Abstract:
There are 126 languages spoken in Kazakhstan (Suleimenova et al., 2007). Among
these, Kazakh and Russian remain the two most commonly spoken languages, with
approximately 74% of the population reporting spoken fluency in Kazakh and 94.4% reporting
spoken fluency in Russian (Bureau of National Statistics, 2010). The coexistence of these two
major varieties, however, has been characterized by an unequal division of power and prestige
between them, the reasons for which lie in the colonial history of Kazakhstan during which
Soviet policies promoting a single ‘Soviet Identity’ and the Russian language had been in force
in the Kazakh steppe for a considerable period of time (Smagulova, 1996). As a result, Russian
has been a socially dominant language in the region for nearly 200 years (Muhamedowa, 2009),
and this linguistic domination of Russian has had its own implications for the mechanisms of
contact between these languages.