[lg policy] More than 20 percent of Kazakh citizens speak three languages

[Harold Schiffman]

 More than 20 percent of Kazakh citizens speak three languages

By Dana Omirgazy *in* Nation <https://astanatimes.com/category/nation/> *on*
28 March 2018

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.
[image: 123189-image]
<https://astanatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/123189-image.jpg>

Photo credit: kazpravda.kz

“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.

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.

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.

A trilingual website tilmedia.kz aimed at promoting Kazakh, Russian and
English languages and children’s website balatili.kz were created last
year, the minister noted.

“The National Terminology Commission has approved 3,000 terms. Thus, the
terminological fund of the Kazakh language contains about 21,000 terms,” he
said.

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.

“In general, the monitoring results of the programme implementation show
positive trends,” Suleimenov said.

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.

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.


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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