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 | |
| Official | Kazakh (national/state language), Russian (official) |
| National | Kazakh language |
| Minority | Kazakh; German; Uzbek; Ukrainian; Uyghur; Tatar; Kyrgyz; Azerbaijani; Korean; |
| Foreign | English, German |
| Signed | Kazakh Sign Language |
| Keyboard layout | |
| Source | Languages committee of the Ministry of culture and Sports |
| Alphabet | Kazakh alphabets Kazakh Braille |
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 a status of "official language", rather than the "state language" Kazakh, and is used routinely in business, government, and inter-ethnic communication. However, only 63.45% 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]
Languages
The following table shows the share of the population that can speak the language according to the 2021 census:[6]
| Language | % | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Russian | 83.7 | Cyrillic |
| Kazakh | 80.1 | Cyrillic, Latin |
| English | 35.1 | Latin |
| Uzbek | 2.5 | Latin, Cyrillic |
| Uyghur | 0.9 | Perso-Arabic, Latin |
| Turkish | 0.6 | Latin |
| German | 0.6 | Latin |
| Tatar | 0.5 | Cyrillic |
| Azerbaijani | 0.5 | Cyrillic, Latin, Perso-Arabic |
| Korean | 0.3 | Hangul |
| Kyrgyz | 0.2 | Cyrillic, Perso-Arabic |
| Belarusian | 0.1 | Cyrillic |
| Ukrainian | 0.1 | Cyrillic |
| Chinese | 0.1 | Chinese characters |
| Chechen | 0.1 | Cyrillic |
| French | 0.1 | Latin |
| Arabic | 0.1 | Arabic alphabet |
| Other | 2.7 | — |
See also
References
- ^ "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.
- ^ http://old.stat.gov.kz/api/getFile/?docId=ESTAT464825
- ^ 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.
- ^ О родном языке корейцев Казахстана [On the mother tongue of Kazakhstani Koreans] (in Russian)
- ^ "Kazakhstan". Ethnologue. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
- ^ National composition, religion and language proficiency in the Republic of Kazakhstan (PDF). Astana: Bureau of National Statistics of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan. 2023. p. 323.
