38-459: Semey ( / s ɪ ˈ m eɪ , s ɛ -/ ; Kazakh : Семей / Semei [sʲɪˈmʲej] ( listen ) ), formerly known as Semipalatinsk ( Russian : Семипалатинск [sʲɪmʲɪpɐˈɫatʲɪnsk] ) until 2007 and as Alash-Qala ( Kazakh : Алаш-қала / Alaş-qala [ɑˌɫɑʃ‿qɑˈɫɑ] ) from 1917 to 1920, is a city in eastern Kazakhstan , in the Kazakh part of Siberia . When Abai Region
76-715: A language exclusively for religious contexts, similar to how Latin served as a liturgical language in the Western European cultural sphere. The Kazakhs used the Arabic script to write their language until approximately 1929. In the early 1900s, Kazakh activist Akhmet Baitursynuly reformed the Kazakh-Arabic alphabet, but his work was largely overshadowed by the Soviet presence in Central Asia. At that point,
114-554: A main span of 750 metres (2,460 ft) and a total length of 1,086 metres (3,563 ft). Construction began in 1998 and the bridge opened to traffic in November 2000. In 2007 the Semipalatinsk City Council voted unanimously in favour of changing the name of the city to Semey . The Chairman said that existing name had negative associations because of the extensive atomic testing there. In March 2022, Semey
152-633: A museum and a street are named after Dostoyevsky. The Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky in Semey was opened on 7 May 1971. It was established by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR N 261. Of the seven museums devoted to Dostoevsky, this is the only one located outside Russia. Semey is famous for its intellectual medical community with leading Semey Medical University which provides
190-523: A system of 12 phonemic vowels, 3 of which are diphthongs. The rounding contrast and /æ/ generally only occur as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but do occur later allophonically; see the section on harmony below for more information. Moreover, the /æ/ sound has been included artificially due to the influence of Arabic, Persian and, later, Tatar languages during the Islamic period. It can be found in some native words, however. According to Vajda,
228-764: Is also a significant minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang , China , and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of western Mongolia . The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union (some 472,000 in Russia according to the 2010 Russian census ), Germany , and Turkey . Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is an agglutinative language and employs vowel harmony . Kazakh builds words by adding suffixes one after another to
266-488: Is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, but which does not apply as strongly and is not reflected in the orthography. This system only applies to the open vowels /e/, /ɪ/, /ʏ/ and not /ɑ/ , and happens in the next syllables. Thus, (in Latin script) jūldyz 'star', bügın 'today', and ülken 'big' are actually pronounced as jūldūz , bügün , ülkön . The following chart depicts
304-556: Is common, though light, in winter. The lowest temperature on record is −48.6 °C (−55.5 °F), recorded in November 1910, and the highest temperature is 42.5 °C (108.5 °F), recorded in August 2002. Semey is situated at the Turkestan–Siberia Railway and offers connections to Almaty (former Alma-Ata ), Barnaul , and Novosibirsk , among others. The city has a museum to commemorate Abay Qunanbayuli . Both
342-487: Is possible to think that different categories of aspect govern the choice of auxiliary, it is not so straightforward in Kazakh. Auxiliaries are internally sensitive to the lexical semantics of predicates, for example, verbs describing motion: Suda water- LOC balyq fish jüzedı swim- PRES - 3 Suda balyq jüzedı Semipalatinsk Oblast, Kazakhstan Semipalatinsk Oblast ( Kazakh : Семей облысы / Semei oblysy ; Russian : Семипалатинская область )
380-732: The Perso-Arabic script for writing. It is scheduled to be phased in from 2023 to 2031. Speakers of Kazakh (mainly Kazakhs) are spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan to the western shore of the Caspian Sea . Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, with nearly 10 million speakers (based on information from the CIA World Factbook on population and proportion of Kazakh speakers). In China, nearly two million ethnic Kazakhs and Kazakh speakers reside in
418-613: The Eastern Kazakhstan Oblast between 17 January 1928 and 14 October 1939 and finally of the Semipalatinsk Oblast between 1939 and 1997. In 1949 the Soviet atomic bomb programme selected a site on the steppe 180 km (110 mi) west of the city as the location for its weapons testing. For decades, Kurchatov (the secret city at the heart of the test range named for Igor Kurchatov , father of
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#1732765215012456-617: The Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang. The Kipchak branch of Turkic languages, which Kazakh is borne out of, was mainly solidified during the reign of the Golden Horde . The modern Kazakh language is said to have originated in approximately 1465 AD during the formation of the Kazakh Khanate . Modern Kazakh is likely a descendant of both Chagatay Turkic as spoken by the Timurids and Kipchak Turkic as spoken in
494-489: The Golden Horde. Kazakh uses a high volume of loanwords from Persian and Arabic due to the frequent historical interactions between Kazakhs and Iranian ethnic groups to the south. Additionally, Persian was a lingua franca in the Kazakh Khanate , which allowed Kazakhs to mix Persian words into their own spoken and written vernacular. Meanwhile, Arabic was used by Kazakhs in mosques and mausoleums , serving as
532-449: The Latin script by 2025. Cyrillic script was created to better merge the Kazakh language with other languages of the USSR , hence it has some controversial letter readings. The letter У after a consonant represents a combination of sounds і /ɘ/ , ү /ʉ/ , ы /ə/ , ұ /ʊ/ with glide /w/ , e.g. кіру [kɪ̞ˈrɪ̞w] , су [so̙w] , көру [kɵˈrʏ̞w] , атысу [ɑ̝təˈsəw] . Ю undergoes
570-732: The Russian Empire. Between 1917 and 1920, the city operated as the capital of the largely unrecognized Alash Autonomy , a state (1917–1920) established after the outbreak of the October Revolution in Russia. The city was called Alash-qala during the Alash Autonomy years. Red Army forces loyal to Petrograd took control of the area in 1920. It was the center of the Semipalatinsk Governorate [ ru ] until 17 January 1928, then of
608-496: The Soviet atomic bomb) was home to many of the brightest stars of Soviet weapons science. The Soviet Union operated the Semipalatinsk Test Site (STS) from the first explosion in 1949 until 1989; 456 nuclear tests, including 340 underground and 116 atmospheric tests, took place there. Some land around Semey has suffered environmental and health effects from the time of its atomic prosperity: nuclear fallout from
646-428: The action is carried out and also interact with the lexical semantics of the root verb: telic and non-telic actions, semelfactives, durative and non-durative, punctual, etc. There are selectional restrictions on auxiliaries: motion verbs, such as бару ' go ' and келу ' come ' may not combine with otyr . Any verb, however, can combine with jat ' lie ' to get a progressive tense meaning. While it
684-474: The atmospheric tests and uncontrolled exposure of the workers, some of whom lived in the area close to the testsite, have resulted in high rates of cancer , childhood leukemia , and birth defects among the residents of neighbouring villages. Modern Semey, a bustling university town, has a population exceeding 350,000. Because of its proximity to the Kazakh border with the Russian Federation, and
722-424: The consonant inventory of standard Kazakh; many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loanwords. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are without parentheses—since these are phonemes, their listed place and manner of articulation are very general, and will vary from what is shown. ( /t͡s/ rarely appears in normal speech.) Kazakh has 19 native consonant phonemes; these are
760-567: The form of agglutinative suffixes. Kazakh is a nominative-accusative, head-final, left-branching, dependent-marking language. Kazakh has no noun class or gender system. Nouns are declined for number (singular or plural) and one of seven cases: The suffix for case is placed after the suffix for number. Forms ' child ' ' hedgehog ' ' Kazakh ' ' school ' ' person ' ' flower ' ' word ' There are eight personal pronouns in Kazakh: The declension of
798-478: The fort, and largely served the river trade between the nomadic peoples of Central Asia and the growing Russian Empire . The construction of the Turkestan-Siberia Railway in the early 20th century added to the city's importance, making it a major point of transit between Central Asia and Siberia. On 19 May 1854, Semipalatinsk was designated as the capital of the Semipalatinsk Oblast within
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#1732765215012836-424: The front/back quality of vowels is actually one of neutral versus retracted tongue root . Phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakh's Cyrillic and current Latin alphabets. Kazakh exhibits tongue-root vowel harmony (also called soft-hard harmony), and arguably weakened rounding harmony which is implied in the first syllable of the word. All vowels after the first rounded syllable are
874-590: The large scientific community attached to the STS labs and the university, which includes many Russians, Semey is said to have a more Russian character than other cities in Kazakhstan. Semipalatinsk Oblast merged with the larger East Kazakhstan Region , whose capital city is Oskemen , on 23 May 1997. The Semey Bridge , a suspension bridge across the Irtish River, connects the two major parts of Semey. It has
912-457: The letters В, Ё, Ф, Х, Һ, Ц, Ч, Ъ, Ь, Э are only used in loanwords—mostly those of Russian origin, but sometimes of Persian and Arabic origin. They are often substituted in spoken Kazakh. Kazakh is generally verb-final, though various permutations on SOV (subject–object–verb) word order can be used, for example, due to topicalization . Inflectional and derivational morphology , both verbal and nominal, in Kazakh, exists almost exclusively in
950-537: The new Soviet regime forced the Kazakhs to use a Latin script, and then a Cyrillic script in the 1940s. Today, Kazakhs use the Cyrillic and Latin scripts to write their language, although a presidential decree from 2017 ordered the transition from Cyrillic to Latin by 2031. Kazakh exhibits tongue-root vowel harmony , with some words of recent foreign origin (usually of Russian or Arabic origin) as exceptions. There
988-437: The noun that they modify. Kazakh has two varieties of adjectives: The comparative form can be created by appending the suffix -(y)raq/-(ı)rek or -tau/-teu/-dau/-dau to an adjective. The superlative form can be created by placing the morpheme eñ before the adjective. The superlative form can also be expressed by reduplication. Kazakh may express different combinations of tense , aspect and mood through
1026-418: The pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns do not. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold. In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person. Adjectives in Kazakh are not declined for any grammatical category of the modified noun. Being a head-final language, adjectives are always placed before
1064-579: The region and the country with highly professional health specialists. Semey is twinned with: Kazakh language China Kazakh is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by Kazakhs . It is closely related to Nogai , Kyrgyz and Karakalpak . It is the official language of Kazakhstan , and has official status in the Altai Republic of Russia . It
1102-454: The ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery, where seven buildings could be seen. The fort (and later the city) was named Semipalatinsk ( Russian for "Seven-Chambered City") after the monastery. The fort suffered frequent flooding caused by snowmelt swelling the Irtysh. In 1778 the fort was relocated 18 kilometres (11 mi) upstream to less flood-prone ground. A small city developed around
1140-516: The same process but with /j/ at the beginning. The letter И represents a combination of sounds: i /ɘ/ (in front-vowel contexts) or ы /ə/ (in back vowel contexts) + glide /j/ , e.g. тиіс [tɪ̞ˈjɪ̞s] , оқиды [wo̞qəjˈdə] . In Russian loanwords, it is realized as /ʲi/ (when stressed) or /ʲɪ/ (when unstressed), e.g. изоморфизм [ɪzəmɐrˈfʲizm] . The letter Я represents either /jɑ/ or /jæ/ depending on vowel harmony. The letter Щ represents /ʃː/ , e.g. ащы [ɑ̝ʃ.ˈʃə] . Meanwhile,
1178-456: The stops /p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, q/ , fricatives /s, z, ɕ, ʑ, ʁ/ , nasals /m, n, ŋ/ , liquids /ɾ, l/ , and two glides /w, j/ . The sounds /f, v, χ, h, t͡s, t͡ɕ/ are found only in loanwords. /ʑ/ is heard as an alveolopalatal affricate [d͡ʑ] in the Kazakh dialects of Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, China. The sounds [q] and [ʁ] may be analyzed as allophones of /k/ and /ɡ/ in words with back vowels, but exceptions occur in loanwords. Kazakh has
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1216-568: The subject to this harmony with the exception of /ɑ/ , and in the following syllables, e.g. өмір [ø̞mʏr] , қосы [qɒso] . Notably, urban Kazakh tends to violate rounding harmony, as well as pronouncing Russian borrowings against the rules. Most words in Kazakh are stressed in the last syllable, except: Nowadays, Kazakh is mostly written in the Cyrillic script, with an Arabic-based alphabet being used by minorities in China. Since 26 October 2017, via Presidential Decree 569, Kazakhstan will adopt
1254-406: The use of various verbal morphology or through a system of auxiliary verbs , many of which might better be considered light verbs. The present tense is a prime example of this; progressive tense in Kazakh is formed with one of four possible auxiliaries. These auxiliaries otyr ' sit ' , tūr ' stand ' , jür ' go ' and jat ' lie ' , encode various shades of meaning of how
1292-566: The word stem, with each suffix expressing only one unique meaning and following a fixed sequence. Ethnologue recognizes three mutually intelligible dialect groups: Northeastern Kazakh—the most widely spoken variety, which also serves as the basis for the official language—Southern Kazakh, and Western Kazakh. The language shares a degree of mutual intelligibility with closely related Karakalpak while its Western dialects maintain limited mutual intelligibility with Altai languages . In October 2017, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev decreed that
1330-492: The writing system would change from using Cyrillic to Latin script by 2025. The proposed Latin alphabet has been revised several times and as of January 2021 is close to the inventory of the Turkish alphabet , though lacking the letters C and Ç and having four additional letters: Ä, Ñ, Q and Ū (though other letters such as Y have different values in the two languages). Over one million Kazakh speakers in Xinjiang still rely on
1368-715: Was an administrative division of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union , established on October 14, 1939 from parts of East Kazakhstan and Alma-Ata Oblasts . Upon Kazakhstan 's independence in 1991, the oblast continued to exist until 1997, when it was merged back into East Kazakhstan Oblast. In 2022, the region was reconstituted as the Abai Region , with its administrative centre still located in Semey . It contained
1406-530: Was created in 2022, Semey became its administrative centre. It lies along the Irtysh River near the border with Russia , 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) north of Almaty and 700 kilometers (430 mi) southeast of the Russian city of Omsk . Its population is 350,967 (2009 Census results). The first Russian settlement in the area dates from 1718, when Russia built a fort beside the river Irtysh , near
1444-504: Was selected by President Tokayev as the prospective capital of the new Abai Region . This came into force on 8 June 2022 when Abai Region became an official Region of Kazakhstan . Semey has a warm-summer humid continental climate ( Köppen climate classification Dfb ) with warm summers and very cold winters. Precipitation is low for the whole year, except for July which has an average of 50 millimetres (2.0 in) compared to less than 30 millimetres (1.2 in) in other months. Snow
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