А а — a
«a» is a vowel of Kazakh, the “Kazakh Cyrillic” script, read as “a as in "father"”. A pure open a, like the a of "father" — it never wanders toward "uh" the way an unstressed English a can. The back-vowel partner of ä. For example, in the word “ана” — mother. The Kazakh alphabet has 42 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “Рақмет” — thank you.
In short
| Character | А а |
| Name | a |
| Sound | a as in "father" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 1st of 42, after it comes ә, appears in roughly every other word on this site.
How it sounds
A pure open a, like the a of "father" — it never wanders toward "uh" the way an unstressed English a can. The back-vowel partner of ä
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- анаmother
The character in the “read them as written” group
Twenty-two letters that read exactly as you would guess. There is nothing to learn in them.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «a» it is “a as in "father"”, as in the word “ана”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 42 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Kazakh character а read?
As “a as in "father"” — it is a vowel of the “Kazakh Cyrillic” script. A pure open a, like the a of "father" — it never wanders toward "uh" the way an unstressed English a can. The back-vowel partner of ä. For example, in the word “ана” — mother.
What is the letter а called?
A. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Kazakh script: it is called “a” and reads as “a as in "father"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.