Over the two weeks I’ve been living in Almaty, I have been fortunate to see many buildings and parks and streets that are a part of the fabric of the city. Whenever…
Category: Blog Posts
Posts written as Blog Posts
Walking In Almaty
When it comes to traveling, my parents instilled in me a valuable lesson: always explore a place on foot. I firmly believe there’s something special about being on my feet and taking…
The Language Roommates of Kazakhstan
Unlike the United States, where English dominates both the official sphere and most public ones, Kazakh and Russian live together in Kazakhstan like roommates. There are people here who speak only Kazakh,…
Three Languages and Two Alphabets on One Sign
Take a look! This is a sign in the Almaty metro, that I passed by during one of my excursions in the city. This station, which is directly underneath the Auezov Theater,…
Coming to Life
What do you know about Qazaqstan? Where I’m from, most people know very little. There’s a sense it’s a big, Muslim, post-USSR country in Central Asia, but that’s about it. If you…
What it means to be Qazaq in contemporary Kazakhstani literature
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Socialist Republics had to cope with the sudden lack of a literary publication system among the collapse of other institutional infrastructure. Kazakhstan has…
Languages in Almaty, Kazakhstan
How can we define the linguistic environment of modern-day Kazakhstan? Before coming to Kazakhstan I was completely unaware of the environment. Now, having been here for 2 weeks, I am still unaware,…
Transitioning from Kazakh to Qazaq
Just a few months ago, when I first heard that the Kazakh government had decided to revamp their language, specifically, to latinize their alphabet, I was immediately brought back to the early…
Multilingual Almaty
While I came here to study the Russian language, Almaty is more than just a Russian-speaking city. Almost everyone with whom I’ve interacted here speaks Russian, but at the same time it’s…
