How to read in Kazakh
Cyrillic plus nine letters of its own: ä, ğ, q, ñ, ö, ū, ü, h, i The script is called “Kazakh Cyrillic”; it has 9 letters. You take it a few characters per session — in a week or two a shop sign stops being a picture.
Nine letters you have never met
The Kazakh alphabet has 42 letters. Thirty-three of them are the Cyrillic set used across the region. You learn such a letter once, and it reads the same in every word after that.
What you actually have to learn is the nine extras, because they carry the sounds English does not have: ä, ğ, q, ñ, ö, ū, ü, h, i.
About the Latin script: Kazakhstan is switching to it gradually, but everyday life, documents and the internet today still run on Cyrillic. The course is built on it.
| letter | sound | closest English anchor |
|---|---|---|
| ä | broad eh | between the a of "cat" and the e of "bed" |
| ö | front-row o | the vowel of "learn" without the r |
| ü | front-row u | say "ee" with rounded lips |
| ū | short oo | the lips barely rounded |
| i (dotted) | short i | like the i of "sit" |
| q | deep k | from the very back of the throat |
| ğ | voiced throat sound | the same place as q, with the voice on |
| ñ | nasal n | like the ng of "song" |
| h | a breath | exactly the h of "hat" |
Why learn this: the vowels choose the ending
The five new vowels are not decoration. In Kazakh every vowel of a word belongs to one row, front or back, and the ending follows that row. Get the row wrong and the ending is wrong — and endings here carry case, person, number and tense.
Back: a, o, ū, y. Front: ä, ö, ü, i, e.
The consonants obey too: q and ğ occur only in back words, their front partners are k and g. See a q, and you know the endings will be back-row.
| vowels | the ending follows |
|---|---|
| back | qala (city) → qalada (in the city) |
| front | üy (house) → üyde (at home) |
- ҮйдеAt home — a front word with the front ending -de
- ҚаладаIn the city — a back word with the back ending -da
- КітаптаIn the book — after i the ending softens to the front row
What order to take the characters in
The writing course is split into 2 steps: one step is one lesson, a few characters at a time. Nobody takes the whole script at once out of mercy: 9 letters in an evening stay in memory for exactly that, an evening.
- 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.
- 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.
Frequently asked
How many characters do you need to learn to read in Kazakh?
9 letters, and you can already read some of them. After that a word stops being a picture — even when its meaning is still unknown.
What to learn first: letters or words?
Letters. A word in an unfamiliar script cannot be read at all, and a “word — translation” card tells you no more than a picture does.
How long does it take to learn to read in Kazakh?
One step a day — 2 days. That is about recognizing characters, not understanding: you will start reading aloud before you understand what you read.