This republic is the only one among the Central Asian republics in the post-Soviet expanses where Russian is the state language. In Kyrgyzstan, it has had this status along with the Kyrgyz one since 1989. In total, more than 2.5 million people speak Russian in the country.
Some statistics and facts
- There are more than 4 million speakers of the Kyrgyz language in the country, of which 3, 8 million are considered native speakers of Kyrgyzstan.
- Uzbek is the second largest native language by the number of native speakers. More than 770 thousand citizens of the country speak it at home.
- German is also native to some residents of Kyrgyzstan. True, only 50 people prefer to use it.
- The most common foreign language in the republic is English. He speaks French an order of magnitude less.
Kyrgyz: history and modernity
One of the state languages of Kyrgyzstan is Turkic. The first surviving written monument is the Sudzha inscription, found in Northern Mongolia and made in the middle of the 9th century by a Kyrgyz nobleman on a gravestone stele.
The Kyrgyz epos "Manas", created in the 17th-18th centuries, when the Tien Shan Kirghiz finally realized themselves as a nationality, became a majestic legacy.
The emergence of the modern Kyrgyz language was also influenced by the presence of the Central Asian Kyrgyz in the Russian Empire in the second half of the century before last. A lot of borrowings came from Russian then, and today the Kyrgyz are fighting to cleanse their language of foreign vocabulary and foreign grammatical rules.
The Kyrgyz script in the country is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, but the ethnic Kyrgyz living in China use the Arabic alphabet.
Tourist notes
Traveling in Kyrgyzstan does not present any communication problem for Russian tourists. All important information is duplicated in two languages. Public transport stops are announced in both Russian and Kyrgyz. Road signs and menus in restaurants are also made. Television and radio broadcasts in both state languages of Kyrgyzstan.
The population of the country also speaks Russian, regardless of their own nationality. In the province, there may be residents who speak only Kyrgyz, and therefore, for trips to the outback, it is better to use the accompaniment of a local guide or translator.
