Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz /kɪərˈɡiːz/ (natively кыргызча, قىرعىزچا‎, kyrgyzcha or кыргыз тили, قىرعىزتئلى‎, kyrgyz tili) is a Turkic language spoken by about four million people in Kyrgyzstan as well as China, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Russia. Kyrgyz is a member of the Kyrgyz–Kipchak subgroup of the Kypchak languages, and modern-day language convergence has resulted in an increasing degree of mutual intelligibility between Kyrgyz and Kazakh.

Common difficulties

The Foreign Service Institute has classified Kyrgyz as a "Hard" language. It is estimated that learning Kyrgyz to a Professional Working Proficiency in the language (a score of Speaking-3/Reading-3 on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale) will take an average of 44 weeks (1100 class hours).