Sunday, April 18, 2010

useless things i learned in kazakhstan 6

the way that "kazakhstan" is spelled in arabic is like how the country's name is spelled in russian, but not as it is spelled in kazakh.

that is:
Казахстан=كازاخستان

but:
Қазақстан would be spelled like قازاقستان

which is odd, because the only reason it is spelled differently in russian is because they don't have the "q" (i.e. ق or қ) sound that is present in kazakh. but that sound does exist in arabic, so there's no reason to resort to the russian version of the name.