Kazakh (also Qazaq and variants, natively Qazaq tili, Қазақ тілі, قازاقٴتىلى; pronounced) is a Turkic language closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak. Kazakh is the official state language of Kazakhstan, in which nearly 10 million speakers are reported to live. More than a million speakers reside in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Large numbers exist elsewhere in Central Asia (mostly in Uzbekistan) and other parts of former Soviet Union, and in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and other countries. There are also some Kazakh speakers in Germany who immigrated from Turkey in the 1970s.
