Kazakh Months

Kazakh grammar for beginners · Twelve names to learn outright

None of the twelve can be worked out from Turkish; the two languages settled on different words for all of them. A few of the Kazakh names do have a Turkish relative, but it has ended up on a different month.

The twelve months

qañtar қаңтар

January · Turkish: ocak

aqpan ақпан

February · Turkish: şubat

nauryz наурыз

March · Turkish: mart

Also the name of the spring festival, held on the twenty-second.

säuır сәуір

April · Turkish: nisan

kökek көкек

April · Turkish: nisan

The same month under a second name, and also the word for a cuckoo.

mamyr мамыр

May · Turkish: mayıs

mausym маусым

June · Turkish: haziran

Turkish mevsim is the same borrowed word, and there it means a season.

şılde шілде

July · Turkish: temmuz

tamyz тамыз

August · Turkish: ağustos

Turkish temmuz is this same borrowed name a month earlier — it is July.

qyrküiek қыркүйек

September · Turkish: eylül

qazan қазан

October · Turkish: ekim

Borrowed from Persian, where the word means autumn — the same borrowing Turkish took as hazan, which still means the season rather than a month. The identical-looking qazan (қазан) "cauldron" is a different word with a Turkic root.

qaraşa қараша

November · Turkish: kasım

jeltoqsan желтоқсан

December · Turkish: aralık

Month and year

ai ай

month · Turkish: ay

And the moon, the two jobs ay does in Turkish as well.

jyl жыл

year · Turkish: yıl

A date is an ordinal and a month

The ordinal comes first and the month follows it, with nothing in between and no ending on either word.

Turkish uses a plain number for the day of the month, beş Ağustos. Kazakh uses the ordinal.

besınşı tamyz бесінші тамыз

the fifth of August · Turkish: beş Ağustos

Keep going

Days of the Week · Seasons

All Kazakh lessons


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