While Russian remains the most widely spoken foreign language in Kazakhstan, its role there and across Central Asia is declining. At the same time, people in the region are slowing learning other languages, in part due to economic factors such as slowing globalization, said Zamir Karazanov, a Kazakh political analyst and head of the Kemer Aruna Public Foundation.
City Language
Since declaring independence in 1991, all Central Asian countries have made the promotion of their own languages a priority. But foreign languages have also historically been important as a link between the region and the rest of the world. But in practice, the learning and use of foreign languages other than Russian has not been widespread.
The importance of the Russian language has declined in Kazakhstan as the number of ethnic Russians in the country has decreased: as of January 1, 2024, ethnic Russians made up 14.89 percent of the country's population, down from nearly 40 percent in 1989, according to official statistics. However, proficiency in the language remains high due to the education system and Kazakhstan's proximity to Russia.
In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Russian is the second official language. In Tajikistan, it is called the “language of inter-ethnic communication.” However, in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Russian is not an official language.
Over 90% of Kazakhs understand Russian to some degree, and 20% of the population consider it their native language, while in Turkmenistan 40% and 12% respectively call Russian their native language, in Kyrgyzstan around 44% and 5% call Russian their native language, in Uzbekistan around 50% and 2.7%, and in Tajikistan around 55% and 0.3% call Russian their native language, respectively.
Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has repeatedly spoken out about the need to protect the Russian language in Kazakhstan and that discrimination on the basis of language will not be tolerated. Last year, he announced the International Organization of the Russian Language, which was established by the CIS Summit. “This new organization is open to all countries and, of course, is of great significance from the point of view of global humanitarian cooperation,” Tokayev explained, stressing that measures to promote the Russian language in Eurasia and elsewhere are in line with the trend of strengthening national identity. “Kazakhstan will continue the policy of strengthening the status of the Kazakh language as the state language,” Tokayev said at the time.
Today, there are many Russian-language media outlets in Kazakhstan, Russian remains the lingua franca at meetings between former Soviet republics, and although Russian is concentrated in large cities, Kazakhstan receives the bulk of its news about the West and other countries from Russian sources.
“Russian is spoken in most parts of Kazakhstan. In the largest city, Almaty, it's not a problem to communicate in Russian. But if you go 30-50 kilometers outside the city, it becomes difficult to speak Russian. Russian is an urban language and a language of inter-ethnic exchange,” political analyst Karazanov told The Times of Central Asia.
“Of course, the number of native Kazakh speakers is growing and the number of Russian speakers is decreasing, but Kazakh cannot yet become a language of inter-ethnic communication. To increase its status, large-scale investments are still needed, including accessible and preferably free language courses so that other nationalities can learn Kazakh. This is a long process. Historically, Russian speakers had no contact with Kazakhs, except in oblasts where the Kazakhs are mainly inhabited. Overall, the reverse process was happening in the country as a whole (compared to now). Now geopolitical events are a factor: after the announcement of the 2022 mobilization (due to Russia's war in Ukraine), there was a flood of immigrants from Russia to Kazakhstan, which increased the need for the Russian language,” Karazanov added.
The impact of slowing global economic growth
English is gradually gaining acceptance in Central Asia: Last year, language-teaching company Education First published a global ranking of English proficiency, placing Kazakhstan 104th out of 113 countries surveyed and 22nd out of 23 in Asia, behind Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan.
In 2022, Uzbekistan overtook its Central Asian neighbors in terms of English proficiency, but it only ranked 89th overall, a score still considered “very low.” Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan ranked 91st, Kazakhstan 99th and Tajikistan 106th.
Broken down by city, Tashkent came in behind Astana and Bishkek, but still received a low score.
“The spread of foreign languages that are in high demand abroad, such as English and Chinese, is linked to the needs of the population. People need these languages mainly for work and/or to leave (Kazakhstan) and live permanently in another country. An increase in the learning of foreign languages does not lead to an increase in their proficiency in Kazakhstan, because it is linked to the intention to leave the country. For a (fluent) foreign language speaker to stay in Kazakhstan, he or she needs a job that requires that language. Conversely, the availability of such jobs depends mainly on investors who are native speakers of the foreign language, and there are not many of them at the moment. Investment is increasing, but we are not seeing an influx of foreign companies where large capital flows not to one industrial group (especially the extractive industries) but to many groups or entire economic sectors at once. Chinese and English are needed in the mining and oil sectors.” “In other regions, foreign companies look for translators, so it's not a large-scale process and ordinary people are not included in it. In other words, foreign languages are needed to travel abroad or work for a foreign company, which is not very common. Therefore, the percentage of people who speak foreign languages remains low, since citizens don't particularly need them in their daily lives,” Karazanov says.
Karazanov also believes that the slow spread of English in Central Asia may be due to the lack of colonial influence in the region, which meant that the language was not learned for generations.
Karazanov believes that currently, the learning of foreign languages is slowing down due to the general slowdown in the pace of globalization and economic growth, and people are “shooting guns everywhere.” He argues that in the near future, 20-30 percent of the population in Kazakhstan and the entire region will not be able to speak a foreign language fluently. On the contrary, if geopolitical tensions do not ease, the role of regional languages, including Russian, will only increase.
Back to the roots
For many years, proposals have been made to add Chinese and Arabic to the compulsory subjects in Kazakh schools, along with Kazakh, Russian and English, but they have never been considered at the government level. Experts say that interest in learning Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, Korean and even Uzbek (in the regions along the border between the two countries) is steadily growing among Kazakhs, but very slowly. Karazanov believes that the situation in Kazakhstan applies to the whole of Central Asia, with some reservations.
“People start learning a foreign language only when they face a problem. If you want to gain something, you first need to learn another language. At the moment, the Central Asian countries do not have such serious problems. It's not like investors come, pay extra money to learn (the language) and hire a lot of Chinese or English-speaking staff. In terms of investment, Kazakhstan is number one in Central Asia. So if there is no such need here, there definitely is none in Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan,” the analyst noted.
The situation with Russian varies from region to region. The percentage of Russian speakers in Kazakhstan's neighbours has always been low, so it is not surprising that Uzbek and Tajik are gradually becoming the lingua franca of both countries. In Kazakhstan, the transition to Kazakh has gone relatively smoothly, without the difficulties one would expect in a major change in the population composition.
As for other foreign languages, Arabic is attracting interest as the language of the Islamic holy book, and Turkish is attractive given the Turkic roots of the Kazakh language. Karazanov explained that the demand to learn these languages is steadily growing and is not driven much by economic and demographic factors.
“The number of Muslims in Kazakhstan has not increased since its sudden surge in the 1990s, but some of them are seriously trying to learn Arabic, and some are starting to learn Korean so they can go to South Korea to work. Kazakhstan has Korean immigrants and it has its own language schools. It's not just Korean Kazakhs who study there. Many Kazakhs travel to Turkey to buy property. But, as I said, people need to learn the language. Without the language, the percentage of people who speak the language will be a small figure there and will stagnate,” Karazanov concluded.
