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<h1>More than 20 percent of Kazakh citizens speak three languages</h1>
<p class="gmail-byline">By Dana Omirgazy <em>in</em> <a href="https://astanatimes.com/category/nation/" rel="category tag">Nation</a> <em>on</em> 28 March 2018</p>
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<p>ASTANA – Approximately 83 percent of the country’s population
speak the Kazakh language and 22 percent of the adult population can
speak three languages, Minister of Culture and Sport Arystanbek
Mukhamediuly said at a March 27 government meeting, quoting a 2017
census.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_28690" style="width:725px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-alignnone"><a href="https://astanatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/123189-image.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-28690"><img class="gmail-wp-image-28690 gmail-size-full" src="https://astanatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/123189-image.jpg" alt="123189-image" width="715" height="403"></a><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Photo credit: <a href="http://kazpravda.kz">kazpravda.kz</a></p></div>
<p>“To implement the project on promoting the trilingual education
policy, 610 civil servants of central executive agencies attended state
language courses last year. In 2016, their number was 300 people. Last
year, 58,348 trainees underwent state language courses in the Language
Training Centres. As of today, 89 regional state language centres
operate throughout the country,” the minister said. Trilingual education
policy refers to a state policy initiated several years ago by
President Nursultan Nazarbayev to ensure language proficiency of the
population in Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of
interethnic communication and English as the language of international
business and communications.</p>
<p>Approximately 94,455 people, including 22,837 civil servants, passed
the Kazakh language proficiency test in 2017. A year earlier, the number
of test-takers was 73,732 people, the minister said.</p>
<p>Last year, 92 percent of documents were processed in the state
language. Of these, 89 percent account for the central state agencies,
93.3 percent of document circulation are at the local executive agencies
and 49.1 percent at national companies. According to the Ministry of
Information and Communication, the share of media content in the Kazakh
language reached 72 percent in 2017.</p>
<p>A trilingual website <a href="http://tilmedia.kz">tilmedia.kz</a> aimed at promoting Kazakh, Russian
and English languages and children’s website <a href="http://balatili.kz">balatili.kz</a> were created
last year, the minister noted.</p>
<p>“The National Terminology Commission has approved 3,000 terms. Thus,
the terminological fund of the Kazakh language contains about 21,000
terms,” he said.</p>
<p>According to Minister of National Economy Timur Suleimenov, the State
Programme of Development and Functioning of Languages of Kazakhstan for
2011-2020 envisages nine target indicators, the interim results of
which have been achieved in all respects.</p>
<p>“In general, the monitoring results of the programme implementation show positive trends,” Suleimenov said.</p>
<p>Following the meeting, Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev instructed
the Ministry of Culture and Sports to intensify work to provide the
public with free Kazakh language courses and increase the availability
of training courses in other languages, including through special
information resources on the internet.</p>
<p>To ensure the gradual transition of the Kazakh language to the
Latin-based script, state agencies were instructed to provide adequate
explanatory work. Sagintayev reiterated to the government officials the
need for timely implementation of key related initiatives.</p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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