Nazarbayev urges Kazakhs to treasure Russian, actively study English
ASTANA. Dec 14 (Interfax) - The people of Kazakhstan should have a caring attitude to the Russian language, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said.
"We are taking active measures to promote trilingualism. We should regard the Russian language caringly. Its knowledge is a historical advantage to our people, I mean Kazakhs," Nazarbayev said in Astana on Friday in an address to the nation.
"Thanks to this language we have access to world culture, to world science and we still use it very widely," he said.
Nevertheless, a breakthrough should be made in studying English which "will open new unlimited opportunities in life for every Kazakh," he said.
He stressed that nobody should be discriminated against on the basis of language or ethnicity.
"I want to say once more that nobody's constitutional rights in this country should be limited based on belonging to some one ethnic or language group. If anyone in our multiethnic country is discriminated against on this basis, especially in employment, enrollment in college and so on, one should say that all of Kazakhstan is discriminated against, all of us," he said.
