| Kazak (Қазақ тілі, قازاق تءىلءي, Qazaq tilî) |
| Spoken in: |
Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, China, Russia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Iran |
| Region: |
Central Asia |
| Total speakers: |
8 million |
| Ranking: |
93 |
| Language family: |
Altaic
Turkic
Western Turkic
Aralo-Caspian
Kazak |
| Official status |
| Official language of: |
Kazakhstan |
| Regulated by: |
no official regulation |
| Language codes |
| ISO 639-1: |
kk |
| ISO 639-2: |
kaz |
| ISO/DIS 639-3: |
kaz |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. |
Kazakh, also Kazak, Khazakh, Qazaq, Kosach, and Kaisak (Қазақ тілі in Cyrillic, Qazaq tilî in the Latin alphabet, and قازاق تءىلءي in the Arabic alphabet) is a Western Turkic language closely related to the Nogai and Karakalpak languages. It is the official language of Kazakhstan, and it is spoken in Central Asia, Iran, and the former Soviet Union. Germany has some Kazakh speakers in the second half of the 20th century and onward. These are mainly descendants of the Volga Germans who were deported to Kazakhstan, mixed with the local population and later returned to Germany.
Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it uses vowel harmony.
Writing system
- Main article: Kazakh alphabet
Originally, Kazakh was written in the Orkhon script, containing 24 letters. Modern Kazakh can be written using modified versions of the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts. The names of the Kazakh letters are derived mostly from their corresponding names in the Arabic alphabet.
Morphology
Pronouns
Kazakh has six personal pronouns:
Personal pronouns
| Kazakh (transliteration) |
English |
| Мен (Men) |
I |
| Сен (Sen) |
You (singular informal) |
| Сіз (Siz) |
You (singular formal) |
| Ол (Ol) |
He/She/It |
| Біз (Biz) |
We |
| Сендер (Sender) |
You (plural informal) |
| Сіздер (Sizder) |
You (plural formal) |
| Олар (Olar) |
They |
Reference
External links
