Kazakh language

File:WIKITONGUES- Yernur speaking Kazakh.webm

A Kazakh speaker, recorded in Taiwan

File:WIKITONGUES- Mereinur speaking Kazakh.webm

A Kazakh speaker, recorded in Kazakhstan

KazakhTemplate:Efn is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by the Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of Kazakhstan, and has official status in the Altai Republic of Russia. It is also a minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China, and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of western Mongolia. The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union (some 472,000 in Russia according to the 2010 Russian census), Germany, and Turkey.

Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is an agglutinative language and employs vowel harmony. 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 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.

In October 2017, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that the writing system would change from using Cyrillic to Latin script 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, 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 Xinjiang use a modified version of the Perso-Arabic script for writing.

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Kazakh are spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan to the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, with nearly 10 million speakers (based on information from the CIA World Factbook on population and proportion of Kazakh speakers).

In China, nearly two million ethnic Kazakhs and Kazakh speakers reside in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang.

History

The Kipchak branch of Turkic languages, which Kazakh is borne out of, was mainly solidified during the reign of the Golden Horde. 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 and Kipchak Turkic as spoken in the Golden Horde.

Kazakh uses a high volume of loanwords from Persian and Arabic due to the frequent historical interactions between Kazakhs and Iranian ethnic groups 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 mosques and mausoleums, serving as a language exclusively for religious contexts, similar to how Latin served as a liturgical language in the Western European cultural sphere.

The Kazakhs used the Arabic script 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 vowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin (e.g., Russian, Persian, Arabic) 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 the Latin script) 'star', 'today', and 'big' are actually pronounced as , , and , respectively.

Consonants

The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh;Template:Efn 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 alveolo-palatal affricate in the Kazakh dialects of Uzbekistan and China. The sounds and may be analyzed as allophones of and in words with back vowels, but exceptions occur in loanwords.Template:Efn

Kazakh consonant phonemes

		Labials	Alveolar	(Alveolo-) palatal	Velar	Uvular
Nasal		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr
Stop	voiceless	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr
	voiced	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr
Fricative	voiceless		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr		(Template:IPA link) Template:Angbr
	voiced		Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr		(Template:IPA link) Template:Angbr
Approximant			Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr	Template:IPA link Template:Angbr
Trill/Tap			Template:IPA link Template:Angbr

• Voiced obstruents syllable-finally become devoiced, as normally indicated in the orthography.
• /Template:IPA link/ can never occur in word initial position.
• occur word-initially only in loanwords.
• /Template:IPA link/ is velarized [[[:Template:IPA link]]] in words with back vowels.
• Voiceless stops are aspirated , and the voice onset time is highest in word-initial position. If followed by another obstruent, they may be unreleased .
• /Template:IPA link/ is often heard as a tap [[[:Template:IPA link]]] in rural speech, as well as in dialects spoken in China.

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.

Phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakh's Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.

Kazakh vowel phonemes

	Front (Advanced tongue root)	Central (Relaxed tongue root)	Back (Retracted tongue root)
Close	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket
Diphthong	Template:Angle bracket	Template:Angle bracket	Template:Angle bracket
Mid	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket
Open	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket

Kazakh vowels by their pronunciation

	Front and central		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket
Open	Template:Angle bracket / Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket	Template:IPAlink Template:Angle bracket

• 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 speakers have a greater tendency to palatalize all , caused by Russian influence.

Vowel harmony

Kazakh exhibits tongue-root vowel harmony (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 speakers tend to violate rounding harmony, as well as pronouncing Russian borrowings against the rules.

Syllable structure

Kazakh's syllable structure is (C)V(C)(C). Syllables containing consonant clusters CC typically are combination of sonorant () and a stop (mainly ). Other types of syllables are also permitted due to recent loanwords, mainly from Russian.

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 , ):

, , , , , , , ...

Template:Gloss

• Definite and negative pronouns are stressed in the first syllable:

Template:Gloss

• Individual onomatopoeic words and interjections are stressed on the first syllable
• Certain suffixes do not take stress, including:
  • the predicate suffixes -mın/-myn, -sıñ/-syñ, -mız/-myz (e.g., baqyttymyz 'we are happy', balasyñ 'you're a child')
  • the suffixes -dei/-dai, -tei/-tai (e.g., börıdei 'like a wolf')
  • the optative suffix -iın/-iyn (e.g., jazaiyn 'let's write')
  • the negative suffixes -me/-ma, -be/-ba, -pe/-pa (e.g., jylama 'don't cry', qoryqpa 'fear not')
  • particles and postpositions -şı/-şy (e.g., qaraşy! 'look!'), ğoi, etc.

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.

Since the Cyrillic alphabet was originally designed for Slavic languages, it had to be modified to better fit the sounds of Turkic languages like Kazakh. Several new letters were added and some existing ones modified: ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ, ү, һ, і.

The Cyrillic letter у after a consonant represents a combination of sounds , , ы , with glide , e.g., , , , . The Cyrillic letter ю undergoes the same process but with at the beginning.

The letter и represents a combination of sounds (in front-vowel contexts) or (in back vowel contexts) with glide , e.g., , . In Russian loanwords, particularly in educated speech, it is often 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. Inflectional and derivational morphology, both verbal and nominal, in Kazakh, exists almost exclusively in the form of agglutinative suffixes. Kazakh is a nominative-accusative, head-final, left-branching, dependent-marking language.

Nouns

Kazakh has no noun class or gender system. Nouns are declined for number (singular or plural) and one of seven cases:

• Nominative
• Accusative
• Genitive
• Dative
• Locative
• Ablative
• Instrumental

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

Declension of nouns for case

Case	Morpheme	Possible forms	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss	Template:Gloss
Nom	—	—
Acc
Gen
Dat
Loc
Abl
Inst

Declension of nouns for number

	Morpheme	Possible Forms
singular	–	–
plural

Pronouns

There are eight personal pronouns in Kazakh:

Personal pronouns

		Singular	Plural
1st person
2nd person	informal
	formal
3rd person

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.

Number	Singular				Plural
Person	1st	2nd		3rd	1st	2nd		3rd
		Familiar	Polite			Familiar	Polite
Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Locative
Ablative
Instrumental

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
2nd sg
2nd sg formal
3rd sg		–		–
1st pl
2nd pl
2nd pl formal
3rd pl		–		–

Adjectives

Adjectives in Kazakh are not declined for any grammatical category of the modified noun. Being a head-final 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 form can be created by appending the suffix or to an adjective.

Superlative

The superlative 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, 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 Template:Gloss, Template:Gloss, Template:Gloss and Template:Gloss, 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 Template:Gloss and Template:Gloss may not combine with . Any verb, however, can combine with Template:Gloss to get a progressive tense meaning.

Progressive aspect in the present tense

Kazakh	Aspect	English translation
	non-progressive	Template:Gloss
	progressive	Template:Gloss
	progressive/durative	Template:Gloss
	progressive/punctual	Template:Gloss
	habitual	Template:Gloss

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:

Selectional restrictions on Kazakh auxiliaries

Sentence	Auxiliary Used
Template:Interlinear	∅ (present/future tense used)
Template:Interlinear	－ Template:Gloss, general marker for progressive aspect.
Template:Interlinear	– Template:Gloss, dynamic/habitual/iterative
Template:Interlinear	– Template:Gloss, progressive marker to show the swimming is punctual
Template:Interlinear Not a possible sentence in Kazakh	– Template:Gloss, ungrammatical in this sentence; can only be used for verbs that are stative in nature

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 Template:Gloss, 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" ("My Kazakhstan"), the national anthem of Kazakhstan:

Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear
Template:Fs interlinear	Template:Interlinear

See also

• BGN/PCGN romanization of Kazakh
• Turkic languages
• Kazakh literature
• Languages of Kazakhstan
• Kazakh Sign Language
• Help:IPA for Kazakh

Further reading

• Mark Kirchner: "Kazakh and Karakalpak". In: The Turkic languages. Ed. by Lars Johanson and É. Á. Csató. London [u.a.] : Routledge, 1998. (Routledge language family descriptions). S.318–332.
• Template:Cite JIPATemplate:Refend

External links

• Kazakh Cyrillic–Latin (new) converter
• Kazakh Cyrillic–Latin (old)–Arabic converter
• Kazakh language, alphabet and pronunciation
• Aliya S. Kuzhabekova, "Past, Present and Future of Language Policy in Kazakhstan" (M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota, 2003)
• Kazakh language recordings Template:Webarchive, British Library
• Kazakh – Apertium
• Kazakh<>Turkish Dictionary
• Kazakhstan in the CIA World Factbook
• US Peace Corps Kazakh Language Courses transcribed to HTML