Languages of Kazakhstan

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 or sparsely populated areas
OfficialKazakh (national/state language), Russian (official)
NationalKazakh language
MinorityKazakh; German; Uzbek; Ukrainian; Uyghur; Tatar; Kyrgyz; Azerbaijani; Korean;
ForeignEnglish, German
SignedKazakh Sign Language
Keyboard layout
ЙЦУКЕН
The Kazakh keyboard.
SourceLanguages committee of the Ministry of culture and sports
AlphabetKazakh alphabets
Kazakh Braille
Language proficiency by age group

Kazakhstan is officially a bilingual country. Kazakh (part of the Kipchak sub-branch of the Turkic languages) is proficiently spoken by 80.1% of the population according to 2021 census, and has the status of "state language". Russian, on the other hand, is spoken by 83.7% as of 2021.[1] It has equal status to Kazakh as an "official language", and is used routinely in business, government, and inter-ethnic communication. However, only 63.4% of ethnic Kazakhs and 49.3% of the country's population are daily speakers of Kazakh language, according to the same census.[2]

Other languages natively spoken in Kazakhstan are Dungan, Ili Turki, Ingush, Plautdietsch, and Sinte Romani.[3] A number of more recent immigrant languages, such as Belarusian, Korean, Azerbaijani, and Greek are also spoken.[4][5]

  1. ^ "National census 2021 - Agency for Strategic planning and reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bureau of National statistics". stat.gov.kz. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
  2. ^ http://old.stat.gov.kz/api/getFile/?docId=ESTAT464825
  3. ^ Higgins, Andrew (12 May 2019). "A Mennonite Town in Muslim Central Asia Holds On Against the Odds". New York Times. New York City. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
  4. ^ О родном языке корейцев Казахстана [On the mother tongue of Kazakhstani Koreans] (in Russian)
  5. ^ "Kazakhstan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 21 December 2014.