Kazakh language facts for kids

Stamp of Kazakhstan partially in Latin alphabet (Qazaqsa)

Kazakh is a language spoken in Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia. It's interesting because it has used different alphabets over time, including the Latin alphabet.

History of the Kazakh Alphabet

For a long time, the Kazakh language in Central Asia used the Cyrillic alphabet. This happened after Russia became more involved in Kazakhstan in the 1800s.

After World War I, many countries that spoke Turkic languages, like Kazakhstan, wanted to switch to the Latin alphabet. A leader named Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Turkey really pushed for this change. So, from 1927 to 1939, when Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union, people used the Latin alphabet for Kazakh.

However, in 1940, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, changed it back to Cyrillic. He wanted to make the Soviet areas in Central Asia more like Russia. This process was called "russification."

When Kazakhstan became an independent country in 1991, it started to allow the Latin alphabet again. But the Cyrillic alphabet was still the main one used.

In 2006, the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, began a plan to switch completely from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. The goal was to officially use Kazakh as the main language of the country after 2020.

Kazakh Letters

The Kazakh Latin alphabet has 38 letters. Here is how it looks:

Images for kids

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  Kazakh Arabic and Latin script in 1924

See also

In Spanish: Idioma kazajo para niños