Q v K: Ministry of Culture commented on Tokayev’s proposition to change English spelling of Kazakhstan as Qazaqstan

Galymzhan Meldeshov, Chairman of the Ministry’s Committee for Development of Languages and Socio-Political Activity, says that there is a unique sound [Қ]  (Q in Latin transcription) in the Kazakh national system of sounds.

“In 1930 and 40s, Kazakhs used the Latin alphabet where Q was used for denoting Қ. I would like to cite Alimkhan Zhunisbek, PhD in Philology, Research Fellow of the Linguistics Institute, who says we should treat articulatory and perfective peculiarities of the sound [Қ] with due care. The loss of this sound, as it happened in Turkish orthography, will lead to undesirable vowel harmony loss. English [K] will dictate its softness which is peculiar to Indo-European languages and gradually it will result in loss of hard consonant [Қ] (…) Q is namely the character which can preserve the sound [Қ]. This replacement is justified both from the viewpoint of the International Phonetic Alphabet and historical view. Q was used for denoting [Қ] in the previous Latin alphabet of the Kazakh language,” he said.

In his words, it is quite important to have this character in  Latin-English keyboard. The character can be used in English spelling of our country’s name and ‘for maintaining and preserving vocal harmony timbre of many Kazakh words with this sound,’” Galymzhan Meldeshov noted and emphasized that he does not mean ‘mass adoption of this sound”.

Recall that Chairman of the Senate of the Kazakh Parliament Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev shared his thought about the correct way of spelling "Kazakhstan" in English.      "In English the spelling QAZAQSTAN reflects the essence of our state more precisely, rather than KAZAKHSTAN, he wrote on his Twitter account.