Trilingualism is mandatory: Nursultan Nazarbayev

During his election campaign in April Nursultan Nazarbayev visited his homeland in Kaskelen district of Almaty oblast in Kazakhstan’s south, where he met with compatriots, Tengrinews reports.

Addressing young people, he said: “If you want to live well, feed your families and children, then you should be an educated and skilled person, respected for professionalism. (…) Schools, which Kazakhstan has never seen before, are being built now. There are young people from Kazakhstan who study in the world’s 25 best universities. 750 new schools have been built in our country.”

Nazarbayev went on saying that state-run programs enabled young specialists to choose for themselves where to work – in cities or in rural areas. “If you want to work, it is impossible to remain unemployed in Kazakhstan. And if someone does not want (to work), then such people should be re-educated,” Nazarbayev said.

Nazarbayev called young people to learn at least three languages. Kazakhstan's President has always been speaking about the importance of knowing three languages - Kazakh, Russian and English. One should know Kazakh as it is the country's culture and roots, Russian as it is the language of Kazakhstan's biggest neighbor as well as one of the six UN languages and English is certainly necessary to enter the global arena, he said. “Parents should make sure that their children are educated. Trilingualism is mandatory!” Nazarbayev said.

Many scientific and technical books and journals are published in English and not all of them are translated into Kazakh or Russian, Nazarbayev added.

Nazarbayev said that young people had to know Kazakh as the state language, Russian as a language of the interethnic communication and English language as an international one. “In Switzerland, for example, every taxi driver must know five languages. Our young people should be able to master it,” he said.

Earlier, Nazarbayev suggested that all subjects in high schools were to be taught in English. “We are making sure that children study English starting from the first grade. And by the time they reach the 11th-12th grades, all subjects must be taught in English,” Nazarbayev said then.

Reporting by Dmitriy Khegai, writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina