The foundation of Kazakh written language (1870-1926)

Kazakhs appeared on the stage of history in the second half of the fifteenth century with the collapse of the Golden Horde Khanate under the nation of Genghis Khan's son, Cüci Khan. Kazakh was not independent written language in the period when the Khanate was first established. Kazakhs continued their official correspondence and written literary activities in Chagatai as Chagatai was common written language of that period. But in early twentieth century Turkic peoples of Central Asia began to use their local dialects as written languages. Kazakh written language is one of the written languages that emerged in this period. The aim of this study is to determine the grammatical features of Kazakh written language, which was separated from the Chagatai written language. It is to determine whether the findings indicate a common written language between 1870-1926. The material of the study covers the texts between 1870-1926. The reason of using more than one text is to obtain more information about the language of that period. The first text which is analyzed is the part taken from Proben (1870) prepared by Wilhelm Radloff. It is written in Cyrillic alphabet. The fragments taken from the works titled Kyrgyzkiy Tekst Beket Batır (1897), Ebyāt-ı Qazaqįye (1908), Ayqap (1912-1913), Tarih-i Kyrgyziya (1913), Çolpan (1913) and Caŋa Mektep (1925-1926) are written in Arabic alphabet. While analyzing the texts, first of all, transcript were made. Afterwards, the grammatical index of the texts was prepared and their phonological and morphological features were analyzed. After that the grammatical features were compared with Chagatai and modern Kazakh. In the conclusion part, the findings obtained are mentioned. Based on these findings, it is discussed whether the language of the texts indicates a common written language. Keywords: Kazakh language, foundation of Kazakh language, Kazakh texts with Arabic Alphabet.