Kazakh

In 2017 Kazakhstan decreed that Kazakh would move from Cyrillic to the Latin script, to be completed by 2025.

It has not happened.

The target was pushed back to 2031 in a decision of January 2021. Several versions of a Latin alphabet have been presented — and then withdrawn after public criticism. The most recent was presented in 2021 and has still not been formally adopted.

Meanwhile, Kazakhs in Xinjiang in China write Kazakh in the Arabic script, and continue to do so.

So Kazakh currently has three scripts in use somewhere, and a transition that has been announced but not completed. For a learner the advice is therefore straightforward: learn Cyrillic. It is what every book, newspaper, shop sign and text message in Kazakhstan uses, and will keep using for years.

As for the language itself, Kazakh is Turkic, and that is the largest dividend: it opens part of the way into Kyrgyz, Turkish, Uzbek and the whole Turkic branch. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are close enough for substantial mutual comprehension.

Kazakh's first beauty is its vocabulary of land and season. There are separate words for the summer pasture, the winter pasture, the spring and autumn pastures, because those are four different places and moving between them is the structure of a year. None of it reduces to a general word for meadow.

The second is jeti ata — the seven forefathers. A society that asks each member to hold their position across seven generations thinks about relatedness quite differently, and the language carries that thinking in its kinship terms.

And the third is aitys, the tradition of improvised poetic duelling. Two performers answer each other in extemporised verse before a crowd, and it is still broadcast. Very few places in the world still have improvised poetry as popular programming.

Kazakh grammar is regular and, if you have studied Japanese, Korean or Turkish, largely familiar.

Agglutinating, suffixes only. Meaning is assembled by stacking suffixes in a fixed order, and a verb can carry several layers.

Vowel harmony governs every suffix: each has several forms and must match the vowel class of the stem. There is a further layer of consonant harmony on some suffixes.

Subject–object–verb order, with the verb last.

Postpositions rather than prepositions, following the noun.

Seven cases, marked by suffix.

No gender, no articles, and verbs are highly regular — there is essentially nothing like the European irregular verb.

The largest adjustment for an English speaker is that everything attaches at the end and the verb waits until last. It is a change of rhythm rather than of difficulty, and once made the system is strikingly consistent.

Reading Kazakh comes more easily than people expect, because Cyrillic maps closely to the sounds and the alphabet takes a week.

What is slow is vocabulary, and there is a particular obstacle: Kazakh text online mixes in Russian to widely varying degrees depending on the source. State journalism holds to a cleaner Kazakh; social media content mixes heavily.

For tools, Sozdik.kz is the most widely used online dictionary and the default look-up while reading.

And one tool is unusually useful for this language: Emle.kz, the electronic orthographic database of Kazakh. With the written standard under discussion because of the script question, an official source on correct spelling is worth more than it would be elsewhere.

For reading material, Abai.kz is a Kazakh-language portal with literature and long-form articles, suitable once you are past the early stage and want something longer than a news item.

Listening to Kazakh has one advantage, one difficulty and one situation-specific problem.

The advantage: vowel harmony makes a whole word sound internally consistent, which helps the ear group syllables belonging to the same word. Combined with a script that maps closely to the sounds, connecting what you hear to what you read is not hard.

The difficulty: the uvular consonants. If you have not separated қ from к in your own production, your ear will not separate them either, and a whole set of words will sound alike. This is why they are worth drilling early, even before you need to speak.

And the situation-specific problem: you will hear a great deal of Russian. In the large cities and the north, Russian is present in most public space, and many conversations move between the two languages within a single stretch. New learners often panic, thinking their comprehension has failed — when in fact they are hearing a different language.

For sources, Qazaqstan, the national television channel, is where Kazakh is used most consistently, which makes it the right entry point.

Speaking Kazakh has an obstacle larger than the grammar, and it should be said plainly: Russian.

In Almaty and across northern Kazakhstan, Russian is the default in many spaces. Many Kazakhs are bilingual and some are more comfortable in Russian. The consequence is that a learner who does not arrange matters finds every conversation drifting into Russian — not because anyone is unwilling to speak Kazakh but because that is the path of least resistance.

The remedy is the same as in the Nordic countries with English: say at the outset that you are learning Kazakh and want to use it, and choose your situations. In the south and in rural areas Kazakh dominates far more clearly, and practice is correspondingly easier.

On grammar while speaking, the main stumbling block is vowel harmony under time pressure, and the second is the verb-final structure, which requires holding the whole thought until the clause closes.

The positive side is worth stating: a foreigner speaking Kazakh is received very warmly, partly because it is rare and partly because the status of the language is a subject people care about.

Writing Kazakh has four things to watch.

First, use Cyrillic. Whatever has been announced, it remains the standard in practice and it is what people read.

Second, do not confuse и with і. Two different letters, nearly identical in appearance, and the commonest learner spelling error.

Third, suffixes must match harmony. Getting this wrong is immediately visible.

Fourth, check spelling when unsure. Because the written standard is under discussion in the context of the script transition, some words do not have fully settled spellings. Emle.kz is where to check.

On keyboards, the Kazakh Cyrillic layout ships with every operating system and is necessary, since the nine Kazakh letters are not on a Russian one.

Four things worth knowing about Kazakh in use.

Dastarkhan is a two-way obligation. Being invited to sit is being offered a relationship, and declining when invited is a weighted gesture. Across Central Asia hospitality is not politeness but an institution with rules.

The question about seven forefathers is a real question. Jeti ata is still asked, and many young people still know the list. If someone asks about your family in a way that seems unusually specific, that is why.

The language question is political. The standing of Kazakh relative to Russian, and the script transition, are subjects on which people hold views. That you are learning Kazakh rather than Russian registers clearly.

South and north differ considerably. In the south Kazakh dominates everyday life; in the northern cities Russian is much more present. This directly affects how much practice you will get.