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Letters and sounds
IPA hints describe individual sounds. Listen to examples and compare your pronunciation.
Ä ä [æ]
Open your mouth and keep your tongue forward. The sound is close to a in English cat.
father
older sister
delicious; tasty (adjective)
Ğ ğ [ʁ ~ ɣ]
A voiced friction sound at the back of the mouth. Let the air pass through a narrow gap with your voice on.
older brother
price; mark; rating
tree; wood
Q q [q]
Make a brief stop farther back than k, with the back of your tongue near the uvula.
city; town
hand; arm
white
Ñ ñ [ŋ]
Like ng in English sing. Keep the tongue tip away from the upper teeth and do not add a separate g.
tomorrow
rain
one thousand
Ö ö [ø ~ œ]
Keep your tongue forward and round your lips. Compare it with o in the audio: the tongue position differs.
eye
four
lake
Ū ū [ʊ]
A short rounded vowel. Keep your tongue farther back than for ü, without stretching the sound into a long oo.
salt
sleep (noun)
document
Ü ü [ʏ ~ y]
Round your lips while keeping your tongue forward. Compare kün and tūz: ü and ū differ in tongue position.
three
milk
day; sun
H h [h]
A useful guide is the gentle breath of h in English home. This letter is uncommon; pronunciation varies, so listen to the whole word.
furniture
hero
city (literary word)
I ı [ɪ ~ ɘ]
A short unrounded vowel, with the tongue farther forward than for y. Do not treat the letters ı and i as interchangeable.
one
younger brother
language; tongue
Y y [ɯ ~ ə]
An unrounded back vowel. Keep it distinct from ı; compare the vowels in jyl and tıl.
year
dishes; container
winter
İ i [ɯj ~ ɪj; i]
In Kazakh words, the letter i can represent a vowel followed by the glide [j], the consonant sound at the start of English yes. Some loanwords use a single vowel. It is not always English ee; listen to each whole example. This i is different from dotless ı.
clothes; clothing
dance (noun)
twenty
U u [w; ʊw ~ ʏw]
The sound depends on the word. In tau and uäde it is a glide close to English w; su contains a vowel plus a glide. Teaching spellings ūu/üu explain some cases. It is not always an English oo vowel.
water
mountain
promise