EVERYTHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE KAZAKH LANGUAGE

There are three languages that are extremely close to one another, so much so that under different political or historical circumstances, they could be considered dialects of the same language. These languages are Kazakh, Nogai, and Karakalpak. Their shared vocabulary, grammar, and phonetic features reflect a common linguistic foundation that only later developed into three separate modern languages.

Desht-i-Kipchak, the medieval name for the vast Kipchak Steppe that formed the heartland of the Golden Horde, was also the linguistic homeland from which modern languages like Kazakh, Nogai, and Karakalpak directly evolved. It is difficult to say exactly when it appeared in this form. Turkic languages are extremely conservative: they evolve slowly and structural changes unfold over long periods of time. This is why even the Codex CumanicusiThe Codex Cumanicus is a fourteenth-century linguistic manual containing dictionaries, grammar notes, and religious texts in Latin, Persian, and Kipchak Turkic, which serves as a critical resource for understanding the language and culture of the Cumans of the Desht-i-Kipchak steppe. can be read almost freely by modern Turkic speakers. Therefore, pinpointing the exact starting point of Desht-i-Kipchak is difficult, but we know that it lies quite far back in time.

Almost all basic vocabulary in Kazakh falls into this category. For example, any everyday word that comes to mind—such as bas (head), köz (eye), qol (hand)—comes from the Kipchak layer. In fact, roughly 90 per cent of the Kazakh lexicon has Kipchak roots, which shows just how deeply this linguistic history underpins the language spoken today.

Islam brought the Arabic script and a significant layer of Arabic and Persian vocabulary. This is natural: just as Greek and Latin words are integral to European languages, Arabic and Persian words became an organic part of Kazakh. In addition, the Mongolian language influenced Kazakh phonetics through centuries of contact and mixing.

The Chagatai language was based on the Karluk dialects, the ancestor of modern literary Uzbek. For centuries, it functioned as the primary written language across an enormous territory—essentially the entire Turkic-Muslim world outside of Turkey and Azerbaijan. And due to its immense geography, it naturally developed many local variations. The version common in the Volga region, for example, had noticeable differences from the form used in Turkestan.

On this basis, during the Soviet era, artificial terms, such as ‘Old Tatar’ and ‘Old Uzbek’ were introduced. The purpose was obvious—to divide the historiography of these peoples. For instance, why wasn’t the language in which Zheti ZhargyiThe Zheti Zhargy (in Kazakh, Жеті Жарғы; in English, Seven Charters) was a legal code introduced in the Kazakh Khanate by Tauke Khan. It enforced strict justice, including the death penalty for rebellion, treason, murder, adultery, and theft. Other laws mandated compensation for injuries and severe penalties for horse theft. was written called ‘Old Kazakh’? That’s the real question—because it very well could have been. However, a different narrative was imposed, and Kazakhs were portrayed as a people without a written tradition, literature, or writing system. Within that framework, acknowledging an ‘Old Kazakh’ written language simply did not fit the story. And so the term was never adopted, even though it would have been entirely justified.

This happened when political borders became fixed and modern ethnic groups were finally formed on this basis in the seventeenth century, well after the establishment of the Kazakh Khanate. From that period onward, we can probably speak of a distinct Kazakh language, even though, in fact, the same language had existed for many centuries already. But it is only from this moment in history that it becomes accurate, in a modern sense, to call it ‘Kazakh’.

Its impact was not cultural in the broad, transformative sense that later occurred during the Soviet period. There was no large-scale assimilation or systematic language policy aimed at reshaping everyday speech. Of course, new words did appear, but these were related to new realities and concepts entering everyday life, practical borrowings rather than signs of deep cultural influence.

It went smoothly. Most people simply learned to write because for them, it wasn’t an abandonment of tradition. The real rupture came later, when the Cyrillic script replaced the Latin script. When it became clear that the globalist socialist revolution would not materialize, the USSR decided to ‘turn inward’, promoting Cyrillic as a unifying script for the Soviet milieu.

Soon, Cyrillic became a symbol of the new cultural standard. As part of this turn, the alphabets of the Turkic languages were deliberately redesigned to be different from one another, making it impossible for Turkic-speaking peoples to read each other’s texts and gradually weakening their cultural and linguistic connections.

Perhaps the Turkic languages would be closer to one another today. Even the Turks and Azerbaijanis, whose languages are nearly identical, now require specialized dictionaries for modern terminology. With a shared Latin script, we might have preserved a common linguistic space, allowing Turkic languages to grow in parallel and remain more interconnected.

In my opinion, it is a step toward closer ties with the wider Turkic world. At the same time, the Latin alphabet is a global script that moves us beyond the post-Soviet sphere, whereas Cyrillic belongs to the Slavic–Orthodox cultural domain. If we are building an independent state with its own cultural trajectory, adopting a global alphabet is a logical step.

This is an excerpt from a conversation with linguist Timur Kozyrev about the Kazakh language. You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel Qalam History.