LingoflyЫ ы — y
«y» is a vowel of the Kazakh script, read as “uh, like the a of "about"”. Short and unrounded, said further back than i. For example, in the word “қыз” (Qyz) — girl. The Kazakh alphabet has 42 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “Сау болыңыз” (Sau bolyñyz) — goodbye.
In short
| Character | Ы ы |
| Name | y |
| Sound | uh, like the a of "about" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 37th of 42, its neighbours in the course are ъ and і, appears in roughly every fifth word on this site.
How to type Ы ы
- 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+044B 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 044B.
- Unicode code points: ы — U+044B, Ы — U+042B. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Short and unrounded, said further back than i
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.
- қыз (Qyz)girl
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 «y» it is “uh, like the a of "about"”, as in the word “қыз” (Qyz)), 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 ы read?
As “uh, like the a of "about"” — it is a vowel of the Kazakh script. Short and unrounded, said further back than i. For example, in the word “қыз” (Qyz) — girl.
What is the letter ы called?
Y. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Kazakh script: it is called “y” and reads as “uh, like the a of "about"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.