Information about Kazakh Language

Kazakh Qazaq tili, Қазақ тілі, قازاق تىلى‎
Spoken in:	Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, Iran
Region:	Central Asia
Total speakers:	12 million
Ranking:	66
Language family:	}}
Writing system:	Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic alphabet
Official status
Official language of:	Kazakhstan
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	kk
ISO 639-2:	kaz
ISO 639-3:	kaz

Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants^[1], natively Qazaq tili, Қазақ тілі, قازاق ٴتىلى‎; pronounced [qɑzɑq tˈlə]) is a Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak.

Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.

Geographic distribution

Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, along with Russian, the official language of commerce. In Kazakhstan, nearly 10 million speakers are reported (based on CIA World Factbook's estimates for population and percentage of Kazakh speakers). More than two million speakers reside in China. Russian Census (2002) reported 560,000 Kazakh speakers in Russia. Other sizable populations of Kazakh speakers live in Mongolia (fewer than 200,000). Large numbers exist elsewhere in Central Asia (mostly in Uzbekistan) and the former Soviet Union, and in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and other countries. There are also some Kazakh speakers in Germany. They immigrated from Turkey in the 1970s.

Writing system

Main article: Kazakh alphabet

Related predecessors to Kazakh were written in the Orkhon script, containing 24 letters. Modern Kazakh has historically been written using versions of the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts.

Today, Kazakh is written in Cyrillic in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, while the more than one million Kazakh-speakers in China use an Arabic-derived script similar to that used to write Uyghur.

In October of 2006, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the president of Kazakhstan, brought up the topic of using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet as the official script for Kazakh in Kazakhstan.^[2][3] A Kazakh government study released in September 2007 said that Kazakhstan could feasibly switch to a Latin script over a 10 to 12 year period, for a cost of $300 million.^[4] The shift to the Latin alphabet is seen both as a way of furthering Kazakhstan's decolonization project and more deeply integrating the country into the global information economy.^[5]

Phonology

Kazakh exhibits front-back vowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which doesn't apply as strongly and isn't reflected in the orthography.

Consonants

The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of Kazakh; many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loan-words. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are in bold—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what's shown. The borrowed phonemes /f/, /v/, /ɕ/, /ʨ/ and /x/, only occur in recent mostly Russian borrowings, and are shown in parentheses ( ) in the table below.

In the table, the elements left of a divide are voiceless, while those to the right are voiced.

Kazakh consonant phonemes

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar/ Uvular		Glottal
Nasal	m				n						ŋ
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	ɡ
Fricative			(f)	(v)	s	z	ʃ	ʒ	(ɕ)		(x)		h
Affricate									(ʨ)
Tap					ɾ
Approximant					l				j		w

Vowels

Kazakh has a system of nine phonemic vowels, which are shown in the table below. Three of these are phonetically diphthongs; however, Vajda argues that this has no phonemic bearing, and that they are in fact not phonemically composed of the elements which make them up, but are instead one phonemic element. The rounding contrast and /æ/ 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.

Kazakh vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ	ʉ	ʊ
Mid		ə
Open	æ		ɑ

Kazakh also has three diphthongs: /jɪ/, /wʉ/, and /wʊ/

Morphology and Syntax

Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV word order can be used. Verbal and nominal morphology in Kazakh exists almost exclusively in the form of agglutinative suffixes.

Case

Kazakh has 7 cases. The endings outlined in the chart below are applied to a word ending in a front vowel, a word ending in a back vowel, a word ending in each of those with a voiced consonant, and a word ending with each of this and an unvoiced consonant.

Declension of nouns

Case	Morpheme	Possible forms	кеме "boat"	ауа "air"	шелек "bucket"	сәбіз "carrot"	бас "head"	тұз "salt"
Nom	—	—	кеме	ауа	шелек	сәбіз	бас	тұ?
Acc	-NI	-ні, -ны, -ді, -ды, -ті, -ты	кемені	ауаны	шелекті	сәбізді	басты	тұзды
Gen	-NIŋ	-нің, -ның, -дің, -дың, -тің, -тың	кеменің	ауаның	шелектің	сәбіздің	бастың	тұздың
Dat	-GA	-ге, -ға, -ке, -қа	кемеге	ауаға	шелекке	сәбізге	басқа	тұзға
Loc	-DA	-де, -да, -те, -та	кемеде	ауада	шелекте	сәбізде	баста	тұзда
Abl	-DAn	-ден, -дан, -тен, -тан	кемеден	ауадан	шелектен	сәбізден	бастан	тұздан
Inst	-Men	-мен(ен) -бен(ен) -пен(ен)	кемемен	ауамен	шелекпен	сәбізбен	баспен	тұзбен

Pronouns

Kazakh has six personal pronouns:

Personal pronouns

Singular		Plural
Kazakh (transliteration)	English	Kazakh (transliteration)	English
Мен (Men)	I	Біз (Biz)	We
Сен (Sen)	You (singular informal)	Сендер (Sender)	You (plural informal)
Сіз (Siz)	You (singular formal)	Сіздер (Sizder)	You (plural formal)
Ол (Ol)	He/She/It	Олар (Olar)	They

The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns (with the exception of сіз, which used to be plural) exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns don't. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold.

Declension of pronouns

Nom	мен	сен	сіз	ол	біз	сендер	сіздер	ола?
Acc	мені	сені	сізді	оны	бізді	сендерді	сіздерді	олард?
Gen	менің	сенің	сіздің	оның	біздің	сендердің	сіздердің	оларды?
Dat	маған	саған	сізге	оған	бізге	сендерге	сіздерге	оларғ?
Loc	менде	сенде	сізде	онда	бізде	сендерде	сіздерде	олард?
Abl	менен	сенен	сізден	онан	бізден	сендерден	сіздерден	оларда?
Inst	менімен	сенімен	сізбен	онымен	бізбен	сендермен	сіздермен	оларме?

In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.

Morphemes indicating person

	pronouns	copulas	possessive endings	past/conditional
1st sg	мен	-MIn	-(I)m	-(I)m
2nd sg	сен	-sIŋ	-(I)ŋ	-(I)?
2nd formal sg	сіз	-sIz	-(I)ŋIz	-(I)ŋIz
3rd sg	ол	—	-(s)I(n)	?
1st pl	біз	-MIz	-(I)mIz	-(I)K
2nd pl	сендер	-sIŋdAr	-(I)ŋ	-(I)?
2nd formal pl	сіздер	-sIzdAr	-(I)ŋIz	-(I)nIz
3rd pl	олар	—	-(s)I(n)	?

Tense/Aspect/Mood

Kazakh may express different combinations of tense, aspect, and mood through the use of various verbal morphology or through a system of auxiliary verbs, many of which might better be considered light verbs. For example, the (imperfect) present tense in Kazakh bears different aspectual information depending on whether basic present-tense morphology is used, or one of (commonly) four verbs is used:

Aspect in the Present Tense in Kazakh

Kazakh	aspect	English translation
Жеймін	non-progressive	"I eat."
Жеп жатырмын	progressive	"I am eating."
Жеп отырмын	progressive/durative	"I am [sitting and] eating." / "I have been eating."
Жеп тұрмын	progressive/punctual	"I am eating [this very minute]."
Жеп жүрмін	habitual/frequentative	"I eat [lunch at noon every day]."

Evidentiality

Kazakh exhibits an evidentiality system which does not neatly align with morphological paradigms.

• тазалап тастапты - he cleaned it, and I saw the result
• тазалап тастапты (екен) - he cleaned it, and someone saw the results and told me
• тазалап тастаған - he cleaned it, I saw the result, and verified it with him
• тазалап тастаған екен - he cleaned it, and told me, but I probably didn't see the results
• тазалап тастады - he cleaned it, and I saw him clean it

References

• This language's entry in the Ethnologue.
• [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kz.html Kazakhstan] in the CIA World Factbook

See also

• Turkic languages

External links

• The Largest Portal in Kazakh language
• Kazak language, alphabet, and pronunciation
• Course of Kazakh for Peace Corps Volunteers
• Another course of Kazakh for PCV
• Forum in Kazakh Language Suhbat.com
• Roman-Cyrillic characters converter for Kazakh alphabets
• Gaspirali Another converter
• Aliya S. Kuzhabekova, "Past, Present and Future of Language Policy in Kazakhstan" (M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota, 2003)

•  • [ e] Altaic languages
Turkic languages • Mongolic languages • Tungusic languages • Japonic languages* • Korean language*
Notes: *Japonic and Korean are not generally recognized as belonging to the Altaic language family. A hypothetical language family that would include both the Japonic languages and Korean is sometimes referred to as the Buyeo language family.

•  • [ e] Turkic languages
Oghur	Bulgar† | Chuvash | Hunnic† | Khazar† | Turkic Avar†
Uyghur	Old Turkic† | Aini| Chagatay† | Ili Turki | Lop | Uyghur | Uzbek
Kypchak	Baraba | Bashkir | Crimean Tatar | Cuman† | Karachay-Balkar | Karaim | Karakalpak | Kazakh | Kipchak† | Krymchak | Kumyk | Nogai | Old Tatar† | Tatar | Urum | Altay | Kyrgyz
Oghuz	Afshar | Azerbaijani | Crimean Tatar | Gagauz | Khorasani Turkish | Ottoman Turkish† | Pecheneg† | Qashqai | Salar | Turkish | Turkmen | Urum
Arghu	Khalaj
Northeastern	Chulym | Dolgan | Fuy Grgs | Khakas | Northern Altay | Shor | Tofa | Tuvan | Western Yugur | Sakha/Yakut
Notes: Listed in more than one group, Mixed language, Disputed, †Extinct