The Talking Kyrgyz Phrasebook

The Kyrgyz have a long history of hunting with trained eagles.

Published: September 15, 2023

Below, you will find several useful phrases and words. To the left is the English and to the above right is an English transliteration of the Kyrgyz translation. Below the English transliteration is a Russian transliteration.

In the center of each row is a play button that will play a recorded file of the English and Kyrgyz words. (In “Counting,” the audio files have been grouped into three sets.)

Kyrgyz is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch. It is related to Turkic and most other languages of Central Asia.

Kyrgyz is one of two official languages in Kyrgyzstan, along with Russian. Both official languages are written in Cyrillic script. Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan is spoken in dialects, with Northern and Southern being the two major divisions. “Standard Kyrgyz” is based on the Northern dialect.

Kyrgyz is spoken by about 7.3 million people worldwide. There are significant immigrant populations of Kyrgyz abroad, where they often live and work in order to send money back to Kyrgyzstan to support their families. As of 2018, there were about 640,000 Kyrgyz in Russia – equal to about a tenth of the population of Kyrgyzstan itself. There were also major populations in Kazakhstan (35,000), Turkey (30,000), and the US (15,000).

Kyrgyz is closely related to Kazakh, the language of Kyrgyzstan’s larger, richer neighbor. It is also closely related to Altai, spoken in the Altai republic in southern Russia. All three languages share a high degree of mutual intelligibility.

Pamiri Kyrgyz is a dialect spoken in Afghanistan and there are also Kyrgyz-speaking populations native to western China and eastern Tajikistan. The wide geographic spread of the language is a testament of the traditionally nomadic nature of the Kyrgyz people and Central Asian cultures in general.

Kyrgyz has no grammatical gender. The Kyrgyz pronoun “ал” can mean “he,” “she,” or “it.”

Kyrgyz uses six grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, and ablative. These cases affect the endings of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.

Kyrgyz is an agglutinative language, which means that grammatical information is primarily conveyed through the addition of suffixes to root words. These suffixes represent various grammatical features, such as tense, mood, aspect, and case.

Kyrgyz uses honorifics, as are common in many Turkic and Asian languages. These do have gender. Generally, any woman older than you will be “eje.” Men older than you will be “baike.” Teachers are generally referred to as “agai.” These can be used on their own, or, if you know the person’s name, as a suffix attached to the name. This system is also embedded in verb forms and pronoun usage.

Kyrgyz typically follows an SOV word order, which means that the subject comes first, followed by the object, and then the verb. This is in contrast to English, which follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order.

Kyrgyz uses postpositions, rather than prepositions like in English. Postpositions are attached to the noun phrases and indicate relationships such as location, direction, and possession.

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The Talking Phrasebook Series presents useful phrases and words in side-by-side translation and with audio files specifically geared to help students work on listening skills and pronunciation. Below, you will find several useful phrases and words. To the left is the English and to the far right is the Latvian translation. In the center column […]

The Talking Phrasebook Series presents useful phrases and words in side-by-side translation and with audio files specifically geared to help students work on listening skills and pronunciation. Below, you will find several useful phrases and words. To the left is the English and to the far right is the Latvian translation. In the center column […]

The Talking Phrasebook Series presents useful phrases and words in side-by-side translation and with audio files specifically geared to help students work on listening skills and pronunciation. Below, you will find several useful phrases and words. To the left is the English and to the far right is the Tajik translation. Tajik uses a Cyrillic […]