Talk:Kazakh language

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Kazak in cyrillic should be written with a back k Dawit

Contents 1 Qaydar and Jenga transcriptions 2 Personal pronouns 3 Phonology section 4 phonemes 5 Kazakh Scouting 6 Kazakh language is within the scope of WikiProject Afghanistan??? 7 Tilashar language learning site 8 Phonology 9 Use of Kazakh vs. Russian in Kazakhstan 10 Description of Kazakh vowels

[edit] Qaydar and Jenga transcriptions

Is there anywhere I could find more information on these transcription systems, e.g., how they came about? I couldn't find anything relevant in Wikipedia articles, and Google searches led me back to Wikipedia. I can't seem to find any relevant information. Waynem 03:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

The Qaydar transcription was developed by a team of linguists under the leadership of Abdwali Qaydar (another spelling: Abduali Khaydar), to be consistent with the Latin alphabets of other Turkic languages. There is not much information about it in English.

I've never heard about the Janga transcription. "Janga" means "new" in Kazakh, and so probably it is not the name or last name of its creator (unlike Qaydar).

Conversions between Cyrillic and Qaydar's Latin alphabet can be made here: www.qaztranslit.com— Janibek and Kerey 19:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Personal pronouns

This table doesn't make sense. Either there is a grammatical sketch, or there isn't. And - without knowing Kazakh - I suspect that out of the eight pronouns given in the table, two are wrong (біэ and сіэдер). Where did Garzo get those from? —Babelfisch 01:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I know some Kazakh and the table looks correct to me. What exactly doesn't make sense? I = men, We = biz, You (to one person, younger than you or your peer) = sen, You (to several people, younger than you or your peers) = sender, You (to one person, older than you or to be polite) = siz, You (to several people, older than you or to be polite) = sizder, He/She/It (there is no sex difference for pronouns in Kazakh) = ol, They = olar.

[edit] Phonology section

User:Firespeaker sent me a private email (I'm not checking WP much these days) asking for some comments/help with this article. Here I respond publically and ask for more assistance. Things which I feel need further elucidation:—

1. Who's Vajda? Let's at least cite the work!
2. Kyrgyz vowel harmony. The Kyrgyz language article in barely there, so that's not going to help much. Observe that the further away from the root vowel you get, the less rounded vowels tend to be, and that it's optional, and here, this is how it works with phonetic IPA transcriptions. (If I'm right about the rule/s.)
3. Vowel harmony really should go into the vowels section. Maybe vowels should be moved above the consonants, if it's that important. On second thoughts, Vowel Harmony really deserves a full section on its own---potentially before the consonants and vowels, because it affects both. i.e. in Kazakh, it seems to me that it's front-back harmony, not front-back vowel harmony.
4. When we say "post-alveolar", do we mean postalveolar/retroflex, or palato-alveolar?
5. If you (Firespeaker) have the data (I think you said you did?) maybe we can draw up a chart like at Image:Bulgarian vowel chart.png. Include the tense vowels (but noted distinctly) and keep the chart so it's still obvious what the patterns are.

I've drawn up a working draft at User:Cassowary/Kazakh language phonology section (draft) which I hope people can comment on, correct, and move over when it's happy.

(Regarding the draft chart on my page, maybe we should extent ɑ into the complex section so it's obvious what the alternation is post-stress (if that is indeed the alternation). I just think it's a bit scary as it stands. (But we should be careful, because the harmonically rounded form of ɑ is ɒ, not wʊ, which it looks like on the old chart.)

There's also the folk at Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonetics who we might alert of this.

Thanks!

—Felix the Cassowary 13:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree on all accounts, and you're correctly informed on all points, except that ɑ rounds to wʊ in Kazakh (were you talking purely phonetically, or Kazakh-specific?). Or, in theory—I'm unsure whether I've heard ɑ round in Kazakh, but it's correct for Kyrgyz at least, where wʊ is somewhat more like [oriɡinal?] ɔ. —Firespeaker 23:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I must've misunderstood you then/confused Kazakh with another language. I suppose it depends on whether it rounds in practice (anything verifiable there?), or else we just go for the originally slightly ambiguous layout. (Have you read the draft? There's a few places where I'm obviously correctly informed, but it's not obvious which is correct, e.g. "does/does not" :) —Felix the Cassowary 03:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

ɑ rounding to ɒ is Tatar, and more lexifiedly/historically, Uzbek. —Firespeaker 14:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I think, Vajda might refer to Edward Vajda, a linguist who currently works on the Ket language; he used to work in the same institute as I do. I could imagine he is meant. — N-true 19:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] phonemes

The chart of consonant phonemes seems to be missing /q/. I don't know anything about the language myself, but it's listed as the pronunciation of <Қ> at Kazakh alphabet (and contrastive with /k/), given as an example at Voiceless uvular plosive, and shown in [qɑzɑq] at the top of the article. Are there other errors? Needs to be checked by someone knowledgeable. — Alan^✉ 22:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kazakh Scouting

Can someone render Dayyin Bol (Be Prepared), the Scout Motto, into Kazakh Cyrillic? Thanks! Chris 15:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I know it's been over a year, but if you need it, it is Дайын бол. Uvula! (talk) 00:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Kazakh language is within the scope of WikiProject Afghanistan???

WHY? 24.63.243.104 03:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Seems WikiProject Afghanistan uses a bot sometimes to tag articles. I removed it from this one. Otebig 05:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a significant number of Kazakh speakers in Afghanistan, but it looks like no one from WikiProject Afghanistan noticed the removal or cares, so maybe it's for the best. —Firespeaker (talk) 04:30, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tilashar language learning site

Hi, I noticed an IP added a link to this KZ language school site without any description. I've put one in, but my Russian is very basic so could someone else check this site is worth linking to? It doesn't have an English version. http://www.tilashar.kz/
— FIRE!^{in a crowded theatre...} 18:19, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Phonology

There's an error in the phonology section. I'm a Qazaq, and I know that ғ is pronounced ɣ (voiced velar fricative), not G (voiced uvular plosive). Our Language has only one uvular plosive, it is voiceless. Sorry for my bad English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.46.75.43 (talk) 10:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I've studied the basics of Kazakh with native speakers and as a linguist, I feel that there is some variation in the sound. First, it sounds to me that ғ is a uvular fricative rather than a velar one. Which is also more logical, considering that қ (uvular) is the form of к that you see before back vowels. Therefore the back-vowel form of г should also be uvular. Also, there are instances where the letter sounds more like a plosive than a fricative, particularly after ң, like in the word ыңғайлы. Wow, this website is the bee's knees! (talk) 20:52, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

This is correct. ‹ғ› is pronounced as a uvular fricative normally, and is a uvular stop after other stops, including nasals. —Firespeaker (talk) 04:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Use of Kazakh vs. Russian in Kazakhstan

It would be interesting to see a section of the article comparing the use and demographics of Kazakh speakers vs. Russian speakers living in Kazakhstan. Uvula! (talk) 00:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Description of Kazakh vowels

Could Kwamikagami give a thorough explanation why the section about vowels couldn't be simplified so that the unnecessary distinction of RTR would be left out? What would be most simple and straightforwardly descriptive would be a table of the following kind, based on the pronunciations given in IPA (which should also be probably checked):

Kazakh vowel phonemes

	Front		Back
Diphthongised	/i̯ə/, ‹е›	/y̯ʉ/, ‹ө›		/u̯ʊ/, ‹о›
Close	/ɘ/, ‹i›	/ʉ/, ‹ү›	/ə/, ‹ы›	/ʊ/, ‹ұ›
Open	/æ/, ‹ә›		/ɑ/, ‹а›

Frontness/backness, as has been noted during the last few decades, is not an articulatory feature, but based on auditory factors. Close vowels are not close because some part of the tongue were at a given height, but because their F1 is at the same level. However, this doesn't mean that the position of the tongue wouldn't correlate with it. It is the position of the back of the tongue that creates the F1 and F2 formants.

ATR and RTR, on the other hand, are used to distinguish certain vowels in some African languages, mostly, where the vowels are pronounced in other respects the same, but only differ as regards to ATR or RTR. So, there might be two /i/'s, with the other having +RTR and the other -RTR. However, if we see that a language has vowels of which some are auditorily front and some auditorily back, we use the features of frontness and backness to describe this difference, not ±RTR, even if we could detect that there's a difference in the position of the root of the tongue (we might indicate this in a narrow transcription and note that this is an accompanying secondary feature).

This issue may also be confused by the presence of vowel harmony. However, the phoneme inventory should be given in terms of phonetic features of the phonemes, and the rules of vowel harmony should be given separately. Vowel harmony is not necessarily bound to phonetics, and usually this isn't so if there have been sound changes in the vowels involved.

Please comment, and at least provide a reference for this Vajda, so that we can assess it. Same applies for the mention of Vajda in the consonants section, though that seems quite uncontroversial in other respects. -Kompar (talk) 08:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

First of all, I don't know Kazakh.

The Vajda ref came up in discussion with s.o. who does. Sorry, I can't provide the ref.

My objection was in "simplifying" the vowel system. I don't see a reason to. ±ATR is also an auditory feature, or it wouldn't be distinctive. (You can sometimes see a person's tongue tense up through their jaw, but that can hardly be the primary cue.) It very often sounds like a difference in height or backness. So the two /i/s in your example may be [i] and [e] in formant space. If the distinctive feature is ±ATR, however, then we do our readers a disservice by lumping it in with non-ATR systems, as if there were no difference; we also do our readers a disservice if we only report ATR systems from Africa, as if they were somehow unique to that continent. kwami (talk) 10:11, 18 September 2009 (UTC)