Kazakh is a Kipchak Turkic language spoken across the vast steppes of Central Asia. It was first written using the Arabic script, which remained in use through the 19th century and into the early Soviet period. In 1929 the Soviet government imposed a Latin alphabet, then in 1940 switched Kazakhstan to Cyrillic — a move designed to sever cultural ties with both the Islamic world and Turkey. After Kazakhstan's independence in 1991, Russian retained de facto co-official status alongside Kazakh, reflecting decades of Russification in which many urban Kazakhs shifted to Russian as their primary language. President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced in 2017 that Kazakhstan would transition back to a Latin alphabet by 2025, a project still ongoing. Today Kazakh and Russian coexist in government, media, and daily life, making Kazakhstan one of the world's most genuinely bilingual states.
