Reflection of the national mentality in the names of four types of cattle in the kazakh language

Abstract

The article deals with the reflection in the names of animals of the national worldview of the people, their recurrence in the language and associative space. The mentality, of course, depends on many internal and external factors. The peculiarity of the mentality is associated with the specific features of the geographical environment, the way of life, the spiritual foundations and ideological foundations of the nation. The study analyzes the names of four types of cattle that underlie the mentality of the Kazakh people, reflecting the specifics of the national worldview. Since the main way of life of the Kazakh people was pastoral cattle breeding, in the language content of metaphorical expressions and comparisons, the character, type, and behavior of people are reduced to a comparison with the behavior of four types of domestic animals. The main activity of the Kazakh people is related to agriculture, so the names of characteristic features are associated with agricultural farming. In order to show the features of the national system of thinking we have reviewed comparisons: егіз қозыдай, түйе өркешіндей, қойдай жуас, сиырдың бүйрегіндей, көгендеулі қозыдай and etc. Comparing metaphorical comparisons based on the concepts of «horse», «cattle», «cow», «sheep» in two languages, we tried to prove their ideographic differences. Linguistic units that are the subject of cognitive activity, which express the concepts of thinking of each nation, become distinctive features of it from other nations. Any language means are the reflection of culture and its originality, act as signs of cultural identity. Such signs are phraseological units, proverbs, comparisons, in which the integral linguistic picture of the world of the Kazakh ethnos has been preserved.