Personal Pronouns in Kazakh

In Kazakh, *Personal Pronouns (жіктеу есімдіктері) designate participants in the speech act and undergo full case declension across all 7 cases. Crucially, Kazakh exhibits two distinct tiers of the second person* (singular and plural):

1. Singular: - Мен (I / 1st pers.) - Сен (You / 2nd pers. informal / familiar, used with peers, children, and close friends) - Сіз (You / 2nd pers. polite / respectful, used with elders, strangers, and professional colleagues) - Ол (He / She / It / 3rd pers. — Kazakh has no grammatical gender). 2. Plural: - Біз / Біздер (We) - Сендер (You all / informal plural) - Сіздер (You all / polite plural) - Олар (They).

Declension Irregularities: Pronouns undergo specific phonetic changes when declined in cases. For instance, мен becomes маған in the dative, мені in the accusative, менде in the locative, менен in the ablative, менің in the genitive, and менімен in the instrumental. Similarly, сен becomes саған, сенің, сені, сенен. The 3rd person pronoun ол uses root он- in declension: оған (to him), оны (him), онда (in him/there), онан/одан (from him), оның (his).

Learners coming from Russian or English frequently make social errors by using сен with elders instead of respectful сіз.