Kazakhstan official language

Interview with Dmitry Kosyrev, political observer for the RIA News Agency in Moscow.

According to the National Constitution, Russian has the status of an official language, Kazakh is the state language, but it is currently far less spoken than Russian. Why? What are the main reasons?

There are several reasons for this “do be status” of two languages for Kazakhstan – Russian and Kazakh. First reason is, of course, national composition, because there are Russians living there and the Kazakh majority; and second is the transition stage from Russian-speaking empire to rather powerful Russian minority. This is absolutely not an unknown situation, you can look at the world, which is composed of 192 nations, and you will see that majority of them have been liberated from this or that form of dependence on foreign powers, and each of them have the same problem – multilingual of its population and special role of the language of people who associated with outside dominance.

Kazakhstan President emphasized, that over 80% of the residents of the country should be able to speak the national language by 2017. And what are your predictions?

Practice shows that the wishes of the national leadership is one thing, and reality is something else. It all depends not on the leadership’s ideas, but on economic ties. I would say, that English, after well-replaced Russian, is the second language for any decant Kazakh. But it may be three languages, and in spite of all the efforts of government officials, these things are done by themselves.

Nazarbayev is sure that the knowledge of the Kazakh language is indispensable to maintain everlasting stability, peace and understanding in Kazakhstan. Do you share this vies?

I would say that this feeling of Kazakh population, feeling of inferiority, which was acquired during the Soviet Union times and still exists even after their independence, is a factor to consider. I would also add that Kazakhstan of all post-Soviet nations was very reasonable about all the promotion of national things after 1991. Probably, now it is the time to do it in a quiet atmosphere without antagonizing too much Russians, at least for one reason: I know quite well a lot of prominent Russians in Kazakhstan, who know Kazakh language, they learned it and they think it is a sign of good tone to be well-proficient in Kazakh.