Languages
Kyrgyzstan is one of the two former Soviet republics in Central Asia to retain Russian as an official language, Kazakhstan being the other. It added the Kyrgyz language to become an officially bilingual country in September 1991.
Kyrgyz is a member of the Turkic group of languages. It was written in the Arabic alphabet until the twentieth century. Latin script was introduced and adopted in 1928, and was subsequently replaced by Cyrillic script in 1941.
According to the 2009 census, 4.1 millions of people spoke Kyrgyz as native or second language and 2.5 millions of people spoke Russian as native or second language. Uzbek is the second most widely spoken native language, followed by Russian; Russian is the most widely spoken second language, followed by Kyrgyz, Uzbek and English.
| Language name | Native speakers | Second-language speakers | Total speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyrgyz | 3,830,556 | 271,187 | 4,121,743 |
| Russian | 482,243 | 2,109,393 | 2,591,636 |
| Uzbek | 772,561 | 97,753 | 870,314 |
| English | 28,416 | 28,416 | |
| French | 641 | 641 | |
| German | 10 | 10 | |
| Other | 277,433 | 31,411 |
Read more about this topic: Kyrgyzstan
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
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