Languages of Kazakhstan
130 ethnic groups live in Kazakhstan. Including 65% of Kazakhs, 21.8% of Russians, 3.0% of Uzbeks, 1.8% of Ukrainians, 1.4% of Uyghurs and 1.2% of Tatars. The official languages of Kazakhstan are Kazakh with 5,290,000 speakers around the country and Russian which is spoken by 6,230,000 people. Both Kazakh and Russian are used on equal grounds.[1] German (30,400 speakers), Tajiki, Tatar (328,000 speakers), Turkish, Ukrainian (898,000 speakers), Uyghur (300,000 speakers),[2] and Uzbek are officially recognized by the 1997 Language Law, No. 151-1.[3]
Languages of Kazakhstan | |
---|---|
The Kazakh-speaking world:
regions where Kazakh is the language of the majority regions where Kazakh is the language of a significant minority | |
Official | Kazakh (national/state language), Russian (official) |
Main | Kazakh language. |
Indigenous | Dialects of Kazakh language |
Minority | German; Uzbek; Uyghur; Tatar; Kyrgyz; Azerbaijan; Korean; |
Immigrant | Turkic languages |
Foreign | English; Arabic (coming with Islam); Chinese; |
Keyboard layout | |
Source | Languages committee of the Ministry of culture and sports |
Alphabet | Kazakh alphabets Kazakh Braille |
Other languages natively spoken in Kazakhstan are Dungan, Ili Turki, Ingush, Plautdietsch, and Sinte Romani. A number of more recent immigrant languages, such as Belarusian, Korean, Azerbaijani, and Greek are also spoken.[4]
In Nazarbayev's resignation speech of 2019, he projects that people of Kazakhstan in the future can speak three languages (Kazakh, Russian and English).[5]
Languages
Per 2007 data:
Language | Percentage | Script |
---|---|---|
Kazakh | 74 % [6] | Cyrillic, Latin |
Russian | 84 % [7] | Cyrillic |
Korean | Hangul | |
German | Latin | |
Polish | Latin | |
Yiddish | Hebrew | |
Ukrainian | Cyrillic | |
Turkish | Latin | |
Uzbek | Latin, Cyrillic | |
Uyghur | Perso-Arabic, Latin | |
References
- "Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Article 7". Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
- "The Languages spoken in Kazakhstan". Studycountry. Retrieved 2017-08-11.
- "О языках в Республике Казахстан". Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
- "Kazakhstan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
- "Address of the Head of State Nursultan Nazarbayev to the people of Kazakhstan". Mission of Kazakhstan to the United Nations. 2019-03-19.
- "Мемлекеттін 70 % мемлекеттік тілде сөйлей алады — ukimet.kz". Archived from the original on 2013-01-18. Retrieved 2019-10-23.