LingoflyЯ я — ya
«ya» is a vowel of the Kazakh script, read as “ya as in "yard"”. A y and an a said together. For example, in the word “аяз” (ayaz) — palm (of the hand). The Kazakh alphabet has 42 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. It appears, for example, in the word “Аяқ” (Ayaq) — leg.
In short
| Character | Я я |
| Name | ya |
| Sound | ya as in "yard" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 42nd of 42, before it comes ю, appears in 113 words of this site.
How to type Я я
- 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+044F 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 044F.
- Unicode code points: я — U+044F, Я — U+042F. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A y and an a said together
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.
- аяз (ayaz)palm (of the hand)
The character in the “letters for two sounds” group
Each of them hides a second sound. е gets a y before it at the start of a word, and ю and я are y plus a vowel. и is a short vowel plus y, and у is w, or a short vowel plus w.
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 «ya» it is “ya as in "yard"”, as in the word “аяз” (ayaz)), 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 я read?
As “ya as in "yard"” — it is a vowel of the Kazakh script. A y and an a said together. For example, in the word “аяз” (ayaz) — palm (of the hand).
What is the letter я called?
Ya. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Kazakh script: it is called “ya” and reads as “ya as in "yard"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.