Language Reference Guide For Kazakh

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Contents:

1. Grammar and Spelling
2. Punctuation
3. Measurements and Abbreviations
4. Hyphenation
5. Geographic Distribution
6. Character Set

Section One – Grammar and Spelling

1. Gender and Case: Kazakh has 3 genders and 7 cases. These are all easily recognisable, and they require agreements.

2. Articles: There are no articles in Kazakh, definite or indefinite.

3. One letter words: There is just one in Kazakh – ү, which means “poison”.

4. Accents: Kazakh has no accents.

Section Two – Punctuation

1. Full stops: These are used only to mark the end of a sentence, and not at the end of headings, titles, subtitles, bullet points, addresses, dates or no. of pages.

2. Speech marks: Speech marks are used exactly like in English except that after the inverted commas a hyphen is used instead of a comma.

3. Apostrophe: The apostrophe is not used in Kazakh.

4. Colons, semi-colons, ellipsis and brackets: These are all used similarly to English.

5. Capitalisation: Headings, product names, sentences, and proper names are capitalised. Days, seasons and months are not capitalised.

Section Three – Measurements and Abbreviations

1. Measurements: Kazakh uses the Metric system.

Decimals points are represented by a comma. Thousands in 4 digit numbers are not separated, as there is no specific rule for numbers of more than four digits.

Time: AM is replaced with the word morning and is placed before the time, e.g. маңертеңгi сағат 10.30 (10.30 am)/күндiзгi сағ 12.00 (noon)/кешкi сағ 4.30 (4.30 pm)/түн ортасы (midnight).

Date: The following formats show how the date is written in Kazakh.

A space is always left between a figure and a measurement abbreviation (including before °C), except in the case of a percentage, which has no space.

2. Abbreviations:

N/a -
No. (nos.) = №
e.g. = Мыс.
WxLxHxD = ЕхҰхБхД
1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th -
Mr. / Mrs. -
Messrs. = Бикеш
Miss = Апа
Dear Sir / Madam = Құрметтi мырза/ханым
m (for metre) = м
cm (for centimetre) = см
lb (for pound weight) = фунт
g (for gram) = г
km (for kilometre) = км
yr (for year) = year (ж)
k (for 1000) -
EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Asia) -

Days of the week: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun -

Months: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec -

Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (not normally abbreviated in English) -

Section Four – Hyphenation

The use of hyphenation is a common occurrence in the Kazakh language. The point at which hyphens appear is determined by syllabic structure, rather than by anything else.

Section Five – Geographic Distribution

Kazakh and Russian are official languages. The national languages are Kazakh, Russian, Korean, German and Uighurian. Legal and financial sectors use Kazakh and Russian. In the Media all national languages are common.

Kazakh is spoken principally in the Kazakh S.S.R. of the former Soviet Union, which stretches from the Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, and whose capital is Astana. There it is spoken by about 7 million people, with another 700 000/750 000 in the rest of the former Soviet Union, more than 1 million across the border in China, more than 100 000 in Mongolia and also by 650 000/700 000 people in Uzbekistan. Kazakh is one of the Turkic languages for which the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced just prior to World War II.

Kazakh is spoken/used in the following countries:
China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan.

Language Family
Family: Altaic
Subgroup: Turkic
Branch: Northwestern (Kipchak)

Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Kazakh - Copyright © Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, Published by Routledge.

Section Six – Character Set

[ ] = Alt key codes

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