Andreas Johansson zhazdy:
> > Russian word is |kazak| [kV"zak].
>
> Which still sound alot like _qazaq_ if you can't tell [q] and [k] apart ...
Yes. Russian |kazak| is a loan word with the same meaning: freeman.
> Were there any |aq qyrGyz|?
I don't know. The present day Qazaqs also called themselves |qyrGyz qaìsaq| or
|qaìsaq qyrGyz|. Another Qypchaq group that migrated to N.Caucasus - Nogays -
still has three different clans: aq noGaì, qara noGaì and just noGaì. And a
different Qypchaq tribe living in Uzbekistan, calls themselves |qara qalpaq|
"black hat"...
> No-one answered whether Kazakh's natively written in Arabic script ...
It depends on how you define "natively". For quite a long time Qazaq was an oral
language. For writing documents most of Turkic tribes used a Turkic lingua
franca called "Türki" written in Arabic script. That was in 17th - 19th cc. The
same script was used for the first pieces of literature in Qazaq written in late
19th c. In 1930 "Yanalif" (New Interturkic Latinized alphabet) was introduced.
In 1940 it was substituted by present Cyrillic alphabet. Not intention to switch
back to Latin script is observed.
~~~~~~Yitzik~~~~~~