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 closely related Karakalpak while its Western dialects maintain limited mutual intelligibility with Altai languages.
In October 2017, Kazakh presidentNursultan 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). Over one million Kazah speakers in Xinjiang still rely on the Perso-Arabic script for writing. Showing their constant alterations of the language. It is scheduled to be phased in from 2023 to 2031.
Geographic distribution
Speakers of Kazakh (mainly Kazakhs) 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[5] on population and proportion of Kazakh speakers).[6]
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.
Phonology and orthography
Kazakh exhibits tongue-rootvowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of Russian or Arabic origin) 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.[7] Thus, (in Latin script) jūldyz 'star', bügın 'today', and ülken 'big' are actually pronounced as jūldūz, bügün, ülkön.
Consonants
The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh;[8] 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,ɕ,ʑ,ʁ/, nasals /m,n,ŋ/, liquids /ɾ,l/, and two glides /w,j/.[9] The sounds /f,v,χ,h,t͡s,t͡ɕ/ are found only in loanwords. /ʑ/ is heard as an alveolopalatal affricate [d͡ʑ] in the Kazakh dialects of Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, 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.
Voiced obstruents syllable-finally become devoiced.[7]
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.[11] 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.[10]
Phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakh's Cyrillic and current Latin alphabets.
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 /e̞/ is often pronounced /je̞/ at the beginning of the word, with exceptional root e-. Urban Kazakh tends to palatalize all /e̞/, caused by Russian influence.[12]
Vowel harmony
Kazakh exhibits tongue-rootvowel 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[ø̞mʏr], қосы[qɒso]. Notably, urban Kazakh tends to violate rounding harmony, as well as pronouncing Russian borrowings against the rules.[12]
Stress
Most words in Kazakh are stressed in the last syllable, except:[13]
When counting objects, numbers are stressed in the first syllable, but stressed in the last syllable in collective numbers suffixed by -eu (bıreu, altau from bır, alty):
bır, ekı, üş, tört, bes, alty, jetı, ...
'one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ...'
Definite and negative pronouns are stressed in the first syllable:
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.[14][15]
Cyrillic script was created to better merge the Kazakh language with other languages of the USSR, hence it has some controversial letter readings.
The letter У after a consonant represents a combination of sounds і /ɘ/, ү /ʉ/, ы /ə/, ұ /ʊ/ with glide /w/,[16] e.g. кіру[kɪ̞ˈrɪ̞w], су[so̙w], көру[kɵˈrʏ̞w], атысу[ɑ̝təˈsəw]. Ю undergoes the same process but with /j/ at the beginning.
The letter И represents a combination of sounds: i /ɘ/ (in front-vowel contexts) or ы /ə/ (in back vowel contexts) + glide /j/,[16] e.g. тиіс[tɪ̞ˈjɪ̞s], оқиды[wo̞qəjˈdə]. In Russian loanwords, it is realized as /ʲi/ (when stressed) or /ʲɪ/ (when unstressed), e.g. изоморфизм[ɪzəmɐrˈfʲizm].
The letter Я represents either /jɑ/ or /jæ/ depending on vowel harmony.
The letter Щ represents /ʃː/, e.g. ащы[ɑ̝ʃ.ˈʃə].
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.
Grammar
Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV (subject–object–verb) word order can be used, for example, due to topicalization.[17]Inflectional and derivationalmorphology, 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.[18]
Nouns
Kazakh has no noun class or gender system. Nouns are declined for number (singular or plural) and one of seven cases:
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.[18]
Number
Singular
Plural
Person
1st
2nd
3rd
1st
2nd
3rd
Familiar
Polite
Familiar
Polite
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.[18]
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[11]
Degrees of Comparison
Comparative
The comparative form can be created by appending the suffix -(y)raq/-(ı)rek or -tau/-teu/-dau/-dau to an adjective.
Superlative
The superlative form can be created by placing the morpheme eñ before the adjective.[11] The superlative form can also be expressed by reduplication.[19]
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'sit', tūr'stand', jür'go' and jat'lie', 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'go' and келу'come' may not combine with otyr. Any verb, however, can combine with jat'lie' to get a progressive tense meaning.[18]
'I am [sitting and] swimming. / I have been swimming.'
Men jüzıp tūrmyn
progressive/punctual
'I am [in the middle of] swimming [this very minute].'
Men jüzıp jürmın
habitual
'I swim [frequently/regularly]'
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:[18]
Selectional restrictions on Kazakh auxiliaries[18]
Sentence
Auxiliary Used
Suda
water-LOC
balyq
fish
jüzedı
swim-PRES-3
Suda balyq jüzedı
water-LOC fish swim-PRES-3
'Fish swim in water' (general statement)
∅ (present/future tense used)
Suda
water-LOC
balyq
fish
jüzıp
swim-CVB
jatyr
AUX.3
Suda balyq jüzıp jatyr
water-LOC fish swim-CVB AUX.3
'The/A fish is swimming in the water'
jat－ 'to lie', general marker for progressive aspect.
Suda
water-LOC
balyq
fish
jüzıp
swim-CVB
jür
AUX.3
Suda balyq jüzıp jür
water-LOC fish swim-CVB AUX.3
'The fish is swimming [as it always does] in the water'
jür – 'go', dynamic/habitual/iterative
Suda
water-LOC
balyq
fish
jüzıp
swim-CVB
tūr
AUX.3
Suda balyq jüzıp tūr
water-LOC fish swim-CVB AUX.3
'The fish is swimming in the water'
tūr – 'stand', progressive marker to show the swimming is punctual
*
Suda
water-LOC
balyq
fish
jüzıp
swim-CVB
otyr
AUX.3
* Suda balyq jüzıp otyr
{} water-LOC fish swim-CVB AUX.3
*The fish has been swimming
Not a possible sentence in Kazakh
otyr – 'sit', 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'see', indicates that the subject of the verb attempted or tried to do something (compare the Japanese てみるtemiru construction).[18]
^Some variations occur in the different regions where Kazakh is spoken, including outside Kazakhstan; e. g. ж / ج (where a Perso-Arabic script similar to the current Uyghur alphabet is used) is read [ʑ] in standard Kazakh, but [d͡ʑ] in some places.
^ abVajda, Edward (1994), "Kazakh phonology", in Kaplan, E.; Whisenhunt, D. (eds.), Essays presented in honor of Henry Schwarz, Washington: Western Washington, pp. 603–650
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.
McCollum, Adam G.; Chen, Si (2021). "Kazakh". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 51 (2): 276–298. doi:10.1017/S0025100319000185, with supplementary sound recordings.
