Kazakh Language Problems in Kazakhstan

Draft

Prepared by: Daniyar Aliyev, 20123362

Academic Reading and Writing II

Reviewer: Olga Gladkova

Spring 2012

By choosing the topic for this research I’ve chosen the Kazakh Language problem. What I mean by writing the statement «Kazakh Language Problem?» By writing such statement I mean that Kazakh language ignorance reached such index that Kazakhstani people and State government should make urgent measures to solve this problem, because if this problem process will be launched, stop and solve this problem will be extremely hard. My research paper will investigate the academic article which I have read and I will provide results of survey that I did among the 48 persons that differs each other by age, social class, interests and ideas. So I will provide what the reasons of this language problem existing nowadays in Kazakhstan, and what other problems may be created by this language problem. I will briefly underline 5 main reasons why Kazakh language problem is becoming dangerous. First reason is – lack of practice and unsuitable environment for learning. Second reason is – established stereotypes of Kazakhstani citizens, this reason will be difficult to change, I’ would rather say: if Kazakhstani citizens will break this stereotype it will be much easier to solve this language problem. In my survey I’ve asked a lot of people, in order to check do these stereotypes really exist. I’ve also asked a lot of question about personal attitude of each respondent to Kazakh Language; I guess that results of this survey will be useful and interesting. Third reason – is improper motivation of state government. I want to say that I will not criticize our national government; I just want to write that this support is not enough in order to solve this issue, in my body section I’ll provide more information about this reason. The fourth reason Kazakh language – lack of the Kazakh language prestige. And last, fifth reason, I suppose one of the main reasons as well it is outdated methods of Kazakh language teaching. I underlined 5 main reasons why Kazakh language problem is existing in Kazakhstan, I want to notice one interesting fact: there is no such kind of problems when citizens of the state does not using their own native language, so Kazakhstan has this linguistic language problem, that maybe will be solved in near future.

So I want do describe each reason more detailed, with providing experts attitude, their evaluation of this problem as well. I will start with firs reason – Lack of practice and unsuitable environment that interferes to use and learn Kazakh language. Linguist from Almaty – (Zhanna Ummatova) believes that over of 20 years of independence of Kazakhstan there has not appeared any sphere of activity where only one state language functioned, in order people began to speak Kazakh language or even began to learn it, language environment is needed. Zhanna gave an example when people that was under the language policy was changed society consciousness and they started to study language, Zhanna believes that environment impose the mark. Words of Zhanna Ummatova: «I’also once didn’t know Kazakh language because I grew up in USSR. In schools Kazakh people scared to use Kazakh language they complexes of that because other pupils immediately started to cuss, in university where I studied almost everyone asked me the same question, «You’re Kazakh, why don’t you know your native language?» - I didn’t know what to answer», despite of such behavior of my classmates and teachers, I didn’t start to learn Kazakh, only when I married, I started to learn it, because my husband was from the province and didn’t know any word from Russian language – this is was my motivation to learn my native language, who knows, maybe if I would not found my husband’ I’ve still didn’t know Kazakh, who knows?» - from these words you can see the personal experience of professional linguist, I have described the first reason, and I’m going to describe the second.

The second reason is – established stereotypes of Kazakhstani citizens.

Another professional linguist (Zhanar Ibrayeva) thinks that some part of Kazakhstan people live in the power of stereotypes. Zhanar says that motivation is really needed; still our citizens suppose that Kazakh kindergartens are worth than Russian or international kindergartens, such thoughts are also connected with schools. According to the experts consciousness didn’t change, here are the questions of language prestige, ideology and personal choices, but if you deeper see in Kazakh language ideology we have some positive moments – people with little steps begin to trust Kazakh language schools and kindergartens.

A third reason as you know is – improper motivation of state government. Professional expert and linguist Samiga Salimova finds that motivation that government gave Kazakhstani citizens in order to learn Kazakh language is not right. Government introduced the law, when all companies which work on territory of Kazakhstan should also use documents on Kazakh language, Samiga thinks that such measure will not push workers of companies learn Kazakh, instead of this there will be more work for translator – this is only difference between when the law was not introduced. Samiga is suggesting that extra money for workers who translated all documents by themselves will be more useful measure neither this law that called «сclerical work»

Fourth reasons why language problem exist in Kazakhstan is – Kazakh language low prestige. If Kazakh language will have more prestige, most of Kazakhstani people will want to learn Kazakh, this is a very difficult step that need to be achieved

Methods of Kazakh language teaching – is the last fifth reason. - «When methods of teaching will be changed, there will be a great wish to learn Kazakh» - believes professional expert and linguist Samiga Salimova, «language will not be so difficult as today» - she adds.
«We cannot learn Kazakh for 10 years, when English we can learn for few years», Samiga does not understand why government don’t make more measures in order to make situation better.
These reasons that I’ve described creates a lot of other different problems that our citizens is facing every day. If Kazakhstani people will not practice Kazakh language, this language can be simply forgotten, though we have a positive moment, there is no such kind of problem in countries and provinces; this problem is more serious in the cities. We cannot loose our language, if Kazakh language will be not as useful as other languages like Russian and English, Kazakhstani people will loose the part of their culture I will start with main problem – problem of communication. As you understand nowadays citizens who are speaking Kazakh cannot speak with citizens who know only Russian and vice versa. This communication barrier should not exist in Kazakhstan.

According to the experts (Samiga Salimova) government does not motivate people in order to use language in proper way, the problem in this question is not only a governmental motivation, Ivan Tutyurikov (2012) believes that if people will not show their desire to study language no one method will help them in order to achieve this goal. Indeed in Ivan Tutyurikov’s words there is some logic, if there would not be initiative from side of people, this kind of motivation is doomed to failure. And to tell the truth solve this problem will be very difficult without Kazakhstani citizens help.

There is one more problem that I want to write here. This is problem of Kazakh language popularization and it use. Kazakh language is not being popularized. For example if you want to see the movie in the cinema you’ll not find the movie which would be shown on Kazakh language, I think this quite simple situation shows our Kazakhstan republic people attitude to this language, also if you’re want to buy some famous book and you’ll come to the book shop or even library you also will not find this book which was printed exactly on Kazakh, I can give a lot of other examples where Kazakh language is not used, by proving such situations I just want to show what is the attitude to Kazakh language in Kazakhstan.

I described main reasons why Kazakh language problem is exist in our country, I have also wrote about problems that this issue creates to the society of Kazakhstan and for it government. Therefore I want to underline possible solutions, I will use the information from the academic articles which I have read, these possible solutions were given by professional experts in this field, this people are well-experienced linguist that understand all seriousness of this issue. Linguists believes that Kazakh language is need to be more prestigious, what we mean by writing the word «prestigious?» First of all Kazakh language should be actual, useful spoken language, or even if it will be «fashionable» to speak Kazakh it also will be very good, it is not a secret that 89 % of people who live in big cities of Kazakhstan use Russian language (official statistics by «KAZ Inform.») It’s very important to high-up the prestige of Kazakh language right now, because nowadays we have people among us who grown-up in Kazakh language environment, I mean this people are – elder grandparents, we should take all knowledge from them, listen to their advices, and use other beneficial information which they can give us. You know that Kazakhstan state is very young country with young population, according to the statistics average age of our Kazakhstani citizens is 36 year. It is a very low index, and just imagine if after some time approximately 10-15 years there will be another generation of children, young people who will not practicing or even study Kazakh language – because of their parents also didn’t. This is a very serious moment. What measures can be done in order to high-up the level of Kazakh language? Professional linguist – Zhanar Ibrayeva believes that older generation should give an example to young people and for children also by trying use Kazakh language, it’s very difficult to speak Kazakh when you don’t know it properly but Zhanar insists that after some time of practice the level of language speaking will be increasing, and prestige of this language will be high as well. From the governmental side also can be done some measures, TV shows, films and soap operas must be also showed in Kazakh language. This type of popularization will increase the prestige of language. Another important sector of popularization of language that will help to high up the prestige of Kazakh language is – prints. Famous magazines such as «Cosmopolitan», «Top Gear», «Sports review», «Forbes», should be printed on Kazakh language as well, and this popularization should not concern only at magazines, newspapers should be printed on Kazakh as well. Thousand of people is reading such prints every day, most of these prints are publishing on Russian, and actually there was no so many prints on Kazakh as on Russian language. So people who know Kazakh better than Russian do not have an opportunity to read and liberalize. This possible solution seems to me not bad in order to solve the language problem in Kazakhstan.

Another possible solution that may help to solve this problem is re-constructing methods of Kazakh language studying and whole education system. All education system beginning from the kindergarten and ending the universities should work in such way, that after ending the whole process of education student can clearly express his thought and ideas, but I have some statistics that shows negative statistics: according to the official statistics of UNT (United National Test) for last 5 years 537.000 thousand students participated in this test, and 112.000 students failed Kazakh language test, it means that each 5^th graduated student that ended school and studied Kazakh for at least 8 years don’t know it very well. It is very sad fact. In order to prevent such statistics in future, government should make new model of education, and pay attention on Kazakh language teaching methods. All counties in the world think a lot of their language system learning system, if you’ll see English and Chinese most famous and useful languages in the world, that millions of people want to learn, and the number of people who want to learn this languages is only increasing. So as I mentioned before outdated methods of Kazakh language teaching need to be changed – this is accepted by results of the statistical survey which was held for last 5 years. Methodology of Kazakh language learning is some kind of base that should be very strong otherwise will not be solved the language problem.

I’ve mentioned possible solutions to this issue, now I want to describe some facts and other interesting ideas which I’ve found from the results of the survey.

According to these results I have identified that most of the respondents is thinking that Kazakh language is not under the danger, despite of this fact respondents noticed that Kazakh language is not useful in their everyday speech. Most of the respondents underlined that they use Kazakh language sometimes only because of that, that not many people is speaking on Kazakh. Respondents was also asked a question that touched on difficulties with Kazakh language studying, all answers which I got from the participants were different. Twenty percent of respondents admitted that to study Kazakh language most difficult is difficult grammar which is very hard to understand and hard to remember, this statistics shows that our learning methods should be changed, this issue should be improved by professional linguists and specialist who are working on creation of studying textbooks. The main important thing in this issue is to create a special education system which will work from the kindergartens and ends in the universities, step by step, Kazakh language level should high-up, progress in studying the languages is very important, so in order to create this well-structured education system, experts and specialists should have a very strong base that will help them to push the progress further. By writing the statement: «strong base» Maira Yessimova – professional teacher of Kazakh language, means that not only teachers and education systems should push people to learn and study Kazakh language, Maira thinks that children in their childhood should use Kazakh language they should watch on parents or relatives speaking Kazakh, if child will speak Kazakh from the childhood, after some time knowledge of Kazakh language each day will be increasing, also Maira suggest to speak Kazakh language not only for children but also for students and people who are working, Maira suggest to use Kazakh as much as possible, use it on the free time, use, and do not be shy. Practice of language it is a serious step for achieving the main goal. Maira Yessimova is sure that one day there will be no person in Kazakhstan who would not know Kazakh at all.

There is more facts that I’ve didn’t expect to have from my survey. I’ve asked a very simple question to my participants: «If somebody will ask you the direction of exact street on Kazakh, will you help to this person?», results of this questions were unexpected, most of the participants answered that they had rather not to help to this person at all, most of the respondents also said that they would feel themselves shy and go in other way. These results showed that if somebody don’t know Kazakh or Russian as well, there will be communication problems, it is very dangerous problem. As you know Kazakhstan it is an international country where lives all over 130 nationalities, and it is very important that all people who are living in Kazakhstan communicate with other people without any barriers that will interfere the communication. As you know we have a lot of people from such countries as: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia and Turkey. All these languages were based on Turkic culture, all these languages has a lot of similar words and letters, so that’s why make them understandable to each other, but there not only people from mid-Asia continent. There’re a lot of people who came from Europe, and European countries, it is not the secret that most of that people use Russian language – most useful international language in our country. So sum-up my mind I want to say, in order to prevent communication problems people who are not enough know Russian, and people who are not know Kazakh should learn Russian and Kazakh as well. It is very important point in this language problem. So, according to my survey, as I said earlier, the communication problem is exist in Kazakhstan and results of my survey accept this statement.

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