Life and culture
Extra reading
A language with a rich history
How many languages do you speak?
What do you know about the history of the Kazakh language?
A thousand years ago, the Kazakh language didn't exist. The main
language of communication in central Asia was Old Turkic. The Old
Turkic alphabet was different from languages today.
Many historians think that people began to communicate in
Kazakh in the 17th century, but it didn't have a written form.
Storytellers, or akyns, travelled from one village to another, telling
stories from Kazakh history. Kazakh wasn't written down until the second half of the
19th century, when educated people such as Abay Kunanbayev wrote about their
country in Kazakh.
At first, Kazakh was written in the Arabic script, and this continued until the 1920s.
Then, for a time, many people wrote the language in the Roman alphabet. After 1940,
Kazakh was written in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. These changes to the written
form explain why, in some countries (for example, China) Kazakh is written in the
Arabic script, and in other places, it is written in Cyrillic.
Over 18 million people speak Kazakh in the world today:
about 16 million in Kazakhstan, 1.2 million in China,
500,000 in Russia, and 100,000 in Mongolia. Smaller
numbers of people speak the language in Iran and
Afghanistan, Turkey and Germany. In Kazakhstan itself,
about half the people speak Kazakh as their first language
and about half speak Russian. Many people can speak both.
Many Kazakh words describe a traditional way of life in
Kazakhstan. For example, balykshi (fisher) and eginshi
(grain-grower) describe traditional jobs. So if people can
understand Kazakh, it helps them understand the history
and culture of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is home to many different people who have different traditions and
languages. On 22nd September every year there is a “Day of Languages' which
celebrates all the languages people speak in the country.
vador
LP
BOUT KAZAKH
Che Kazakh language'
Қазақ тілі) was written
ce this in the Arabic
ript:
Task
Read the text and these sentences. For each sentence write T (true),
F (false) or ? (the text doesn't say). Correct the false sentences.
1 Old Turkic had the same alphabet as Kazakh today.
2 People wrote Kazakh first and then spoke it years later.
3 Abay Kunanbayev's stories were translated into different languages.
4 The written form of the Kazakh language changed over time.
5 Today, most people write Kazakh using the Arabic script.
6 The Kazakh language has many words which show how people lived
الیت قاز
was written like this in
Roman alphabet:
zak tili
in the past.
7 The 'Day of Languages' celebrates the English language.
Unit 1
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