Kazakh (natively Қазақ тілі, Қазақша, Qazaq tili, Qazaqşa, قازاق ٴتىلى‎, قازاقشا; pronounced [qɑˈzɑq tɘˈlɘ]) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak (or Northwestern Turkic) branch, closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz, and especially Karakalpak. Kazakh is the official language of the Republic of Kazakhstan and a significant minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Prefecture of the People's Republic of China and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of Mongolia. Kazakh is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs through the former Soviet Union (approximately 500,000 in the Russian Federation according to the 2002 Russian Census), Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Germany. Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.

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