Kazakh Language Guide

Official language in
Kazakhstan
Also spoken in
China, Mongolia, Russia, Uzbekistan
Script
Cyrillic, Arabic

Where it's spoken

Under the Constitution of Kazakhstan, Kazakh is the state language, and in state organisations and local self-government bodies Russian is officially used on an equal footing with Kazakh. A grammar of Kazakh by Dotton and Wagner notes that Russian is used widely in Kazakhstan, and that many residents of Almaty use Russian for daily communication.

Outside Kazakhstan, the same grammar reports Kazakh speakers in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, significant Kazakh minority groups in the Altai Republic of Russia and in Bayan-Ölgii province in western Mongolia, and Kazakh-speaking communities in Uzbekistan. Kazakh spoken in Kazakhstan is described as having three or four dialects, but many researchers agree that the differences between them are small and largely lexical.

Sources

Script & pronunciation

Kazakh is currently written in Cyrillic in Kazakhstan and Mongolia and in Arabic script in China. The Unicode Standard lists Kazakh among the Turkic languages whose alphabets use extended Cyrillic letters, and the Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet includes letters such as Ә ә, Ғ ғ, Қ қ, Ң ң and Ө ө, as in this app's cards Сәлем (Sä-lem, "Hello") and Жоқ (Joq, "No / There is none"). A presidential decree approved a Kazakh alphabet based on the Latin script and instructed the government to switch the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin in stages.

This app's cards give the Kazakh text in Cyrillic with a Latin-letter romanization. The romanization is not uniform across cards: the same word Жоқ is Joq on one card and Zhoq on another, and some cards split the romanization into syllables with hyphens, as in Sä-le-met-siz be? for Сәлеметсіз бе?.

Sources

Grammar essentials

Kazakh is a subject–object–verb language: neutral sentences generally put the verb last. In Сіз ағылшынша сөйлейсіз бе? (Siz a-gyl-shyn-sha soy-ley-siz be?, "Do you speak English?"), the verb сөйлейсіз comes at the end, followed only by the question particle бе. Grammar is expressed with suffixes, and many suffixes have variants chosen by vowel harmony: a word with back vowels takes a variant with a back vowel, and a word with front vowels takes a variant with a front vowel.

Interrogative forms are made with a particle that typically sits at the end of the sentence. It takes the form ma/me after vowels and after r, l and y, ba/be after nasal consonants and after z and zh, and pa/pe after voiceless consonants, as in Бар ма? (Bar ma?, "Do you have it?"), Тегін бе? (Te-gin be?, "Is it free?") and Пакет керек пе? (Paket kerek pe?, "Do you need a bag?"). Verbs are negated with a suffix placed immediately after the verb root and before any tense endings; its first consonant varies between m, p and b. This app's card Мен қазақша білмеймін (Men qa-zaq-sha bil-mey-min, "I can't speak Kazakh") notes that білмеймін is the negative form of the verb for "know" with a first-person ending. To say that you have or do not have something, Kazakh uses bar and its negative joq, as in Бронім бар (Bro-nim bar, "I have a reservation") and Бронім жоқ (Bro-nim zhoq, "I don't have a reservation"). The negative copula is emes, as in Кірім таза емес (Kirim taza emes, "My laundry is not clean"), the first half of a longer card.

Sources

Politeness & etiquette

Kazakh distinguishes a formal "you", siz, from an informal "you", sen. The choice may indicate status as well as respect for age: most people who are older are addressed with siz, and younger people with sen. This app's card Сіз (Siz) gives it as "You (polite)" and notes that sen is for friends and children.

The verb ending also shows which "you" is meant: -siz/-syz for formal address and -siń/-syń for informal address (endings are written here in the grammar's Latin spelling). This app's card Сіз ағылшынша сөйлейсіз бе? ("Do you speak English?") is asked with the polite pronoun, while the informal card Менімен бірге жүресің бе? (Me-ni-men bir-ge jü-re-sin be?, "Would you like to go out with me?") uses the second-person singular ending in жүресің.

Polite requests to one person add -yńyz/-ińiz to the verb, as in Күте тұрыңыз (Ku-te tu-ry-ngyz, "Please wait"), Кешіріңіз (Ke-shi-rin-iz, "Sorry / Excuse me") and the formal farewell Сау болыңыз (Saw bo-ly-nyz, "Goodbye (stay well)"). For greetings, this app's cards mark Сәлем (Sä-lem, "Hello") as a casual greeting for friends or peers and Сәлеметсіз бе? (Sä-le-met-siz be?, "Hello / How are you? (formal)") as a formal greeting for elders or first meetings.

Sources

Browse all TravelPhrases languages