Kazakh
/kəˈzak
/ /ˈkazak/noun
1A member of a people living chiefly in Kazakhstan. Traditionally nomadic, Kazakhs are predominantly Sunni Muslims.Approximately 5 percent of the total Mongolian population are Sunni Muslims, mainly ethnic Kazakhs in the western region....
- Other ethnic groups that were caught within the country as the borders in Central Asia were redrawn during the Soviet era include Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Kazakhs, Uyghur, and Bukharan and European Jews.
- In the settler sources reviewed here, this dynamic shows most clearly in the case of peasant views of pastoral nomads, including Muslim Kazakhs and Kyrgyz and Buddhist Altayans.
2 [mass noun] The Turkic language of the Kazakhs, with over 7 million speakers.Central Asia largely speaks Turkic languages (Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz), which, however, are not that close to the Turkish spoken in Istanbul....
- During Soviet times, when Russian was the only real language of importance, Kazakh failed to keep up with the changing vocabulary of the twentieth century.
- She speaks Kazakh, Russian, English and Italian.
adjective
Relating to the Kazakhs or their language.The Kazakh national movement, which began in the late 1800s, sought to preserve the Kazakh language and identity....
- To our north, the vast featureless Kazakh steppes, an area the size of Western Europe, stretched away seemingly to infinity.
- At present, however, it is premature to assume that Kazakh oil will make up the gap.
Origin
Russian, from Turkic; see Cossack.