Culture and traditions of Language

Roots
Turkic, Mongol, and borrowings from Arabic, Persian, Slavic, western (Russian, soviet, and modern influences and trends).
Was formed as the language of the tribes in the Kazakh khanate in mid XV century, origin- political and social, turned into ethnic factor.

Kazakh language specifics
is a Turkic of Altaic family, early version of Kipshak.
Kazakh is an agglutinative, and it employs vowel harmony.

Today, Kazakh is written in the Cyrillic alphabet in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, while the more than one million Kazakh-speakers in China use an Arabic-derived script (tote-zhazu) similar to that used to write Uigur.
The oldest known written records of languages closely related to Kazakh were written in the Orphon script. However, it is not believed that any of these varieties were direct predecessors of Kazakh.
Modern Kazakh has historically been written using versions of the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts.

Kazakh language studies
Until Russian reforms of late 19 century, Kazakh language was oral, and writing was in Arabic. Literary language was formed by Abay since late XIX century. Before- Chagatai (koine turki).

Text of 1902

Complexity
Kazakh has a system of nine phonemic vowels, three of which are diphthongs.
Kazakh has 7 cases. Case endings are applied only to the last element of a noun phrase—e.g., a noun, an adject, or a nominalised verb phrase.
Kazakh has eight personal pronouns:
Kazakh may express different combinations of tense, aspect, and mood through the use of various verbal morphology or through a system of auxiliary verbs, many of which might better be considered light verbs.

Kazakh exhibits an evidentiality system which does not neatly align with morphological paradigms.
тазалап тастапты – he cleaned it and I saw the result
тазалап тастаған – he cleaned it, I saw the result and verified it with him
тазалап тастаған екен – he cleaned it and told me, but I probably didn't see the results
тазалап тастады – he cleaned it and I saw him clean it
тазалап тастағанға ұқсайды – he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this
тазалап тастаған шығар – he cleaned it, or so I infer from a result I saw which suggests this

Mankurtism: policy, process, participants and effects
Kazakhstan has been part of the USSR, whose state language was Russian, and it dominated and then replaced the usage of Kazakh in public, culture and social spheres. By 1991 majority of population could not speak Kazakh. That's why the Russian language kept its status as the official language in Kazakhstan even after its independence, which makes Kazakhstan a bilingual country.
Loss of connections with the ethnic group (memory, culture and traditions, history, language) was defined as mankurtism.

1) concept that predicted people without ethnic memory and identity could commit crimes against its people
2) deliberate policy against ethnicities and their cultures

Russian/soviet influence
1. Lexicon
2. Written form and script (until 1929- Arabic, 1929-1940 Latin, 1940- Cyrillic). the 42-letter alphabet based on Cyrillic, while maintaining all of 33 letters of the Russian alphabet and adding 9 letters for the sounds of the Kazakh language.
All language reforms were political-ideological to transform the mental map and civilizational path of nomads, disconnect with the Islamic world, prevent unity of Turkic groups in the USSR (fears of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism).

A Kazakh newspaper of 937

Russian was the language of interethnic communication throughout the Soviet Union. As the data from the censuses show, the share of the population speaking Russian constantly rose. Thus, for example, in Kazakhstan, the percentage of the non-Russian population that spoke Russian fluently in 1989 was 72.9 percent. For Kazakhs, the percentage was 64.1 percent.

русскоязычный поэт Б.Канапьянов:
Позабытый мной с детства язык,
Пресловутое двуязычие,
При котором теряю свой лик
И приобретаю двуличие.
Я пойму неизвестного мне
Уходящего аборигена,
Но когда я средь ночи во сне
Перед предком склоняю колено,
Сознаю, что не верит он мне,
Как пришельцу из тяжкого плена.
Усмехнётся он в той стороне:
Ты меня недостойная смена.

Nomadic legacy
Was dominant in Kazakh lexicon before the soviet modernization. Nomadic terminology is the richest in the world languages- over 3000 words. Among them only 300 refer to camel.

Borrowings (cases)- went through lexical and phonetic changes
From Greek- sciences, linguistics, philosophy- theorem, axiom, dinosaur, telephone, mixes - tele-didar
From Latin- in sciences, politics and medicine -autobus, accord, velosiped, Indii, lens.
From Arabic- religion, philosophy, politics, culture and arts, personal names.
From Persian – arts, literature, culture, personal names

Modern day borrowings- language globalization
Off-shore zone - оффшорлық аймақ, barter zhasau, videozhazba or beineclip, sponsor– демеуші, busnessman– кәсіпкер, president, parliament, etc.

Legal basis
Law on languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan (11 July, 1997, #151)- state language- Kazakh, Russian- for communication

Changes happened
Geographical names (toponames): Semipalatinsk- Semei, Aktubinks- Aktobe, Kokchatev- Kokshetau, Borovoye- Burabai, Issyk- Esil, Alma-Ata- Almaty, etc.