Languages of Kazakhstan

Languages of Kazakhstan
OfficialKazakh (state language), Russian
NationalKazakh language
MinorityKazakh; German; Uzbek; Ukrainian; Uyghur; Tatar; Kyrgyz; Azerbaijani; Korean;
ForeignEnglish, German
SignedKazakh Sign Language
Keyboard layout
SourceLanguages committee of the Ministry of culture and Sports
AlphabetKazakh 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 the 2021 census, and has the status of "state language". Russian, on the other hand, is spoken by 83.7% as of 2021. The Constitution of Kazakhstan does not give it any special status, only allowing its use in government "on an equal footing" with Kazakh. Russian is also used routinely in business 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.