Three
alphabets
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
are used to write the
Kazakh language
The Kazakh or simply Qazaq (Latin: or , Cyrillic: or , Arabic Script: or , , ) is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official lan ...
: the
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
,
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
s. The Cyrillic script is used in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. An October 2017 Presidential Decree in Kazakhstan ordered that the transition from Cyrillic to a Latin script be completed by 2025. The Arabic script is used in parts of China, Iran and Afghanistan.
Cyrillic script
Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet
The Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet is used in Kazakhstan and the
Bayan-Ölgiy Province in Mongolia. It is also used by Kazakh populations in Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as diasporas in other countries of the former USSR. It was introduced during the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
period in the 1800s, and then adapted by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1940.
In the nineteenth century,
Ibrahim Altynsarin
Ybyrai (Ibrahim) Altynsarin ( kz, Ыбырай Алтынсарин, ''Ybyraı Altynsarın''; Russian: ''Ибрай Алтынсарин'', 1841–1889) was a major figure in pre-Soviet Kazakh history. He was the most prominent Kazakh educator ...
, a prominent Kazakh educator, first introduced a Cyrillic alphabet for transcribing Kazakh. Russian missionary activity, as well as Russian-sponsored schools, further encouraged the use of Cyrillic in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The alphabet was reworked by
Sarsen Amanzholov Sarsen Amanzholuly Amanzholov ( kk, Сәрсен Аманжолұлы Аманжолов; russian: Сарсен Аманжолович Аманжолов; on December 27, 1903 – January 28, 1958), was a noted Turkologist, and one of the pionee ...
and accepted in its current form in 1940. It contains 42 letters: 33 from the Russian alphabet with 9 additional letters for sounds of the Kazakh language: Ә, Ғ, Қ, Ң, Ө,
Ұ, Ү, Һ, І (until 1951 ''Ӯ'' was used instead of ''Ұ''). Initially, Kazakh letters came after letters from the Russian alphabet, but now they are placed after Russian letters similar in sound or shape.
The letters В, Ё (since 1957), Ф, Ц, Ч, Ъ, Ь and Э are not used in native Kazakh words. Of these, Ё, Ц, Ч, Ъ, Ь, Э, are used only in words borrowed from Russian or through the Russian language which are written according to Russian orthographic rules. The letter E in Kazakh makes a sound similar to Э in Russian (ex. Kazakh: Екібастуз - Russian: Экибастуз). The letter Ж is pronounced similarly to ДЖ in Russian (approximately like J in English). The letter Х is pronounced like a wheezing h (hard h). The letter Һ is frequently used in Arabic-Persian borrowings and is often pronounced like an unvoiced Х (as , soft h, or a
voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant ''phonologically'', but ...
). In rapid conversation, the letter Қ (Q) can be pronounced like X (if Қ is in the middle of a word and before a consonant) or like Ғ. The letter Щ is used for the long Ш sound in three native words (ащы 'bitter', тұщы 'saltless', кеще 'stupid') and their derivatives, as well as in loanwords.
The letter И represents the tense vowel obtained from the combinations ЫЙ and ІЙ . The letter У represents and the tense vowel obtained from the combinations ҰУ , ҮУ , ЫУ and ІУ . Additionally, И and У are retained in words borrowed from Russian, where they represent the simple vowels and respectively.
History
The switch from a Latin alphabet to a Cyrillic one was likely in an attempt to distance the then-Soviet Kazakhstan from Turkey. This was likely in part due to weakening Turkish–Soviet relations and the
Turkish Straits crisis.
In effort to consolidate its national identity, Kazakhstan started a phased transition from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet in 2017. The Kazakh government drafted a seven-year process until the full implementation of the new alphabet, sub-divided into various phases.
Romanization
Kazakh Cyrillic is
romanized
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
for accessibility to readers familiar with the Latin alphabet. Commonly used systems include:
*
ALA-LC romanization
ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
(American Library Association and Library of Congress), 1940 system, commonly used in English-language bibliographic cataloguing and in academic publishing
*
BGN/PCGN romanization
BGN/PCGN romanization are the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN).
The system ...
(US Board on Geographic Names and Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use), 1979 system, commonly used in place names and mapping
*
ISO 9:1995 (International Organization for Standardization), 1995, an international system based on central European orthography that uses a single unique character for each letter.
Notes to the BGN/PCGN system
# Character sequences гһ, зһ, кһ, нг, сһ and цһ may be romanized ''g·h'', ''z·h'', ''k·h'', ''n·g'', ''s·''h and ''ts·h'' to differentiate from ''gh'', ''zh'', ''kh'', ''ng'', ''sh'', and ''tsh'', which are used to render ғ, ж, х, ң, ш, and тш.
# The character ы may be romanized ''i̵'' instead of ''у''.
Encoding
Before the spread of operating systems and text editors with support for
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
, Cyrillic Kazakh often failed to fit on a keyboard because of both the problem with 8-bit encoding, which was not supported at the system level, and the absence of standard computer fonts. More than 20 variations of 8-bit encoding for Kazakh Cyrillic have been suggested, including the following government standards (note that the following are historical code pages and that modern systems use Unicode Encoding, such as UTF-8):
* СТ РК 920-91 for MS-DOS (a modification of
code page
In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
866)
* СТ РК 1048—2002 for Windows (a modification of code page 1251)
СТ РК 1048—2002 was confirmed in 2002, well after the introduction of different Windows character sets. Some Internet resources in part used the government information agency QazAqparat before the encoding of this standard. Today the encoding UTF-8 is being accepted.
Keyboard
The standard Windows
keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
is the actua ...
used for Cyrillic Kazakh in Kazakhstan is a modification of the standard Russian keyboard, with characters found in Kazakh but not in Russian located on the number keys.
Latin script
![Sotsijaldy qazaqstan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Sotsijaldy_qazaqstan.jpg)
![Selected-Works-of-Mao-Zedong-in-Kazakh-Title-page-3477](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Selected-Works-of-Mao-Zedong-in-Kazakh-Title-page-3477.jpg)
A number of Latin alphabets are in use to write the Kazakh language. A variant based on the
Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, Dotless I, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requ ...
is unofficially used by the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey and in Western countries and Kazakhstan. As with other Central Asian
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
, a Latin alphabet, the
Yañalif
Jaꞑalif, Yangalif or Yañalif (Tatar: jaꞑa əlifba/yaña älifba → jaꞑalif/yañalif, , Cyrillic: Яңалиф, "new alphabet") is the first Latin alphabet used during the latinisation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s for the Turkic languag ...
,
was introduced by the Soviets and used from 1929 to 1940 when it was replaced with Cyrillic.
Moreover, a Latin alphabet was used for the Kazakh language for
Kazakhs in China
Kazakhs are a Turkic ethnic group and are among the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
History
During the fall of the Dzungar Khanate, the Manchus massacred the native Dzungar Oirat Mongols of Dzungaria i ...
during 1964–84. Later, the use of the Kazakh Arabic alphabet was restored in China.
1929 Latin alphabet (Çaꞑalip)
1938 Latin alphabet (Çaꞑalip)
As part of a modernization program, the presidential decree No. 569 signed by Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev
Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev ( kk, Нұрсұлтан Әбішұлы Назарбаев, Nūrsūltan Äbişūlı Nazarbaev, ; born 6 July 1940) is a Kazakh politician and military officer who served as the first President of Kazakhstan, in off ...
ordered the replacement of the Cyrillic script with a Latin script by 2025.
In 2007, Nazarbayev said the transformation of the Kazakh alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin should not be rushed, as he noted: "For 70 years, the Kazakhstanis read and wrote in Cyrillic. More than 100 nationalities live in our state. Thus we need stability and peace. We should be in no hurry in the issue of alphabet transformation".
In 2015, the Minister of Culture and Sports
Arystanbek Muhamediuly
Arystanbek Muhamediuly (, ''Arystanbek Mūhamediūly''; born 11 February 1963) is a Kazakh politician who served as a Minister of Culture and Sports from 11 March 2014 to 17 June 2019. He's currently the director of the National Museum of the Rep ...
announced that a transition plan was underway, with specialists working on the orthography to accommodate the phonological aspects of the language.
On April 12, 2017, President Nazarbayev published an article in state newspaper ''
Egemen Qazaqstan
''Yegemen Qazaqstan'' ( kk, Егемен Қазақстан, , ''Sovereign Kazakhstan'') is a government owned Kazakh language newspaper published from Kazakhstan. It was first published on 17 December 1919. The newspaper was started by the min ...
'' announcing a switchover to the Latin alphabet by 2025,
a decision implemented by decree.
Nazarbayev argued that the "Kazakh language and culture have been devastated" during the period of Soviet rule, and that ending the use of Cyrillic is useful in re-asserting national identity.
The new Latin alphabet is also a step to weaken the traditional Russian influence on the country, as the Russian language is the country's second official language. The initial proposed Latin alphabet tried to avoid
digraphs (such as "sh", "ch") and
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s (such as "ä" or "ç"). In fact, President Nazarbayev had expressly stated that the new alphabet should contain "no hooks or superfluous dots". Instead, the new alphabet, which is based on a transliteration of Cyrillic into Latin letters, would have used
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
s to denote those Kazakh letters where there was no direct Latin equivalent. It is similar to the
Karakalpak Latin alphabet and the
Uzbek alphabet
The Uzbek language has been written in various scripts: Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic. The language traditionally used Arabic script, but the official Uzbek government under the Soviet Union started to use Cyrillic in 1940, which is when widespread ...
.
A revised version of the 2017 Latin alphabet was announced in February 2018. Presidential Decree 637 of 19 February 2018 amends the 2017 decree and the use of apostrophes was discontinued and replaced with diacritics and digraphs.
Notably, the new alphabet uses the
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
. A few web applications and sites were launched to facilitate the switch to the Latin-based alphabet. One of them is a new web-based portal, Qazlatyn.kz, that uses the new Latin alphabet to report news and other information about Kazakhstan.
In April 2021, the Latin script for the Kazakh language was presented to the public; it was well received. The current Latin script has similarities especially with
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
,
Azerbaijani and
Turkmen alphabets, but also has some elements shared by
various romanization systems of Ukrainian. Elementary schools will start using only the new Latin script from 2023. The transition is expected to be completed by 2031.
Latest developments
Kazakh Latin alphabet (April 2021)
In 2020, the President of Kazakhstan
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev ( kk, Қасым-Жомарт Кемелұлы Тоқаев, Qasym-Jomart Kemelūly Toqaev ; born 17 May 1953) is a Kazakh politician and diplomat who is currently serving as the President of Kazakhstan since 12 J ...
called for another revision of the Latin alphabet with a focus on preserving the original sounds and pronunciation of the Kazakh language. This revision, presented to the public in November 2019 by academics from the Baitursynov Institute of Linguistics, and specialists belonging to the official working group on script transition, uses
umlauts,
breve
A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...
s and
cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
s instead of digraphs and acute accents, and introduces spelling changes in order to reflect more accurately the phonology of Kazakh.
This revision deviated only slightly from the
Common Turkic Alphabet
The Common Turkic Alphabet ( tr, Ortak türk alfabesi; az, Ortaq türk əlifbası, اورتاق تورک الیفباسی; tt-Cyrl, Уртак төрки әлифба, translit=Urtaq törki älifba; kk, Ortaq türkı älıpbiı) is a project of ...
(CTA), introducing the letter
Ŋ in place of
Ñ. As this version was waiting approval, linguists had been in discussion as to which Latin-based letters were to be used in place of the specific Cyrillic-based letters Ә ə, Ғ ғ, И и, Й й, Ң ң, Ө ɵ, У у, Ұ ұ, Ү ү, Ы ы, Ч ч, Ш ш, and І i; a suggested alternative to the introduction of accented characters was to make greater use of digraphs, with ч being written as "tş", for example.
In January 2021, a new revision of the Kazakh Latin alphabet was presented, introducing the letters Ä ä (Ə ə), Ö ö (Ө ө), Ü ü (Ү ү), Ğ ğ (Ғ ғ), Ū ū (Ұ ұ), Ŋ ŋ (Ң ң), and Ş ş (Ш ш),
bringing it even closer to the CTA. A subsequent revision on 22 April further narrowed this gap by changing Ŋ ŋ to Ñ ñ.
This version will be officially implemented starting 2023.
[
2017 Kazakh Latin Alphabet.png, Initial proposed Latin alphabet for the Kazakh language, implemented by Presidential Decree 569 (26 October 2017),] later revised by Presidential Decree 637 of 19 February 2018, replacing the apostrophe with diacritics and digraphs, alt=
2018 Kazakh Latin alphabet table - RU.svg, 2018 revision of the Kazakh Latin alphabet, used from 2018 to 2022
2019 Kazakh Latin alphabet 2.png, Proposed new version of the Kazakh Latin alphabet presented in 2019, alt=2019 new version of the Kazakh Latin alphabet
2021 Kazakh Latin alphabet table - RU.svg, January 2021 revision of the Kazakh Latin alphabet, officially used starting 2023 (with the exception of Ŋŋ being changed to Ññ)
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the official alphabet for Kazakhs in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture ( kk, Іле Қазақ автономиялық облысы) (also as Yili) is an autonomous prefecture for Kazakh people in Northern Xinjiang, China, one of five autonomous prefectures in Xinjiang. Yining City ...
of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
of China. It was first introduced to the territory of Kazakhstan in the eleventh century and was traditionally used to write Kazakh until the introduction of a Latin alphabet in 1929. In 1924, Kazakh intellectual Akhmet Baitursynov
Ahmet Baitursynuly ( kk, Ахмет Байтұрсынұлы, , romanized: ''Ahmed Baitūrsynūly''; Russified: Ахмет Байтурсынов) ( 5 September 1872 — 8 December 1937) was a Kazakh intellectual who worked in the fields of poli ...
attempted to reform the Arabic script to better suit Kazakh. The letters , , , and are used to represent sounds not found in the Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
language.
A modified Arabic script is also used in Iran and Afghanistan, based on the alphabet used for Kazakh before 1929.
The Kazakh Arabic alphabet contains 29 letters and one digit, the 'upper hamza' used at the beginnings of words to create front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...
s throughout the word. The direction the alphabet is written in is right to left. Unlike the original Arabic script, which is an abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
, the Kazakh Arabic script functions more like a true alphabet, as each sound has its own letter and every sound in each word is spelt out in the written form of the language. The reform of the Arabic script from an abjad to an alphabet was carried out by the early 20th-century linguist Akhmet Baitursynov
Ahmet Baitursynuly ( kk, Ахмет Байтұрсынұлы, , romanized: ''Ahmed Baitūrsynūly''; Russified: Ахмет Байтурсынов) ( 5 September 1872 — 8 December 1937) was a Kazakh intellectual who worked in the fields of poli ...
.
Kazakhs living now in China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
and other countries of the Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
use the Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
.
Forms of the Kazakh Arabic alphabet
Correspondence chart
Here is the correspondence chart of the official writing scripts:
Symbols in parentheses are for bi-directional transliteration only. See Menıñ Qazaqstanym
The state anthem of the Republic of Kazakhstan,, , simply referred to in Kazakh language, Kazakh as "Menıñ Qazaqstanym", became the national anthem of Kazakhstan on 7 January 2006, replacing the Anthem of the Republic of Kazakhstan, previou ...
.
Historical alphabets
Old Turkic alphabet
Orkhon-Yenisey letters have a superficial similarity to Germanic runes
Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, a ...
in shape, and so are sometimes called runes. Unlike the Germanic runes, the Old Turkic script
The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old T ...
was written right to left while Germanic runes were usually written left to right. The script was used in some parts of Kazakhstan's territory in the fifth to the tenth centuries. The language of the inscriptions was the Old Turkic
Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürks, Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It ...
, the language of the First Turkic Khaganate
The First Turkic Khaganate, also referred to as the First Turkic Empire, the Turkic Khaganate or the Göktürk Khaganate, was a Turkic khaganate established by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks in medieval Inner Asia under the leadership of Bumin ...
.
Kipchak Armenian
Migrating from the Armenian kingdom in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Armenians
Armenians ( hy, հայեր, ''hayer'' ) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the ''de facto'' independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diaspora ...
had an extensive liturgical, legal and other literature in the Kipchak language
Cuman or Kuman (also called Kipchak, Qypchaq or Polovtsian) was a Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans (Polovtsy, Folban, Vallany, Kun) and Kipchaks; the language was similar to today's various languages of the Kipchak-Cuman branch. Cu ...
that differs from Old Kazakh only by the abundance of the Armenian-Christian vocabulary. These texts were written using the Armenian alphabet. Their descendants who settled around the world, almost to the end of the nineteenth century, the Armenian-Kipchak were writing business records, personal correspondence and more.
Latin Kipchak
Catholic missionaries in Crimea produced holy books in the Kipchak language, the ancestor of the Kazakh language, they produced the Gospel and the other liturgical books.
Other writing systems
There are epigraphic monuments of Turkic tribes (mainly to the period of Islamization).
For sight-impaired people, there is also Kazakh Braille
The braille alphabet used for the Kazakh language is based on Russian Braille, with several additional letters found in the print Kazakh alphabet.
Alphabet
Kazakh uses all of the letters of the Russian alphabet, though some just in loans and h ...
, based on Russian Braille
Russian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Russian language. With suitable extensions, it is used for languages of neighboring countries that are written in Cyrillic in print, such as Ukrainian and Mongolian. It is based on the Latin trans ...
, with several additional letters found in the Kazakh alphabet.
Text sample
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
:
References
External links
Kazakh alphabet (in Russian)
Kazakh Cyrillic–Arabic–Latin converter
ALASH Cyrillic–Latin–Arabic–Runic online converter
Cyrillic–Latin 2018 online converter
Official Kazakh version (in Arabic script) of the ''People's Daily Online''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kazakh Alphabet
Arabic alphabets
Cyrillic alphabets
Latin alphabets
Alphabets
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
Alphabets used by Turkic languages