Kazakh

Introduction

Kazakh is a member of the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. It is closely related to Kyrgyz. Like all Turkic languages, it is believed to have descended from Chagatai Turkic, an extinct Turkic language which once served as a lingua franca in Central Asia. The word Chagatai relates to the Chagatai Khanate, the western part of the Mongol empire, left to Genghis Khan's second son Chagatai Khan. Chagatai Turkic was written with the Arabic alphabet and was influenced by Arabic and Persian. In the 14th century, the Chagatai Khanate was conquered by Timur, a native of Samarkand. Timur's successors were later ousted from the Chagatai Khanate by the Uzbeks. The Kazakhs originated as dissident Uzbeks during the same period. Both groups became part of the Soviet Union in 1917. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan became independent countries.

Kazakh Yurt Kazakh(along with Russian) has been the official language of the Republic of Kazakhstan since 1989. It is spoken by some 6.5 million people, most of them ethnic Kazakhs. It is also spoken in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Kazakh Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The total number of speakers of Kazakh is estimated at 8 million (Ethnologue). Interestingly, Germany has a number of Kazakh-speaking Volga Germans who were deported by Stalin to Kazakhstan in 1941, and who subsequently returned to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

40% of Kazakhstan's total population of about 17 million are ethnic Kazakhs, about an equal number are Russians, and the rest are other Slavs and Germans. Even though Kazakh is the official language of Kazakhstan, Russian continues to play a dominant role. Most students are taught in Russian, although attempts are being made to promote Kazakh language education. Most business and government affairs are also conducted in Russian. While the majority of ethnic Kazakhs speak Russian, few Russians have bothered to learn Kazakh. Recently, the government of Kazakhstan passed legislation which mandates the exclusive use of Kazakh in all sphere of public life by the year 2008.

Dialects

Kazakh dialects are usually divided into three geographical groups. They are mutually intelligible:

Northeastern Kazakh
Southern Kazakh
Western Kazakh

Structure

Sound System

Kazakh Man

Kazakhstan Man

Kazakh Woman

Vowels
Kazakh has 9 vowels vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. They can be long or short. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning.

x	Front		Back
x	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High	/i/	/ü/	//	/u/
Mid	/e/	/ö/	xx	/o/
Low		x	/a/	x

As all other Turkic languages, Kazakh is characterized by vowel harmony, a type of phonological process that involves constraints on which vowels may be found near each other. Vowels in Kazakh words must harmonize with one another in terms of front versus back, and rounded versus unrounded. For example, if the first vowel in a word is a front rounded vowel such as /ü/ or /ö/, then all other vowels in that word must also be /ü/ or /ö/ since these are the only two front rounded vowels in Kazakh .

Consonants
Kazakh has a large inventory of consonants. There are no consonant clusters at the beginning or end of words.

x	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p - b	x	t - d	x	x	x	k - g	q	x
Fricatives	x	f - v	x	s - z	-	c	x -	Χ -	h
Affricates	x	x	x	x	x	tc	x	x	x
Nasals	m	x	n	x	x	x		xx	x
Tap (flap)	x	x	x	r	x	x	x	x	x
Laterals	x	x	l	x	l	x	x	x	x
Semi-vowels	w	x	x	x	x	j	x	x	x

q	no equivalent in English
	sh in shop
	s in measure
c	no equivalent in English
x -	no equivalents in English
Χ -	no equivalents in English
	ng in sing
l	l in bull

Stress
Stress usually falls on the final syllable of a word.

Click here to listen to basic dialogs in Kazakh.

Grammar

Kazakh Woman

Kazakh Man

Kazakh Woman

Like all Turkic languages, Kazakh is agglutinative, i.e., grammatical relations are indicated by the addition of suffixes to stems. Suffixes are strung together one after another, resulting on occasion in long words.

Nouns
Kazakh nouns are marked for the following categories:

two numbers: singular and plural;
seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative, instrumental; cases are marked by inflectional suffixes whose forms depend on whether the stem ends in a front vowel, a back vowel, a voiced consonant, or a voiceless consonant.
there is no definite article;
there is no grammatical gender

Verbs
Kazakh Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. Verbs have the following grammatical categories:

two numbers: singular and plural;
three persons: 1st, 2, 3rd;
five moods: indicative, dubitative, imperative, conditional, subjunctive;
two voices: active and passive with different forms for passive transitive and passive intransitive verbs;
three tenses: present, past, future;
evidentiality that is required at all times and which indicates whether evidence exists for a given statement. Turkish contrasts direct information (reported directly) and indirect information (reported indirectly).
there are fairly complex rules for interrogative and negative forms;

Word order
Word order in Kazakh sentences is normally Subject - Object - Verb, although some permutations are possible where context demands.

Vocabulary

According to some experts, Kazakh has been influenced by Russian more than any other Turkic language of the former Soviet Union. Other lexical influences also include Arabic and Persian.

Below are some basic words and phrases in Kazakh (in Cyrillic script).

Kazakh Phrases

Below are the numbers 1-10 in Kazakh Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Kazakh Numerals

Writing

Until 1929, Kazakh was written with the Arabic script.
From 1929 to 1940, it was written with the Roman script;
From 1940 on, Kazakh was written with a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet that contains 42 letters, 33 of them taken from the Russian alphabet and 9 specifically designed to represent Kazakh sounds.
Currently, the government of Kazakhstan is making an attempt to switch to a Latin-based alphabet. Below are the letters of the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet.

Modified Cyrillic-based alphabet for Kazakh
(letters in parentheses are only used in words borrowed from Russian)

Kazakh Cyrillic Alphabet

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kazakh in Cyrillic and Latin scripts.

UDHR Kazakh

Resources

Click here to find out where Kazakh is taught in the United States.
Click here to find materials for studying Kazakh.

Online resources for the study of Kazakh
SEELRC Kazakh webliography
Basic lessons in Kazakh
Orientaal's Links to Kazakh
Wikipedia article on Kazakh language
UCLA language profile for Kazakh
Omniglot guide to Kazakh writing system
Kazakh Language Resources
Texts and books in Kazakh (in Russian)
Resources for the study of Kazakh
University of Arizona Beginning Kazakh CD-ROM
Central Asian Language Modules
Library of Congress Portals to the World: Kazakhstan
BBC News country profile: Kazakhstan
Kazakh lessons on-line (in Russian)
Russian-Kazakh online dictionary