Kazakh Alphabet for Kids: The 42 Letters and Where to Start

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If you grew up with the Russian alphabet, a page of Kazakh looks almost familiar. Most of the letters are the ones you already know. Then, every few words, there is one that is not: a Қ with a little tail, an Ө with a bar through the middle, an Ә that looks like an upside-down e. Those letters are where Kazakh sounds live, and they are the ones worth slowing down for with a child.

This post is for parents who want to sit next to a small child and start on the Kazakh alphabet: what is in it, which letters need extra time, what is happening with the Latin script, and a few simple ways to make letters stick.

42 letters, 33 of them shared with Russian

Kazakh is written in a Cyrillic alphabet of 42 letters. It was adopted in 1940 and has kept the same shape since a few small changes in the 1950s. Thirty-three of the letters are the Russian alphabet; the other nine were added for sounds Russian does not have: Ә Ғ Қ Ң Ө Ұ Ү Һ І.

The two groups do not carry equal weight. Some of the Russian letters turn up mostly in borrowed words: ё, ц, ч, ъ, ь and э appear only in words taken from Russian, and щ in just a few Kazakh words besides. The nine added letters, on the other hand, are part of ordinary Kazakh words from the start: snow is қар, cheese is ірімшік.

The nine Kazakh letters

Here are the nine, with a rough English hint for each sound and the word Барыс uses to teach it. The hints are only a starting point. The ear does the real work, so say the words aloud rather than reading the table silently.

Two of the nine have no picture word in the app: Ң and Һ are shown on their own, and the app speaks the letter’s name. Һ in particular is used mostly in words borrowed from Arabic and Persian, so it is a letter to recognise rather than one to spend long on.

It also helps to notice how the new letters are built. Several are a familiar letter with something added: Қ is К with a tail, Ң is Н with a tail, Ғ is Г with a crossbar, Ө is О with a bar, and Ұ is Ү with a stroke across it. Pointing out the pairs (“this one is like К, but it has a tail”) gives a child a hook to hang the new letter on.

And the Latin alphabet?

You may have read that Kazakhstan is changing to the Latin alphabet. That is true as a plan, but it has been a slow one. A decree in 2017 set 2025 as the target. The Latin letters have been redrawn more than once since then, and in 2021 the government spoke of a gradual move through 2031. In 2023 President Tokayev said the change should not be rushed, and a report from September 2026 says the alphabet and its spelling rules are still being worked on, with no final date set.

What that means for a family today is simple: Kazakh is still written in Cyrillic, and learning it now is not wasted. The sounds a child learns are the sounds of Kazakh, whatever letters write them later.

How small children learn letters

Sound first, shape second. A letter means something to a child when it is tied to a sound and a thing they know. “Қ, қар” on a snowy morning means more than a row of letters on a page. Say the letter, then the word, then point at the picture, and let your child say it back.

Trace big and slow. Before a pencil, a finger. Tracing a letter on a screen, on a steamed-up window or in a tray of flour lets a child feel the shape without worrying about neat lines. Short is fine: three letters done with attention are worth more than a whole page done to get it over with.

Play, a little and often. Matching pairs, turning over cards, “find the one that starts like Үкі”: games give a reason to look at the same letter many times without it feeling like practice. Ten minutes on a few days is easier for everyone than one long session.

Read stories together. Letters make more sense once a child has seen them do their job. A familiar story read aloud, with the child spotting a letter they know on the page, joins the two up.

Where Barys comes in

Барыс (Barys) is our Kazakh app for young children, with a snow leopard cub as its guide. It is one of the first-alphabet apps described in A First Alphabet in Every Language, built the same way as the others but with everything in Kazakh.

The alphabet section has 38 letters; all but three (Ң, Һ and Ч) come with a picture word. Tap one and the app says the letter and then its word, like “қа — Қар”. It leaves out Ё, Щ, Ъ and Ь, which, as above, turn up mostly in words taken from Russian. Around the alphabet there are 13 more categories (numbers, animals, colours, food, family, weather and others), each with its words spoken aloud.

For practice there are 6 games: Flash Cards, Memory Match, Line Matching, Spin Wheel, Counting and Explore. In the writing tab a child traces over a faint letter on notebook lines, and there are colouring pages too. To end the day, there are 12 classic stories in Kazakh, starting with Кішкентай қызыл тауық, The Little Red Hen.

The first ten letters, from А to З (which already includes Ә and Ғ), are free, along with the letter games for them, the first story, and tracing for the first three letters. Everything else is a one-time purchase, behind a grown-up check. There are no ads, and it works offline.