Talk:Kazakhs

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Kazakh should be spelled with no extra h (Kazak) (unless your Russian)! What do you think about changing that?

Dawit

I don't mean it badly but if you are Russian you are not using this alphabet anyway. I like the H it is a good reminder that the last K is just a K by default, it could nearly be a R. Carole a 19:28, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think nowadays Kazak is used more often though. Perhaps we should just use Qazaq, the official latin spelling.--Erkin2008 10:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Photo

I added the photo, and soon after I started to worry that it would look like I was trying to "pigeon hole" the look of the Kazakh people. I don't want it to come across as a racial over simplification. This is not meant to be the case. When I took this picture this man showed great pride in being a Kazakh shepard in the steppe. His self pride was beautiful, and to me illustrate nicely the Kazakh spirit. I wanted this picture to show the Kazakh spirit not their look. Is it coming across alright, or should I delete the picture? Carole a 16:50, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Added another picture, does this help? Carole a 19:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nice pics! When i opened up the article I was pleasently surprised, I think there often aren't enough pics on the wikipedia :) -- Are there any other pics you know of, particularly historical? Would it be worthwhile of having a variety of pics versus time? FrancisTyers 03:17, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Very interesting picture, so i added a link to it in the "See also" thread. The reason i dared to replace it by Prokudin's work is that the latter picture is more valuable from the historical point of view and is really precious one, since it shows the appearence of kazakhs, when they still used to be nomads - the appearence you can find only in movies nowadays. i am so grateful to the person who posted it here GaiJin 08:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quarashi

isn't QUAZAQ just a WRONG transcription made by Westerners who thinks a Q is always followed by a U? wathiik.

If your assumption was true would it not then be QUAZAQU?

[edit] Requested move (moving discussion from Wikipedia:Requested moves)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support "Kazakhs" is the name of a people, which has no singular form (a Kazakh is one person). Many other Wikipedia articles about peoples are named this way. —Michael Z. 2005-07-4 19:10 Z
  • Oppose The word "Kazakh" refers to an ethnicity, a language, a culture, etc. If this article is meant to be specifically about the people, and not about that other stuff, then it should be renamed "Kazakhs" or "Kazakh people". (IIRC there was such an article, but it was merged into this one.) But it's not just about the people- there's other stuff in there too (culture, language). --Staecker 4 July 2005 19:31 (UTC)
"Kazakh" as a noun refers to a Kazakh individual. Otherwise it is an adjective, and not suitable for an article title. This article is about the Kazakh people, called the Kazakhs. Their language and culture are aspects of them. The Kazakh language and Kazakh culture already have main articles which go into more depth. —Michael Z. 2005-07-4 21:02 Z
"Kazakh" as a noun also refers to the Kazakh language. ("What language do the Kazakhs speak?" "Kazakh.") If this article is to be about the Kazakh people, then it should be called "Kazakh people." An article with the title "Kazakh" should probably be a brief summary of each of these 3 (or more) aspects (The people, The language, The culture) with links to each of the main articles. Or it could just be a standard disambig, like English. --Staecker 4 July 2005 22:43 (UTC)
But Kazakh is short for Kazakh language, the standard form for language articles in Wikipedia. Many or most articles about peoples have titles in a standard form like Kazakhs, others like Kazakhi or Kazakh people. Kazakhs is the simplest English form, and there is no conflict with other articles. See for example Category:Ethnic_groups_of_Europe. —Michael Z. 2005-07-5 17:10 Z
Yes I know "Kazakh" is short for "Kazakh language", just like English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, etc. Note that every one of these links to a disambig. So this article (with parts removed) can move to "Kazakhs", with a redirect from "Kazakh people", and "Kazakh" can be a disambig, as in the above examples. I hope we can agree on that? I'm glad this is getting settled! --Staecker 5 July 2005 17:33 (UTC)
Sounds great! —Michael Z. 2005-07-5 18:06 Z
I guess more appropriate an analogy is to German, which I believe functions grammatically the same as the word "Kazakh". Staecker 4 July 2005 22:49 (UTC)
But by my quick count, in Category:Ethnic groups of Europe there are 22 articles titled in a form like "Kazakh people" and 69 like "Kazakhs". —Michael Z. 2005-07-9 06:57 Z
That's a curious list. By my inspection, it would appear that most of the groups that have their name incorporated in the title of a country go by X people, and that the minor plural is used mostly for more minor groups (e.g. Moglenites, Arvanites), and ethnic classes which are primarily of historical significance (e.g. Angles, Goths). Though obvious exceptions exist, such as Greeks and Poles. I still believe that in comparison to major living ethnic groups, "Kazakh people" is the better choice of title. Dragons flight 20:32, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • support move to Kazakhs. Reasons above. --Irpen 06:00, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Because we use singulars by policy. — Chameleon 3 July 2005 11:06 (UTC)

Well apparently it's a policy that hasn't been enforced except for this article, and it doesn't even look correct. --Hottentot

Incidentally, I've recently added a clarification to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals), by specifically mentioning the titles of articles about peoples in the section about "Some nouns are always in the plural" (under #Grammatical niceties). If you have a moment, please review and comment or amend. —Michael Z. 2005-07-4 21:11 Z

Here's my list of possible titles for an article about the Kazakh people. Kazakh doesn't belong here because as a noun, it means an individual member of the Kazakh people, or the Kazakh language. Feel free to add others I haven't thought of.

Chameleon, please note that, in my opinion, even though some of these are formed from words in the plural form, they are all singular nouns representing the one Kazakh people (i.e., the nation or race). —Michael Z. 2005-07-9 15:56 Z

The word in Kazakh is "Kazak" (noun) or "Kazaksha" (adj), I believe. Anyways it's never "Kazakhi". Staecker 9 July 2005 16:53 (UTC)

Just to set the record straight, the proper words in Kazakh are "kazak" (singular noun), "kazaktar" (plural noun, i.e. Kazakhs), "kazak" (adjective), whereas "kazaksha" is an adverb that means 'in the Kazakh language'. The proper words in Russian are "kazakh" (singular noun), "kazakhi" (plural noun, i.e. Kazakhs), "kazakhskiy" (adjective), and "po-kazakhski" ('in the Kazakh language').

  • Kazakh nation

[edit] Early twentieth-century photo

There ought to be a place for this image in the article. It's a color photograph from somewhere between 1905 and 1915. Isomorphic 15:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

the image added back. thank you for the rare picture. GaiJin 08:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It was making things look messy on the bottom, because of overcrowding when I took it off again. But I would off left it on, except that I don't believe that they were actually Kazakhs. Perhaps Mr. Gorskii was wrong. In Central Asia you can tell where somebody is from, and what ethnic group they are from pretty well by there "dopa" (hat). And the hats being worn here would not point to anything Kazakh. In fact, there is nothing in the picture that would give the slightest indication that they were Kazakh.--Erkin2008 23:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen, and the Khazar-Jew Theory

Perhaps Sacha Baron Cohen subscribes to the theory that most Ashkenazi Jews are originally from Khazaria since he chooses to base his famous Borat character out of Khazakhstan, which is roughly the same area that the Khazars/Ashkenazi Jews are proposed to originate from (see The Thirteenth Tribe). --172.151.71.190 16:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Culture Section: Physical Description

Although phenotypes tend to be a fairly subjective topic, I disagree with the notion that Kazakhs display "predominantly mongoloid" features. I disagree with the terms "mongoloid," "caucasoid," and "negroid" as it is, but for the sake of the article featured (as well as many others), this will not be dealt with. However, although "mongoloid" influences seem to be among the most widespread of facial features, the majority of Kazakhs do not really look fully mongoloid; therefore, stating that "mongoloid" features are predominant is a bit of a stretch. Most Kazakhs have moderate to strong "caucasoid" influences in their ethnic look, and many of these "caucasoid" features seem to be derived from Mediterranean elements. In fact, Kazakhs seem to mark a logical transitional point between Western and Eastern Asians-- even the images of featured Kazakhs show photos of people that look like a combination of Arabs/Persians/Mediterraneans and more Eastern/"mongoloid" peoples. It is difficult to find academic information verifying this 100%, but it is certain that Kazakhs are an ethnically/"racially" mixed Central Asian group that exhibit a very wide range of phenotypes.69.235.152.12 18:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)James Lopez

It seems you are mixing race and location using confusing terms as Asian and Mongoloid, which are not necessarily synonims. Kazakhs are not fully Mongoloid but they belong to South Siberian race where Mongoloid features prevail over Caucasoid. I would not call Kazakhs a "transitional point" from anthropological point of veiw. Among Central Asian Uzbeks are genetically and anthropologically closer to your vision of transitional point. Volga region Tartars and Bashkorts also are could be called mixed race ethnicity when Kazakhs are closer to Mongoloid race than Caucasians.

I make note of your points, but I think that my use of the terms "Western Asian," "Eastern Asian," and "Central Asian" makes it very clear that I do not think that Asian is synonymous with "mongoloid" (unlike many Westerners, who do seem to see it this way). As I mentioned previously, I don't even agree with the term "mongoloid," as I do not believe in racial theory; however, since it is used in this article, and my point is not to dismantle the term itself, I am supposing its legitimacy for the sake of the discussion here. There is not a whole lot of readily available material regarding the DNA compositions of Kazakhs, or many other Central Asian populations for that matter; however, based on the diversity of cultural elements found within "Kazakh culture" (Mongol/proto-Mongolian, Turkic, Slavic, Arabic, Persian), as well as the phenotypical evidence of the physical appearances of Kazakhs in general, I still think they mark a very logical transition between Western Asians (Arabs, Western Persians, Western Turks) and Eastern Asians (numerous Chinese ethnic groups as well as Eastern Mongolians). Perhaps they are not as transitional of a population as the Uzbeks, but they, like the Turkmens and the Khyrgyz, do not fit very easily into having more in common with Western or Eastern Asians. There is probably no such thing as a perfect 50/50 transition from one ethnic category to another, but I think Kazakhs constitute a fairly logical example of a trasitional population, as they exhibit physical and cultural traits from both "opposite" ends of the continent and yet remain distinctly Central Asian.69.235.152.155 02:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)James Lopez

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