LingoflyА а
«а» is a vowel of the Kazakh script, read as “a as in "father"”. Open and steady even without stress; it never fades to "uh". For example, in the word “ана” (Ana) — 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” (Raqmet) — thank you.
In short
| Character | А а |
| 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 to type А а
- On a phone: add the Kazakh keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0430 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0430.
- Unicode code points: а — U+0430, А — U+0410. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Open and steady even without stress; it never fades to "uh"
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.
- ана (Ana)mother
The character in the “twenty-two common letters” group
Five of them read the way they look: а к м о т. Five only look Latin: В is v, Н is n, Р is r, С is s, Х is kh. The other twelve are new shapes: eleven consonants and one vowel, ы.
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 «а» it is “a as in "father"”, as in the word “ана” (Ana)), 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 script. Open and steady even without stress; it never fades to "uh". For example, in the word “ана” (Ana) — mother.