Discover

'Kazakh' (also 'Qazaq' and variants^[2], natively ''Qazaq tili'', Қазақ тілі, ; pronounced ) is a Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak.
Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.

Contents

Geographic distribution

Writing system

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Morphology and Syntax

Case

Pronouns

Tense/Aspect/Mood

Evidentiality

References

See also

External links

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 articles: 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.^[3][4] 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.^[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 , , , and , 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, whilst those to the right are voiced.

Kazakh consonant phonemes

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar/ Uvular		Glottal
Plosives	''	''			''	''					''	''
Nasals	''				''						''
Fricatives					''	''	''	''					''
Affricates
Tap					''
Approximant	''								''
Lateral approximants					''

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 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		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High
Diphthongal
Low

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	тұз
Acc	-NI	-ні, -ны, -ді, -ды, -ті, -ты	кеме'ні'	ауа'ны'	шелек'ті'	сәбіз'ді'	бас'ты'	тұз'ды'
Gen	-NIŋ	-нің, -ның, -дің, -дың, -тің, -тың	кеме'нің'	ауа'ның'	шелек'тің'	сәбіз'дің'	бас'тың'	тұз'дың'
Dat	-GA	-ге, -ға, -ке, -қа	кеме'ге'	ауа'ға'	шелек'ке'	сәбіз'ге'	бас'қа'	тұз'ға'
Loc	-DA	-де, -да, -те, -та	кеме'де'	ауа'да'	шелек'те'	сәбіз'де'	бас'та'	тұз'да'
Abl	-DAn	-ден, -дан, -тен, -тан	кеме'ден'	ауа'дан'	шелек'тен'	сәбіз'ден'	бас'тан'	тұз'дан'
Inst	-Men	-мен(ен) -бен(ен) -пен(ен)	кеме'мен'	ауа'мен'	шелек'пен'	сәбіз'бен'	бас'пен'	тұз'бен'

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	олар
Acc	'мені'	'сені'	сізді	'оны'	бізді	сендерді	сіздерді	оларді
Gen	'менің'	'сенің'	сіздің	'оның'	біздің	сендердің	сіздердің	олардың
Dat	'маған'	'саған'	сізге	'оған'	бізге	сендерге	сіздерге	оларға
Loc	менде	сенде	сізде	'онда'	бізде	сендерде	сіздерде	оларда
Abl	'менен'	'сенен'	сізден	'онан'	бізден	сендерден	сіздерден	олардан
Inst	'менімен'	'сенімен'	сізбен	'онымен'	бізбен	сендермен	сіздермен	олармен

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)ŋ
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)ŋ
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

1. "Ethnologue report for Altaic"
2. The most common English spelling, ''Kazakh'', is from the Russian name, ''Казах''.
3. Kazakhstan switching to Latin alphabet
4. Kazakh President Revives Idea Of Switching To Latin Script
5. Kazakhstan: Moving Forward With Plan To Replace Cyrillic With Latin Alphabet


★ This language's entry in the Ethnologue.

★ Kazakhstan in the CIA World Factbook

See also

★ Turkic languages

External links

★ The Largest Portal in Kazakh language

★ Kazak language, alphabet, and pronunciation

★ Online Kazakh language course

★ 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)