Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev predicted on Monday that Kazakh would become widely spoken in the country in the next decade, replacing Russian as the main language.
"We would like 100% of those who will start learning Kazakh language in the first class to be able to speak Kazakh. I am sure this will happen," Nazarbayev said at a meeting of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan. He emphasized that over 80 percent of the residents of the country should be able to speak the national language by 2017.
According to the national constitution, Russian has the status of an official language. Kazakh is the state language, but it is currently far less spoken than Russian.
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