Skills on AI

Locale Kk 001

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Use when working with the Kazakh locale (`kk-001`) — its endonym Қазақ тілі, Cyrillic script, left-to-right (LTR) direction, or spoken-population data. Reference data and translation guidance (register, grammar, idiom, typography) for this specific locale; see [[locale]] for general i18n/l10n concepts (BCP 47, plural rules, RTL) that apply across all locales.

Reference data for the Kazakh locale — endonym Қазақ тілі, written in the Cyrillic script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

  • BCP 47 tag: kk-001
  • ISO 639-1: kk
  • ISO 639-3: kaz
  • Script: Cyrl (Cyrillic)
  • Region: 001 (World)
  • Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

  • L1 (native): 16,000,000
  • L2 (additional): 3,000,000
  • L1+L2 (total): 19,000,000

Regional variants

This is the base/macro locale for Kazakh. Region-specific variants in this dataset:

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

  • one — n = 1 (e.g. 1)
  • other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Kazakh is a Turkic language written in Cyrillic (with additional letters ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ, ү, һ, і) in Kazakhstan. The state has planned a transition to a Latin-based alphabet, with revisions and a long timeline; use Cyrillic unless the project requires Latin. See Locale Kk Kz. Kazakh in China uses an Arabic-based script, which is out of scope here.

Translate ideas, not words.

  • Kazakh is agglutinative with vowel harmony and subject-object-verb order. Do not translate through Russian; reorder and restructure English sentences.
  • Use Kazakh terminology from the national terminology commission rather than raw Russian loanwords when a term exists.
  • Re-express idioms by meaning.

Grammar and register.

  • Vowel harmony (front/back); seven cases; no gender; no plural after numerals.
  • Сіз is the polite form for UI and public text; сен is informal.

Orthography and typography.

  • Use the Kazakh letters ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ, ү, һ, і; never replace them with Russian look-alikes.
  • Currency tenge (₸); decimal comma; dates 2026 жылғы 17 қазан; 24-hour clock; quotation marks «…».

Common pitfalls

  • Replacing Kazakh letters with Russian look-alikes.
  • Using Russian grammar or vocabulary.
  • Mixing Cyrillic and Latin alphabets without a requirement.

Learn more

  • Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
  • Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
  • National Terminology Commission and the A. Baitursynuly Institute of Linguistics, Kazakhstan
  • Microsoft Localization Style Guide, Kazakh (https://aka.ms/kazakh-styleguide)

View locale-kk-001/SKILL.md on GitHub