Kazakh language
| Kazakh Qazaq tili, Қазақ тілі, قازاق تىلى |
||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | [qɑzɑq tˈlə] | |
| Spoken in: | Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, Iran | |
| Region: | Central Asia | |
| Total speakers: | 12 million | |
| Ranking: | 66 | |
| Language family: | Altaic[1] (controversial) Turkic Kypchak Kypchak-Nogay Kazakh |
|
| Writing system: | Cyrillic alphabet, Latin alphabet, Arabic alphabet | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: |  Kazakhstan |
|
| Regulated by: | No official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | kk | |
| ISO 639-2: | kaz | |
| ISO 639-3: | kaz | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants[2], natively Qazaq tili, Қазақ тілі, قازاق ٴتىلى; pronounced [qɑzɑq tˈlə]) is a Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak.
Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.
Contents |
Geographic distribution
Kazakh language has its speakers (mainly Kazakhs) spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan mountains to the Ural mountains. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, in which nearly 10 million speakers are reported to live (based on the CIA World Factbook's estimates for population and percentage of Kazakh speakers). More than two million speakers reside in China.
Russian Census reported 560,000 Kazakh speakers in Russia. Other sizable populations of Kazakh speakers live in Mongolia (fewer than 200,000). Large numbers exist elsewhere in Central Asia (mostly in Uzbekistan) and the former Soviet Union, and in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and other countries. There are also some Kazakh speakers in Germany, having immigrated from Turkey in the 1970s.
Writing system
Today, Kazakh is written in the Cyrillic alphabet in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, while the more than one million Kazakh-speakers in China use an Arabic-derived script similar to that used to write Uyghur.
The oldest known written records of languages closely related to Kazakh were written in the Orkhon script. However, it is not believed that any of these varieties were direct predecessors of Kazakh. Modern Kazakh has historically been written using versions of the Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic scripts.
In October of 2006, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, brought up the topic of using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet as the official script for Kazakh in Kazakhstan.[3][4] A Kazakh government study released in September 2007 said that Kazakhstan could feasibly switch to a Latin script over a 10 to 12 year period, for a cost of $300 million.[5]
Phonology
Kazakh exhibits front-back vowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of Russian language or Arabic language) as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which doesn't apply as strongly and isn't reflected in the orthography.
Consonants
The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh [6]; many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loan-words. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are in bold—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what's shown. The borrowed phonemes /f/, /v/, /ɕ/, /ʨ/ and /x/, only occur in recent mostly Russian borrowings, and are shown in parentheses ( ) in the table below.
In the table, the elements left of a divide are voiceless, while those to the right are voiced.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||||||||||
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | q | ɢ | ||||||||
| Fricative | (f) | (v) | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | (ɕ) | (x) | h | |||||||
| Affricate | (ʨ) | |||||||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||||||||||
Vowels
Kazakh has a system of nine phonemic vowels, which are shown in the table below. Three of these are phonetically diphthongs; however, Vajda argues that this has no phonemic bearing, and that they are in fact not phonemically composed of the elements which make them up, but are instead one phonemic element. 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.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ɪ | ʉ | ʊ |
| Mid | ə | ||
| Open | æ | ɑ |
Kazakh also has three diphthongs: /i̯ɪ/, /y̯ʉ/, and /u̯ʊ/, corresponding to orthographic е, ө, and о.
Morphology and Syntax
Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV word order can be used. Verbal and nominal morphology in Kazakh exists almost exclusively in the form of agglutinative suffixes.
Case
Kazakh has 7 cases. Case endings are applied only to the last element of a noun phrase—e.g., a noun, an adject, or a nominalised verb phrase. The endings outlined in the chart below are applied to a word ending in a front vowel, a word ending in a back vowel, a word ending in each of those with a voiced consonant, and a word ending with each of this and an unvoiced consonant.
| Case | Morpheme | Possible forms | кеме "ship" | ауа "air" | шелек "bucket" | сәбіз "carrot" | бас "head" | тұз "salt" |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nom | — | — | кеме | ауа | шелек | сәбіз | бас | тұз |
| Acc | -NI | -ні, -ны, -ді, -ды, -ті, -ты, -н | кемені | ауаны | шелекті | сәбізді | басты | тұзды |
| Gen | -NIŋ | -нің, -ның, -дің, -дың, -тің, -тың | кеменің | ауаның | шелектің | сәбіздің | бастың | тұздың |
| Dat | -GA | -ге, -ға, -ке, -қа, -не, -на | кемеге | ауаға | шелекке | сәбізге | басқа | тұзға |
| Loc | -DA | -де, -да, -те, -та | кемеде | ауада | шелекте | сәбізде | баста | тұзда |
| Abl | -DAn | -ден, -дан, -тен, -тан, -нен, -нан | кемеден | ауадан | шелектен | сәбізден | бастан | тұздан |
| Inst | -Men | -мен(ен) -бен(ен) -пен(ен) | кемемен | ауамен | шелекпен | сәбізбен | баспен | тұзбен |
Pronouns
Kazakh has eight personal pronouns:
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kazakh (transliteration) | English | Kazakh (transliteration) | English |
| Мен (Men) | I | Біз (Biz) | We |
| Сен (Sen) | You (singular informal) | Сендер (Sender) | You (plural informal) |
| Сіз (Siz) | You (singular formal) | Сіздер (Sizder) | You (plural formal) |
| Ол (Ol) | He/She/It | Олар (Olar) | They |
The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns (with the exception of сіз, which used to be plural) exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns don't. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold.
| Nom | мен | сен | сіз | ол | біз | сендер | сіздер | олар |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acc | мені | сені | сізді | оны | бізді | сендерді | сіздерді | оларді |
| Gen | менің | сенің | сіздің | оның | біздің | сендердің | сіздердің | олардың |
| Dat | маған | саған | сізге | оған | бізге | сендерге | сіздерге | оларға |
| Loc | менде | сенде | сізде | онда | бізде | сендерде | сіздерде | оларда |
| Abl | менен | сенен | сізден | онан | бізден | сендерден | сіздерден | олардан |
| Inst | менімен | сенімен | сізбен | онымен | бізбен | сендермен | сіздермен | олармен |
In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.
| pronouns | copulas | possessive endings | past/conditional | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st sg | мен | -MIn | -(I)m | -(I)m |
| 2nd sg | сен | -sIŋ | -(I)ŋ | -(I)ŋ |
| 2nd formal sg | сіз | -sIz | -(I)ŋIz | -(I)ŋIz |
| 3rd sg | ол | — | -(s)I(n) | — |
| 1st pl | біз | -MIz | -(I)mIz | -(I)K |
| 2nd pl | сендер | -sIŋdAr | -(I)ŋ | -(I)ŋ |
| 2nd formal pl | сіздер | -sIzdAr | -(I)ŋIz | -(I)nIz |
| 3rd pl | олар | — | -(s)I(n) | — |
Tense/Aspect/Mood
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. For example, the (imperfect) present tense in Kazakh bears different aspectual information depending on whether basic present-tense morphology is used, or one of (commonly) four verbs is used:
| Kazakh | aspect | English translation |
|---|---|---|
| Жеймін | non-progressive | "I eat." |
| Жеп жатырмын | progressive | "I am eating [right now]." |
| Жеп отырмын | progressive/durative | "I am [sitting and] eating." / "I have been eating." |
| Жеп тұрмын | progressive/punctual | "I am [in the middle of] eating [this very minute]." |
| Жеп жүрмін | habitual/frequentative | "I eat [e.g., lunch at home every day]." |
Evidentiality
Kazakh exhibits an evidentiality system which does not neatly align with morphological paradigms.
- тазалап тастапты - he cleaned it and I saw the result
- тазалап тастаған - he cleaned it, I saw the result and verified it with him
- тазалап тастаған екен - he cleaned it and told me, but I probably didn't see the results
- тазалап тастады - he cleaned it and I saw him clean it
- тазалап тастаған ұқсас - he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this
- тазалап тастаған шығар - he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this
See also
References
- ↑ "Ethnologue report for Altaic"
- ↑ The most common English spelling, Kazakh, is from the Russian name, Казах.
- ↑ Kazakhstan switching to Latin alphabet
- ↑ Kazakh President Revives Idea of Switching to Latin Script
- ↑ Kazakhstan: Moving Forward With Plan to Replace Cyrillic With Latin Alphabet
- ↑ Some variations occur in the different regions where Kazakh is spoken, including outside Kazakhstan; e.g. ж / ج (where the so-called “Uyghur” (Perso-Arabic) script is used) is read [ʒ] in standard Kazakh, but [d͡ʒ] in some places.
- This language's entry in the Ethnologue.
- Kazakhstan in the CIA World Factbook
External links
- Kazakh Language Courseware from University of Arizona Critical Languages Series
- The Largest Portal in Kazakh language
- Kazak language, alphabet, and pronunciation
- Online Kazakh language course
- Course of Kazakh for Peace Corps Volunteers
- Another course of Kazakh for PCV
- Forum in Kazakh Language Suhbat.com
- Roman-Cyrillic characters converter for Kazakh alphabets
- Gaspirali Another converter
- Aliya S. Kuzhabekova, "Past, Present and Future of Language Policy in Kazakhstan" (M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota, 2003)
- Tilashar online Kazakh language lessons & dictionary (Russian)
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