Like other Turkic languages, the Kazakh language is an agglutinative language characterized by vowel harmony.
In October 2017, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev decided that by 2025 the government would switch from using the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. On February 19, 2018, President Nazarbayev signed an amendment to the decree of October 26, 2017 No. 569 “On the translation of the Kazakh alphabet from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet”. The modified alphabet uses S and C for the Kazakh sounds "Sh" and "Ch" and the use of apostrophes is excluded. Common phrases in the Kazakh language often include these sounds, therefore, the selection of the correct letters for their transmission was the main problem for government philologists and linguists.
Language distribution
Native speakers of the Kazakh language (mainly Kazakhs) live in a vast territory from the Tien Shan to the western coast of the Caspian Sea. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, with about 10 million native speakers (based on information from the World Factbook encyclopedia on population and number of Kazakhs). In China, in the Ili Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, more than a million ethnic Kazakhs live.
History
The oldest known written records in languages closely associated with Kazakhstan were written in the ancient Turkic alphabet, although at the moment it is not considered that any of these dialects of the Old Turkic language was a direct predecessor of the Kazakh language. The modern complex Kazakh language appeared in 1929. This happened after the Soviet authorities introduced the Latin alphabet, and then the Cyrillic alphabet in 1940. Prior to this, the Kazakh language was difficult to distinguish from Arabic, Persian or Ottoman, since it also used Arabic.
Introducing the strategic plan in April 2017, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev described the twentieth century as the period during which “the Kazakh language and culture were devastated.” Nazarbayev ordered the Kazakh authorities to create the Latin Kazakh alphabet by the end of 2017 so that the transition process to it could be started already in 2018.
As of 2018, the Kazakh language is written in Cyrillic in Mongolia, in Latin in Kazakhstan, and more than a million Kazakhstanis in China use the Arabic alphabet, similar to the alphabet used in the Uyghur language.
Reason for changing the alphabet
The decision to Latinize the Kazakh language is complex and ambiguous. It was justified by the need to revive the Kazakh culture after the difficult Soviet period and to facilitate the use of the latest digital technology, all using Latin alphabet. However, the initial decision to introduce a new spelling using apostrophes caused controversy, as this would make it difficult to use many popular search and writing tools. The alphabet was revised the following year by Presidential Decree No. 637 of February 19, 2018, and the use of the apostrophes was canceled - they replaced the diacritics.
Hesitation of the president
Nazarbayev first raised the topic of using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet as an official program for the development of the Kazakh language in October 2006. A study by the government of Kazakhstan, published in September 2007, said that switching to Latin for 10-12 years would be feasible at a cost of $ 300 million. On December 13, 2007, the transition was temporarily suspended, and President Nazarbayev said: “For 70 years, Kazakhstanis have read and written in Cyrillic. More than 100 nationalities live in our state, therefore we need stability and peace. We must not rush into the matter of transforming the alphabet. ” However, on January 30, 2015, the Minister of Culture and Sports Arystanbek Mukhamedyuly announced that a transition plan was being developed, with specialists working on spelling, to take into account the phonological aspects of the language.
Language features
The Kazakh language demonstrates the harmony of vowels, it contains many words borrowed from related and neighboring languages - usually of Russian or Arabic origin. There is also a system of harmonization of sounds, which resembles that in the Kyrgyz language, but which is not used so often and is not reflected in spelling.
The Kazakh language has a system of 12 phonemic vowels, 3 of which are diphthongs. The rounding contrast and / æ / are usually found only as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but subsequently appear as allophonic sounds.
According to philologist Weide, the quality of the front / back vowels is actually related to the neutral or reduced roots of the tongue.
Phonetic meanings are combined with the corresponding symbol in the Kazakh Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
The Kazakh language can express various combinations of tension, aspect and mood with the help of different verbal morphology or through a system of auxiliary verbs, many of which are better called light verbs. The present is a prime example of this phenomenon. Progressive time in the Kazakh language is formed with one of four possible auxiliary language turns. These auxiliary revolutions, such as tyr ’(sitting), ұ tur’ (standing), ү zhir ’(going) and zhat’ (lying), encode various shades of meaning of how the action is performed, as well as interact with lexical semantics root verbs.
Compared to Japanese
In addition to the complexities of progressive time, there are many auxiliary convertible pairs that encode a number of aspects - modal, volitional, evidence-based and modifications of actions. For example, the -ypөru pattern with the auxiliary verb kөru indicates that the subject of the verb has tried or is trying to do something. It can be compared with a similar construction in Japanese - て み る temiru. Thanks to these features, many people believe that the Kazakh language is difficult.
Kazakh language in Kazakhstan
The official languages of Kazakhstan are Kazakh with 5,290,000 native speakers throughout the country and Russian, spoken by 6,230,000 people. Kazakh and Russian are used throughout the country on an equal footing. Other common languages in the country are German (30,400 native speakers), Tajik, Tatar (328,000 native speakers), Turkish, Ukrainian (898,000 native speakers), Uyghur (300,000 native speakers), and Uzbek. All of them are officially recognized by the Language Act of 1997 No. 151-1. Other languages in Kazakhstan are Dungan, Ili Turkic, Ingush, Sinti and Gypsy. The translator of the Kazakh language into Russian is a profession demanded only among representatives of the older generation of Kazakhstanis who still do not speak the state language.
Recently, many native speakers of other languages have appeared in the country, such as Belarusian, Korean, Azerbaijani and Greek.
Conclusion
The dictionary of the Kazakh language is very diverse, this language is interesting, peculiar and unusual. Every year the number of carriers increases. The translator of the Kazakh language is already a demanded profession, and not only within Kazakhstan itself. Since the beginning of the 90s, the country has been carrying out an intensified campaign to promote the Kazakh language in all spheres of life - in paperwork, training, art and culture. Many Russians living both in Kazakhstan and in Russia are frightened by this trend - some, such as, for example, Russian writer and politician Eduard Limonov, openly talk about the cultural genocide of Russians in Kazakhstan and call for Russia to annex North Kazakhstan (Semirechye), known for its settlements with a compactly living Russian population. These fears are connected with the fact that Russians in this country are, as a rule, forced to learn the Kazakh language, which is perceived by some as a national humiliation.