01 Kazakh - Introduction

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TOP FIVE REASONS WHYYOU NEED TO KNOW KAZAKH

1. Tere are very few people in America wholearn or speak Kazakh! Tose who study

Kazakh can nd careers in a variety of eldsincluding translation and interpreting,consulting, foreign service and intelligence,

journalism, and many others.2. Kazakhstan is the biggest country in Central

Asia, with the largest economy, the secondlargest population, and the most trade withthe United States. Business partnerships

with Kazakhstan and the U.S. are growing,creating a demand for educated Americans

who are uent in Kazakh.

3. Kazakh is a gateway to accessing urkiclanguages spoken by millions of people inthe former Soviet Union, China, and theCaucuses, including the atar, Azerbaijani,and Uyghur peoples. Tese regions areof vital strategic importance in the worldtoday!

4. Te revival of the Kazakh language is anexciting story—and just by learning Kazakh,you become part of it. Kazakhs appreciateforeigners who take the time to learn their

language and share their unique way of life.5. Learning Kazakh is fun! Te grammar

of Kazakh is consistent and the spellingis phonetic. Yes, learning Kazakh can bechallenging, but remember what you won’thave to worry about: nouns don’t havegender, adjectives don’t have to agree withnouns, and verbs aren’t irregular! Best of all,by learning Kazakh you will get to know theKazakh people, immerse yourself in theirrich cultural heritage, and experience their

way of life and the values they share.

WHO SPEAKS UZBEKUzbeks are the most numerous Tur-kic people in Central Asia. They pre-dominantly mostly live in Uzbekistan, alandlocked country of Central Asia thatshares borders with Kazakhstan to thewest and north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajiki-stan to the east, and Afghanistan andTurkmenistan to the south. Many Uz-

beks can also be found in Afghanistan,Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and the Xinjiang UyghurAutonomous Region of China.

Center for LanguageCentral Asian Region

KAZAKH

718 Eigenmann Hall, 1900 East 10th Street,Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47406Phone: (812) 856-1230 Fax: (812) 856-1206E-mail : celcar@indiana.edu

Web site: http://www.indiana.edu/~celcar

WHERE IN THE U.S.ACAN YOU LEARN KAZAKH?

Te Department of Central Eurasian Studies(CEUS) at Indiana University offers courses inKazakh language, its culture, history, and society.For more information, visit their website at http:// www.indiana.edu/~ceus or contact them via email atceus@indiana.edu.

Te Summer Workshop in Slavic, East Europeanand Central Asian Languages (SWSEEL) at IndianaUniversity offers intensive courses of Kazakh. For moreinformation, visit their website at http://www.indiana.edu/~swseel or contact them via email at swseel@indiana.edu.

Also, the following universities offer various levels ofKazakh:

- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor - University of Wisconsin, Madison - University of Washington - University of Arizona - University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - University of Chicago

WHERE CAN YOU OBTAIN RESOURCESFOR LEARNING KAZAKH?

Te Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region(CeLCAR) at Indiana University develops materials forlearning and teaching Central Asian languages. For moreinformation, visit our website at http://www.indiana.edu/~celcar.

Te Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center(IAUNRC) at Indiana University has a wide varietyof Kazakh books, videos, CDs, DVDs, costumes, andartifacts. Te center lends and ships these materialsfor use in the classroom free of charge. For moreinformation, visit their website or http://www.indiana.edu/~iaunrc or contact them at iaunrc@indiana.edu.

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the collapse of the Soviet-Union, Kazakh lexicon wentthrough a major de-Russication process. As a result,many Russian loanwords were replaced with the originalKazakh ones.

WHAT ALPHABET DO KAZAKHS USE?Troughout their history, Kazakhs used a numberof alphabets. Old urkic, a predecessor of all urkiclanguages, including Kazakh was recorded in therunic script. As the Kazakh language emerged in the

wake of the Mongol empire, the Perso-Arabic script was adopted. Under Soviet Russian rule, Kazakhadopted rst the Latin script and then the Cyrillicscript also used to write Russian. Tis Cyrillic scriptis well designed to t the language, using specialletters to represent the distinctive Kazakh sounds

with a completely phonetic spelling. oday Kazakhsof Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and of post-Soviet statescontinue using the Cyrillic alphabet. Only those inChina still use the Perso-Arabic script.

WHAT IS KAZAKH CULTURE LIKE?Kazakhstan is the heart of nomadic Central Asia. Forcenturies, the cities of southern Kazakhstan participatedin the cultural renaissance of the Silk Roads, while

nomadic conquerors

have repeatedly comeout from the Kazakhsteppes to build greatempires. Kazakhstan

was deeply inuencedby the Mongol worldempire, and manyKazakhs honor GenghisKhan as a national

hero. Like other urco-Mongolian peoples, the ancientnomads of Kazakhstan worshipped the sky deity engri.In the wake of the Mongol empire, the Kazakh khans

adopted Islam, and grew closer to the culture of thesouthern oasis cities. oday, almost all Kazakhs areSunni Muslims, but they also value the multi-ethnic andmulti-religious nature of Kazakhstan.

raditionally, Kazakhs are pastoral nomads,raising horses, sheep, goats, two-humped camels,and cattle. Horsemeat and fermented mare’smilk are stillfavorite Kazakhfoods. Sovietcollectivizationpolicies forced onKazakhs endedin famine anda mass out-migration ofKazakhs to theneighboring China. Beginning in the 1990s, dueto Kazakhstan’s economic boom, many ethnicKazakhs began returning to their historic landsfrom China, Mongolia and other post-Soviet states.Contemporary Kazakh culture is truly Eurasian: aunique blend of nomadic traditions, Russian andSoviet past and modern-day Western inuences.

Regional and clan inuences remain strong amongthe Kazakhs, who were traditionally divided intothree jüz (“hordes”): the Senior jüz, the Middle jüz,and the Junior jüz. Each jüz has a dozen or moredifferent clans, and although belonging to a certain

jüz or clan doesnot play a majorrole in people’s

social-economiclives todays, manyKazakhs are stillproud to identifythemselves withintheir jüz and knowtheir ancestors

within seven generations.

Kazakhs are avid musicians. Dombra, a traditionalKazakh musical instrument, accompanies allkinds of Kazakh ceremonies and get-togethers.raditionally, Kazakhs arrange song contests,

aitysh, during festivity or holidays and the publicchooses the best folk singer among the contestants.

Kazakhs are urkic people, traditionally nomads, who mostly live in Kazakhstan, the largest country

in Central Asia.

Kazakhstan occupiesthe vast grasslandsbetween Russia, China’s

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regionof China, and thethree smaller Central

Asian nations to thesouth: Kyrgyzstan,

urkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Many Kazakhs alsolive in Xinjiang, Mongolia, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

WHAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IS KAZAKH?Kazakh belongs to the urkic group of languages, whichincludes languages such as Uzbek, urkish, Uyghur, and

atar. urkic languages have been spoken across vastterritory from the Balkans to China for many centuries.Kazakh is the most widely spoken language of theKipchak sub-branch of the urkic languages.Kazakhs represent the majority of the population (65%)of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Kazakh is the officiallanguage of Kazakhstan. But until recently, it was rarelyused in administration and government. Since the

collapse of the Soviet Union, the general attitude towardKazakh has been changing, and government bodies havebeen switching to Kazakh.Kazakh is an agglutinative language in which suffixesthat indicate only one meaning are attached to the

word stem one after another in a set order. Unlikesome other Central Asian urkic languages, Kazakhalso has a vigorous system of vowel harmony in

which the vowels of the suffixes change to t thevowels in the stem. But Kazakh does not havethe difficulties that inecting languages have

with grammatical gender and multiple systems ofdeclension and conjugation.Te vocabulary of Kazakh has been inuenced by

Arabic, Persian, Mongolian, and Russian. However, after

WHO ARE THE KAZAKHS?