Languages of Kazakhstan | |
---|---|
Official | Kazakh (national/state language), Russian (official) |
National | Kazakh language |
Minority | Kazakh; German; Uzbek; Ukrainian; Uyghur; Tatar; Kyrgyz; Azerbaijani; Korean; |
Foreign | English, German |
Signed | Kazakh Sign Language |
Keyboard layout | |
Source | Languages committee of the Ministry of culture and sports |
Alphabet | Kazakh alphabets Kazakh Braille |
Kazakhstan is officially a bilingual country. Kazakh (part of the Kipchak sub-branch of the Turkic languages) is proficiently spoken by 80.1% of the population according to 2021 census, and has the status of "state language". Russian, on the other hand, is spoken by 83.7% as of 2021.[1] It has a status of "official language", rather than the "state language" Kazakh, and is used routinely in business, government, and inter-ethnic communication. However, only 63.45% of ethnic Kazakhs and 49.3% of the country's population are daily speakers of Kazakh language, according to the same census.[2]
Other languages natively spoken in Kazakhstan are Dungan, Ili Turki, Ingush, Plautdietsch, and Sinte Romani.[3] A number of more recent immigrant languages, such as Belarusian, Korean, Azerbaijani, and Greek are also spoken.[4][5]