Languages of Kazakhstan
| Languages of Kazakhstan | |
|---|---|
The Kazakh-speaking world: regions where Kazakh is the language of the majority regions where Kazakh is the language of a significant minority or sparsely populated areas | |
| 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. 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.
Other languages natively spoken in Kazakhstan are Dungan, Ili Turki, Ingush, Plautdietsch, and Sinte Romani. A number of more recent immigrant languages, such as Belarusian, Korean, Azerbaijani, and Greek are also spoken.