Kazakh exhibits tongue-root vowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of Russian or Arabic origin) as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which does not apply as strongly and is not reflected in the orthography.
Consonants[]
The following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh;[1] many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loan-words. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are without parentheses—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what is shown. The phonemes /f/, /v/, /t͡ɕ/ and /x/ only occur in recent borrowings, mostly from Russian.
In the table, the elements left of a divide are voiceless, while those to the right are voiced.
| Labials | Alveolar | (Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | Uvular | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m ⟨м/m⟩ | n ⟨н/n⟩ | ŋ ⟨ң/ń⟩ | |||||||
| Stop | p ⟨п/p⟩ | b ⟨б/b⟩ | t ⟨т/t⟩ | d ⟨д/d⟩ | tɕ ⟨ч/ch⟩ | k ⟨к/k⟩ | ɡ ⟨г/g⟩ | q ⟨қ/q⟩ | ||
| Fricative | f ⟨ф/f⟩ | v ⟨в/v⟩ | s ⟨с/s⟩ | z ⟨з/z⟩ | ɕ ⟨ш/sh⟩ | ʑ ⟨җ/j⟩ | χ ⟨х/h⟩ | ʁ ⟨ғ/ǵ⟩ | ||
| Approximant | l ⟨л/l⟩ | j ⟨й/ı⟩ | w ⟨у/ý⟩ | |||||||
| Rhotic | ɾ ⟨р/r⟩ | |||||||||
Vowels[]
Kazakh has a system of 12 phonemic vowels, 3 of which are diphthongs. The rounding contrast and /æ/ generally only occur as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but do occur later allophonically; see the section on harmony below for more information. Moreover, the /æ/ sound has been included artificially due to the influence of Arabic, Persian and, later, Tatar languages during the Islamic period.
According to Vajda, the front/back quality of vowels is actually one of neutral versus retracted tongue root.
Phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakh's Cyrillic and current Latin alphabets.
| Front (−RTR) |
Central (0RTR) |
Back (+RTR) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ɪ ⟨і/i⟩ | ʉ ⟨ү/ú⟩ | ʊ ⟨ұ/u⟩ |
| Diphthong | jɪ ⟨е/e⟩ | əj ⟨и/í⟩ | ʊw ⟨у/ý⟩ |
| Mid | e ⟨э/e⟩ | ə ⟨ы/y⟩ | o ⟨о/o⟩ |
| Open | æ ⟨ә/á⟩ | œ̝ ⟨ө/ó⟩ | ɑ ⟨а/a⟩ |
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | ɪ ⟨і/i⟩ | ʉ ⟨ү/ü⟩ | ə ⟨ы/ı⟩ | ʊ ⟨ұ/u⟩ |
| Open | e ⟨э/e⟩ / æ ⟨ә/ä⟩ | œ̝ ⟨ө/ö⟩ | ɑ ⟨а/a⟩ | o ⟨о/o⟩ |
References[]
- ↑ Some variations occur in the different regions where Kazakh is spoken, including outside Kazakhstan; e.g. ж / ج (where a Perso-Arabic script similar to the current Uyghur alphabet is used) is read [ʑ] in standard Kazakh, but [d͡ʑ] in some places.