Kazakh alphabet

The Kazakh alphabets are the alphabets used to write the Kazakh language. The Kazakh language uses the following alphabets:

• The Cyrillic alphabet is officially used in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Bayan-Ölgiy Province in Mongolia. It is also used by native Kazakh populations belonging to the areas of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as diasporas in other countries of the former USSR. It was introduced by the Soviet Union in 1940.
• The Arabic alphabet is officially used in People's Republic of China in the Altay Prefecture and the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It is also used in Iran and Afghanistan. This is a modified script based on the alphabet used for Kazakh before 1927.
• A Latin alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet is unofficially used by the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey. The Kazakh diaspora also uses a surrogate Latin alphabet in Germany, the US and in other Western countries. As with other Central Asian Turkic languages, a Latin alphabet was introduced by the Soviets and used from 1927 to 1940 when it was replaced with Cyrillic.

Cyrillic alphabet

The Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet is used in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. In the nineteenth century, Ibrahim Altynsarin, a prominent Kazakh educator, first introduced a Cyrillic alphabet for transcribing Kazakh. Russian missionary activity, as well as Russian-sponsored schools, further encouraged the use of Cyrillic in the nineteenth...
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