Kazakh language

Name	Kazakh
Nativename	«қазақша», «қазақ тілі» «qazaqşa», «qazaq tılı» «قازاقشا», «قازاق ٴتىلى» «قزاقچه», «قزاق تلى»
Image
Imagecaption	Kazakh in Cyrillic, Latin, and Perso-Arabic scripts
Pronunciation	qʰɑzɑqˈʃɑ qʰɑˈzɑq tʰɘˈlɘ
States	Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
Region	Central Asia (Turkestan)
Speakers	million
Date	2021 census
Ethnicity	Kazakhs
Ref	e27
Familycolor	Altaic
Fam1	Turkic
Fam2	Common Turkic
Fam3	Kipchak
Fam4	Kipchak–Nogai
Script	Kazakh alphabets (Cyrillic script, Latin script, Perso-Arabic script, Kazakh Braille)
Nation	Kazakhstan Russia Altai Republic China Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture Barköl Kazakh Autonomous County Mori Kazakh Autonomous County *Aksay Kazakh Autonomous County
Agency	Ministry of Culture and Sports Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Iso1	kk
Iso2	kaz
Iso3	kaz
Lingua	44-AAB-cc
Mapcaption	The Kazakh-speaking world:
Notice	IPA
Glotto	kaza1248
Glottorefname	Kazakh

A Kazakh speaker, recorded in Taiwan
A Kazakh speaker, recorded in Kazakhstan
Kazakh 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 /e/, /ɪ/, /ʏ/ and not /ɑ/, and happens in the next syllables. Thus, (in the Latin script) «jūldyz» 'star', «bügın» 'today', and «ülken» 'big' are actually pronounced as «jūldūz», «bügün», and «ülkön», respectively.

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. (/t͡s/ rarely appears in normal speech.) Kazakh has 19 native consonant phonemes; these are the stops /p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, q/, fricatives /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʁ/, nasals /m, n, ŋ/, liquids /r, l/, and two glides /w, j/. The sounds /f, v, χ, h, t͡s, t͡ɕ/ are found only in loanwords. /ʒ/ is heard as an alveolo-palatal affricate d͡ʒ in the Kazakh dialects of Uzbekistan and China. The sounds q and ʁ may be analyzed as allophones of /k/ and /ɡ/ in words with back vowels, but exceptions occur in loanwords.

		Uvular
Nasal
Stop	voiceless
Stop	voiced
Fricative	voiceless	()
Fricative	voiced	()
Approximant
Trill/Tap

Voiced obstruents syllable-finally become devoiced, as normally indicated in the orthography.
// can never occur in word initial position.
/j, z, r, l, ʁ/ occur word-initially only in loanwords.
// is velarized in words with back vowels.
Voiceless stops /p, t, k, q/ are aspirated tʰ, kʰ, qʰ, and the voice onset time is highest in word-initial position. If followed by another obstruent, they may be unreleased t̚, k̚, q̚.
// is often heard as a tap 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 /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. Moreover, the /æ/ 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.

Close
Diphthong	je	əj	ʊw
Mid
Open

unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close
Open	je̘ /

There is significant debate over the Kazakh vowel phoneme chart, but all analysis agrees on an eight-vowel system with æ being artificially added due to influence from Arabic and Persian.
The vowel kk is often pronounced kk at the beginning of the word, with exceptional root e-. Urban Kazakh speakers have a greater tendency to palatalize all kk, 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 /ɑ/, and in the following syllables, e.g., «өмір» kk, «қосы» kk. 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 (/r, l, n, j/) and a stop (mainly /t/). 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 («bıreu», «altau» from «bır», «alty»):
«bır», «ekı», «üş», «tört», «bes», «alty», «jetı», ...
Definite and negative pronouns are stressed in the first syllable:
«bärıne» «eşkımge»
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 bɑχə̆tˈtʰəməz 'we are happy', balasyñ bɑˈɫɑsəŋ 'you're a child')
the suffixes -dei/-dai, -tei/-tai (e.g., börıdei bɵˈrʉdʲej 'like a wolf')
the optative suffix -iın/-iyn (e.g., jazaiyn ʒɑˈzɑjən 'let's write')
the negative suffixes -me/-ma, -be/-ba, -pe/-pa (e.g., jylama ʒəˈɫɑmɑ 'don't cry', qoryqpa qʰoˈrʊqpʰɑ 'fear not')
particles and postpositions -şı/-şy (e.g., qaraşy! qʰɑˈrɑʃə 'look!'), ğoi, etc.

Orthography

Kazakh alphabets
Nowadays, Kazakh is mostly written in the Cyrillic script, with an Arabic-based alphabet being used by Kazakh speakers in China. On 26 October 2017, via Presidential Decree 569, Kazakhstan announced it would adopt the Latin script by 2025. However, this transition has been delayed.

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 kk, kk, ы kk, kk with glide kk, e.g., «кіру» kk, «су» kk, «көру» kk, «атысу» kk. The Cyrillic letter ю undergoes the same process but with /j/ at the beginning.

The letter и represents a combination of sounds kk (in front-vowel contexts) or kk (in back vowel contexts) with glide kk, e.g., «тиіс» kk, «оқиды» kk. In Russian loanwords, particularly in educated speech, it is often realized as kk (when stressed) or kk (when unstressed), e.g., «изоморфизм» kk.

The letter я represents either kk or kk depending on vowel harmony.

The letter щ represents kk, e.g. «ащы» kk.

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.

IPA	Cyrillic	Latin			Arabic		Braille
IPA	Cyrillic	2021	2018	2017	Letter	Name	Braille
ɑ	А а	A a				Alif
æ	Ә ә	Ä ä	Á á	A' a'		Hamza + Alif
b	Б б	B b				Ba
v	В в	V v				Waw with háček
g	Г г	G g				Gaf
ʁ	Ғ ғ	Ğ ğ		Ǵ ǵ	G' g'		Ghain
d	Д д	D d				Dal
e	Е е	E e				Ha
jo	Ё ё	İo io	Io ıo		()	Ya + Waw
ʒ~d͡ʒ	Ж ж	J j				Jeem
z	З з	Z z				Za
ɯj, ɪj	И и	İ i	I ı	I' i'		Ya
j	Й й	İ i	I ı	I' i'		Ya
k	К к	K k				Kaf
q~χ	Қ қ	Q q				Qaf
l	Л л	L l				Lam
m	М м	M m				Meem
n	Н н	N n				Noon
ŋ	Ң ң	Ñ ñ	Ń ń	N' n'		Kaf with three dots
o	О о	O o				Waw
œ	Ө ө	Ö ö	Ó ó	O' o'		Hamza + Waw
p	П п	P p				Pa
r	Р р	R r				Ra
s	С с	S s				Seen
t	Т т	T t				Ta
w, uw, yw, ɯw, ɪw	У у	U u	Ý ý	Y' y'		Waw with 3 dots
u~ʊ	Ұ ұ	Ū ū	U u			Waw with damma
y~ʉ	Ү ү	Ü ü	Ú ú	U' u'		Hamza + Waw with damma
f	Ф ф	F f				Fa
h	Һ һ	H h	ھ	Ha
χ	Х х	خ	Kha
ts	Ц ц	Ts ts	S s		()	Ta + Seen
tɕ	Ч ч	Tş tş	Ch ch	C' c'		Cheem
ʃ	Ш ш	Ş ş	Sh sh	S' s'		Sheen
ɕː	Щ щ	Ştş ştş	Shch shch		()	Sheen + Sheen
	Ъ ъ	colspan="5"
ɯ	Ы ы	Y y				Alif maqṣūrah
ɪ	І і	I ı	I i			Hamza + Ya
	Ь ь	colspan="5"
ɛ	Э э	E e		rowspan="3"	()	Ha
jʊ	Ю ю	İu iu	Iý ıý	()	Ya + Waw with damma
jɑ	Я я	İa ia	Ia ıa	()	Ya + Alif

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:

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

Nom	—	—	«keme»	«aua»	«şelek»	«säbız»	«bas»	«tūz»	«qan»	«kün»
Acc			«kemenı»	«auany»	«şelektı»	«säbızdı»	«basty»	«tūzdy»	«qandy»	«kündı»
Gen			«kemenıñ»	«auanyñ»	«şelektıñ»	«säbızdıñ»	«bastyñ»	«tūzdyñ»	«qannyñ»	«künnıñ»
Dat			«kemege»	«auağa»	«şelekke»	«säbızge»	«basqa»	«tūzğa»	«qanğa»	«künge»
Loc			«kemede»	«auada»	«şelekte»	«säbızde»	«basta»	«tūzda»	«qanda»	«künde»
Abl			«kemeden»	«auadan»	«şelekten»	«säbızden»	«bastan»	«tūzdan»	«qannan»	«künnen»
Inst			«kememen»	«auamen»	«şelekpen»	«säbızben»	«baspen»	«tūzben»	«qanmen»	«künmen»

singular	–	–	«bala»	«kirpi»	«qazaq»	«mektep»	«adam»	«gül»	«söz»
plural			«balalar»	«kirpiler»	«qazaqtar»	«mektepter»	«adamdar»	«gülder»	«sözder»

Pronouns

There are eight personal pronouns in Kazakh:

1st person		«men»	«bız»
2nd person	informal	«sen»	«sender»
2nd person	formal	«sız»	«sızder»
3rd person		«ol»	«olar»

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
Person	1st	Familiar	Polite	3rd	1st	Familiar	Polite	3rd
Nominative	«men»	«sen»	«sız»	«ol»	«bız»	«sender»	«sızder»	«olar»
Genitive	«menıñ»	«senıñ»	«sızdıñ»	«onyñ»	«bızdıñ»	«senderdıñ»	«sızderdıñ»	«olardyñ»
Dative	«mağan»	«sağan»	«sızge»	«oğan»	«bızge»	«senderge»	«sızderge»	«olarğa»
Accusative	«menı»	«senı»	«sızdı»	«ony»	«bızdı»	«senderdı»	«sızderdı»	«olardy»
Locative	«mende»	«sende»	«sızde»	«onda»	«bızde»	«senderde»	«sızderde»	«olarda»
Ablative	«menen»	«senen»	«sızden»	«odan»	«bızden»	«senderden»	«sızderden»	«olardan»
Instrumental	«menımen»	«senımen»	«sızben»	«onymen»	«bızben»	«sendermen»	«sızdermen»	«olarmen»

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

1st sg	«men»
2nd sg	«sen»
2nd sg formal	«sız»
3rd sg	«ol»	–	–
1st pl	«bız»
2nd pl	«sender»
2nd pl formal	«sızder»
3rd pl	«olar»	–	–

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 «eñ» 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 «otyr» , «tūr» , «jür» and «jat» , 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 «бару» and «келу» may not combine with «otyr». Any verb, however, can combine with «jat» to get a progressive tense meaning.

Kazakh	Aspect	English translation
«Men jüzemın»	non-progressive
«Men jüzıp jatyrmyn»	progressive
«Men jüzıp otyrmyn»	progressive/durative
«Men jüzıp tūrmyn»	progressive/punctual
«Men jüzıp jürmın»	habitual

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:

Sentence	Auxiliary Used
	∅ (present/future tense used)
	«jat»－ , general marker for progressive aspect.
	«jür» – , dynamic/habitual/iterative
	«tūr» – , progressive marker to show the swimming is punctual
Not a possible sentence in Kazakh	«otyr» – , ungrammatical in this sentence; «otyr» 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 + «köru», with the auxiliary verb «köru» , indicates that the subject of the verb attempted or tried to do something (compare the Japanese «てみる» «temiru» construction).