Editing Kazakh language (section)

==History==

The [[Kipchak languages|Kipchak]] branch of Turkic languages, which Kazakh is borne out of, was mainly solidified during the reign of the [[Golden Horde]].  The modern Kazakh language is said to have originated in approximately 1465 AD during the formation of the [[Kazakh Khanate]].  Modern Kazakh is likely a descendant of both [[Chagatay Turkic]] as spoken by the [[Timurids]] and [[Kipchak languages|Kipchak Turkic]] as spoken in the Golden Horde.

Kazakh uses a high volume of loanwords from [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Arabic language|Arabic]] due to the frequent historical interactions between Kazakhs and [[Iranian peoples|Iranian ethnic groups]] to the south.  Additionally, Persian was a ''lingua franca'' in the [[Kazakh Khanate]], which allowed Kazakhs to mix Persian words into their own spoken and written vernacular.  Meanwhile, Arabic was used by Kazakhs in [[mosque]]s and [[mausoleum]]s, serving as a language exclusively for religious contexts, similar to how Latin served as a liturgical language in the Western European cultural sphere.
[[File:Cyrillic alphabet world distribution.svg|thumb|A geographical map of Cyrillic alphabet distribution.]]
The Kazakhs used the [[Arabic script]] to write their language until approximately 1929.  In the early 1900s, Kazakh activist [[Akhmet Baitursynov|Akhmet Baitursynuly]] reformed the Kazakh-Arabic alphabet, but his work was largely overshadowed by the Soviet presence in Central Asia.  At that point, the new Soviet regime forced the Kazakhs to use a Latin script, and then a Cyrillic script in the 1940s. Today, Kazakhs use the Cyrillic and Latin scripts to write their language, although a presidential decree from 2017 ordered the [[Kazakh alphabets|transition from Cyrillic to Latin]] by 2031.

Although not an endangered language, in 2024, Kazakh has been described as being placed in a somewhat vulnerable position by the Kazakhstani [[Minister of Science and Higher Education]] [[Sayasat Nurbek]], within a category where the number of speakers is not increasing as rapidly as anticipated.<ref>{{cite web |last= Najafzada|first= Leyla|date=25 October 2024 |language=en-GB|work=Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford|title= Introducing Kazakh to Oxford: An Interview with Minister Sayasat Nurbek|url= https://www.ames.ox.ac.uk/article/interview-kazakh-minister-higher-education-and-science}}</ref>