Words R Us
- Kazakh (kaz)

Kazakh is a Turkish language and member of the Kipchak branch of the Turkic language family. It is spoken mainly in Kazakhstan, China and Uzbekistan and also in Germany, Iran, Mongolia, Turkey and other countries. Of the 12.8 million speakers of Kazakh there are about 10 million in Kazakhstan, 1.25 million in China, almost 1 million in Uzbekistan, and about 100,000 in Mongolia.

Kazakh was first written with the Arabic script during the 19th century when a number of poets, educated in Islamic schools, incited revolt against Russia. Russia's response was to set up secular schools and devise a way of writing Kazakh with the Cyrillic alphabet, which was not widely accepted. By 1917, the Arabic script was reintroduced, even in schools and local government.

The Arabic script for Kazakh remains in official use in China and other regions where Kazakh is spoken outside of Kazakhstan and Russia. Unlike the basic Arabic alphabet, which is more properly called an abjad, the adapted Kazakh Arabic script is a true alphabet, with individual characters for each sound in the language.

Ethnologue recognizes three mutually intelligible dialect groups, Northeastern Kazakh, the most widely spoken variety which also serves as the basis for the standard language, Southern Kazakh and Western Kazakh. The language share a degree of mutual intelligibility with closely related Karakalpak while its Western dialects maintain limited mutual intelligibility with Altai languages.

Sources: Wikipedia
Omniglot