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Kazakh language
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Kazakh language

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Also known as: Kazak language
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Last Updated: • Article History
Also spelled:
Kazak
Related Topics:
Kazakh literature
Northwestern Turkic languages

Kazakh language, member of the Turkic language family within the Altaic language group, belonging to the northwestern, or Kipchak, branch. The Kazakh language is spoken primarily in Kazakhstan and in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China but is also found in Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Afghanistan. The so-called Kipchak-Uzbek dialect is closely related to Kazakh and is considered by some to be a Kazakh dialect (its speakers, however, use the Uzbek literary language). See also Turkic languages.

The language was typically written using the Arabic script until the 20th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Kazakh was written in Latin script but was switched to Cyrillic script about two decades later. In 2017 Kazakhstan began transitioning back to writing Kazakh in the Latin script but rendered in a reformed system of spelling.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Zeidan.