabet has been revised several times and as of January 2021 is close to the inventory of the

Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet () is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which ( Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements o ...

, though lacking the letters C and Ç and having four additional letters: Ä, Ñ, Q and Ū (though other letters such as Y have different values in the two languages). It is scheduled to be phased in from 2023 to 2031. Over one million Kazakh speakers in

use a modified version of the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

for writing.

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Kazakh (mainly Kazakhs) are spread over a vast territory from the

Tian Shan The Tian Shan, also known as the Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, meaning the "Mountains of God/Heaven", is a large system of mountain ranges in Central Asia. The highest peak is Jengish Chokusu at high and located in Kyrgyzstan. Its lowest point is ...

to the western shore of the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, with nearly 10 million speakers (based on information from the

CIA World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print ve ...

on population and proportion of Kazakh speakers). In China, nearly two million ethnic Kazakhs and Kazakh speakers reside in the

of Xinjiang.

History

The

branch of Turkic languages, which Kazakh is borne out of, was mainly solidified during the reign of the

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as ''Ulug Ulus'' ( in Turkic) was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the division of ...

. The modern Kazakh language is said to have originated in approximately 1465 AD during the formation of the Kazakh Khanate. Modern Kazakh is likely a descendant of both Chagatay Turkic as spoken by the

Timurids The Timurid Empire was a late medieval, culturally Persianate, Turco-Mongol empire that dominated Greater Iran in the early 15th century, comprising modern-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, much of Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and parts of contem ...

and Kipchak Turkic as spoken in the Golden Horde. Kazakh uses a high volume of loanwords from

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

due to the frequent historical interactions between Kazakhs and

Iranian ethnic groups Iranian () may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Iran ** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran ** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia ** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...

to the south. Additionally, Persian was a ''lingua franca'' in the Kazakh Khanate, which allowed Kazakhs to mix Persian words into their own spoken and written vernacular. Meanwhile, Arabic was used by Kazakhs in

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

s and

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type o ...

s, serving as a language exclusively for religious contexts, similar to how Latin served as a liturgical language in the Western European cultural sphere. Cyrillic alphabet world distribution

The Kazakhs used the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

to write their language until approximately 1929. In the early 1900s, Kazakh activist Akhmet Baitursynuly 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. Today, Kazakhs use the Cyrillic and Latin scripts to write their language, although a presidential decree from 2017 ordered the transition from Cyrillic to Latin by 2031. Although not an endangered language, in 2024, Kazakh has been described as being placed in a somewhat vulnerable position by the Kazakhstani Minister of Science and Higher Education Sayasat Nurbek, within a category where the number of speakers is not increasing as rapidly as anticipated.

Phonology and orthography

Kazakh exhibits tongue-root

, with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

or Arabic origin) as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which does not apply as strongly and is not reflected in the orthography. This system only applies to the open vowels and not , and happens in the next syllables. Thus, (in Latin script) 'star', 'today', and 'big' are actually pronounced as , , .

Consonants

The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh; many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loanwords. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are without parentheses—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what is shown. ( rarely appears in normal speech.) Kazakh has 19 native consonant phonemes; these are the stops , fricatives , nasals , liquids , and two glides . The sounds are found only in loanwords. is heard as an alveolopalatal affricate in the Kazakh dialects of Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, China. The sounds and may be analyzed as allophones of and in words with back vowels, but exceptions occur in loanwords. * Voiced obstruents syllable-finally become devoiced.

Vowels

Kazakh has a system of 12 phonemic vowels, 3 of which are diphthongs. The rounding contrast and generally only occur as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but do occur later allophonically; see the section on harmony below for more information. Moreover, the sound has been included artificially due to the influence of Arabic, Persian and, later, Tatar languages during the Islamic period. It can be found in some native words, however. According to Vajda, the front/back quality of vowels is actually one of neutral versus

retracted tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR or +ATR), or expanded pharynx, and retracted tongue root (RTR or −ATR) are contrasting states of the pharynx during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Afric ...

. Phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakh's Cyrillic and current Latin alphabets. * There is significant debate over the Kazakh vowel phoneme chart, but all analysis agrees on an eight-vowel system with being artificially added due to influence from Arabic and Persian. * The vowel is often pronounced at the beginning of the word, with exceptional root e-. Urban Kazakh tends to palatalize all , caused by Russian influence.

Vowel harmony

Kazakh exhibits tongue-root

(also called soft-hard harmony), and arguably weakened rounding harmony which is implied in the first syllable of the word. All vowels after the first rounded syllable are the subject to this harmony with the exception of , and in the following syllables, e.g. , . Notably, urban Kazakh tends to violate rounding harmony, as well as pronouncing Russian borrowings against the rules.

Stress

Most words in Kazakh are stressed in the last syllable, except: * When counting objects, numbers are stressed in the first syllable, but stressed in the last syllable in collective numbers suffixed by (, from , ): :, , , , , , , ... : * Definite and negative pronouns are stressed in the first syllable: : :

Orthography

Nowadays, Kazakh is mostly written in the Cyrillic script, with an Arabic-based alphabet being used by minorities in China. Since 26 October 2017, via Presidential Decree 569, Kazakhstan will adopt the Latin script by 2025. Cyrillic script was created to better merge the Kazakh language with other languages of the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, hence it has some controversial letter readings. The letter У after a consonant represents a combination of sounds і , ү , ы , ұ with glide , e.g. , , , . Ю undergoes the same process but with at the beginning. The letter И represents a combination of sounds: i (in front-vowel contexts) or ы (in back vowel contexts) + glide , e.g. , . In Russian loanwords, it is realized as (when stressed) or (when unstressed), e.g. . The letter Я represents either or depending on vowel harmony. The letter Щ represents , e.g. . Meanwhile, the letters В, Ё, Ф, Х, Һ, Ц, Ч, Ъ, Ь, Э are only used in loanwords—mostly those of Russian origin, but sometimes of Persian and Arabic origin. They are often substituted in spoken Kazakh. The table below compares the various scripts.

Grammar

Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV (subject–object–verb) word order can be used, for example, due to

topicalization Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic (linguistics), topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position later in the sentence). T ...

Inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

al and derivational

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

, both verbal and nominal, in Kazakh, exists almost exclusively in the form of

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

suffixes. Kazakh is a nominative-accusative, head-final, left-branching, dependent-marking language.

Nouns

Kazakh has no

noun class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

system. Nouns are declined for number (singular or plural) and one of seven cases: *

Nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

Accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

Genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

Dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

Locative In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...

Ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something, make comparisons, and serve various o ...

Instrumental An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...

The suffix for case is placed after the suffix for number.

Pronouns

There are eight personal pronouns in Kazakh: The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns do not. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold. In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.

Adjectives

Adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

s in Kazakh are not declined for any

grammatical category In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive ...

of the modified noun. Being a

head-final In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed Principles and parameters, parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head (linguistics), head of a phrase precedes its Complement (linguistics), complement ...

language, adjectives are always placed before the noun that they modify. Kazakh has two varieties of adjectives: * Qualitative – used to describe properties of the noun, such as color * Relational – adjectives formed from words from other parts of speech

Degrees of comparison

Comparative

The

comparative The degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs are the various forms taken by adjectives and adverbs when used to compare two entities (comparative degree), three or more entities (superlative degree), or when not comparing entities (positi ...

form can be created by appending the suffix or to an adjective.

Superlative

The

superlative The degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs are the various forms taken by adjectives and adverbs when used to compare two entities (comparative degree), three or more entities (superlative degree), or when not comparing entities (positi ...

form can be created by placing the morpheme before the adjective. The superlative form can also be expressed by reduplication.

Verbs

Kazakh may express different combinations of tense, aspect and mood through the use of various verbal morphology or through a system of

auxiliary verbs An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or ...

, many of which might better be considered light verbs. The present tense is a prime example of this; progressive tense in Kazakh is formed with one of four possible auxiliaries. These auxiliaries , , and , encode various shades of meaning of how the action is carried out and also interact with the lexical semantics of the root verb: telic and non-telic actions, semelfactives, durative and non-durative, punctual, etc. There are selectional restrictions on auxiliaries: motion verbs, such as and may not combine with . Any verb, however, can combine with to get a progressive tense meaning. While it is possible to think that different categories of aspect govern the choice of auxiliary, it is not so straightforward in Kazakh. Auxiliaries are internally sensitive to the lexical semantics of predicates, for example, verbs describing motion: In addition to the complexities of the progressive tense, there are many auxiliary-converb pairs that encode a range of aspectual, modal, volitional, evidential and action- modificational meanings. For example, the pattern verb + , with the auxiliary verb , indicates that the subject of the verb attempted or tried to do something (compare the Japanese construction).

Annotated text with gloss

From the first stanza and refrain of "

Menıñ Qazaqstanym "Menıñ Qazaqstanym" ('My Kazakhstan') is the national anthem of Kazakhstan since 7 January 2006, replacing the Anthem of the Republic of Kazakhstan, previous anthem first used upon Kazakhstan#Independence, independence in 1991. It is based o ...

" ("My Kazakhstan"), the

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European ...

of Kazakhstan:

Notes

References

External links

Kazakh Cyrillic–Latin (new) converterKazakh Cyrillic–Latin (old)–Arabic converterAliya S. Kuzhabekova, "Past, Present and Future of Language Policy in Kazakhstan"
(M.A. thesis,

University of North Dakota The University of North Dakota (UND) is a Public university, public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States. It was established by the Dakota Territory, Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishm ...

, 2003)
Kazakh language recordings
, British Library
Kazakh – ApertiumKazakh<>Turkish Dictionary

Kazakhstan
in the

US Peace Corps Kazakh Language Courses
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