What about Kazakhstan vs Kazakstan?

[Stephen J. Bobick]

William Ryan wrote:
> 4. The state of Kazak(h)stan, which as far as I know is still using
> Cyrillic, obviously has a right to express its preference in the matter
> of transliteration, and I would hope has obtained good linguistic advice
> and not simply asked for a change just to irritate its Russian and
> Ukrainian minorities. How does it spell its name in Russian? How do
> Ukrainians spell it? As I mentioned in another message, the problem for
> Russians (and presumably for Ukrainians, though I don't have my
> Ukrainian dictionary to hand),

Nope, no problem for Ukrainians.  The word for "Cossack" is "kozak".

> is that they have to differentiate
> between Kazakhi and Kazaki, although at one time the two were both
> spelled 'kazaki' and may indeed have the same origin.

In Ukrainian, one can find Kazakstan and Kazakhstan, depending
(apparently) on which pravopys is being used.  According to the pravopys
of 1929, the spelling is Kazakstan ("Ukrains'ko-Anhlijs'kyj Slovnyk",
Andrusyshen, 1955, and "Pravopysnyj
Slovnyk", Holoskevych, 1977).  Podvez'ko's "Anhlo-Ukrayins'kyj Slovnyk
(orig.
published in Kyiv in 1974) uses the newer pravopys, and Kazakhstan.  No
surprise
here, since the newer pravopys was designed to russify the Ukrainian
language.

-- Stepan Bobyk

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