Uyghur language

Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچه Uyurqə, ئۇيغۇر تىلى Uyur tili, or Уйурч or Уйур тили—) in Chinese and Уйгурский (язык) in Russian—is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghuristan), formerly also “Sinkiang” and “Chinese Turkestan,” a Central Asian region administered by China. In English, the name of the ethnicity and its language is spelled variously as Uyghur, Uighur, Uygur and Uigur. (Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger," but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native ^*.)

Classification

Uyghur is one of the southeastern Turkic languages, which is grouped by some linguists as a branch of Altaic.

Geographic distribution

Uyghur is spoken by 8.5 million (2004) in China, mostly in the far western Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Uyghur is also spoken by 300,000 in Kazakhstan, and there are Uyghur-speaking communities in Afghanistan, Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, and Uzbekistan.

History

Like the Uzbek language, the Uyghur language is descended from Chagatay Turkic common to Central Asian regions under the Chagatay and Timurid dyansties between 13 and 19th centuries. The Chagatay Turkic language in turn owed its origin in the Turkic dialects of the Qarluks and the Karakhanid state, centered around Kashgar. Contrary to some official histories, the Idikut states of Hami and Turpan, which would be properly labeled "Uyghur" during the Karakhanid and Mongol Yuan periods, spoke a dialect closer to Yugur than to Qarluk-Karakhanid. However these oases came under Chagatay and Timurid rule later in the 14th century, and slowly adopted the common language of the Muslim state when their own Buddhist culture eventually died out. Whereas colloquial Chagatay Turkic in Uzbekistan came under heavy modification by absorbing a Tajik Language substrate and a Tatar or Kazakh superstrate, the local variants in what is today Xinjiang came into contact with substratal local languages in Khotan, Qomul (Hami), Turpan and Gulja (Ili), notably the Indo-European substrates of Khotan and Turpan, and the distinctive Turkic language in Hami and Turpan closer to Yugur than Chagatay Turkic. Kashgar, being an important political and religious center of the Xinjiang Chagatayid states, gave rise to a Kashgarlik variety of the language with great currency in inter-oasis trade. However, since the 19th century Jadid Movement in Xinjiang, the Ili variety, one developed rather recently by Uyghur migrants from all oases since as late as 17th century, became the basis for modern standard Uyghur. This owed much to the strategic location of Ili being an entrepot between Xinjiang and Soviet, Uzbek and Afghan Central Asia, to the relative modern outlook of the Ililik intellegentsia, and to the homogeneous nature of the Ililik dialect as combining features from dialects of all Uyghur oases.

Official status

The Uyghurs are one of the 56 official nationalities in China, and Uyghur is an official language of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Dialects

The dialects of Uyghur identified by the Ethnologue are Central Uyghur, Hotan (Hetian), and Lop (Luobu). There are two main languages in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region: Uyghur and Chinese. Chinese is not used widely in southern Xinjiang. About 80 newspapers and magazines are available in Uighur; five TV channels and ten publishers serve as the Uighur media.

All of the information and news provided has to be permitted by governmental offices.

Sounds

Syllable structure can be CV, CVC, or CVCC. However, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis. Uyghur is not a tonal language. Like other Turkic languages, Uyghur has vowel harmony.

Furthermore, it distinguishes short and long vowels that respond differently to certain phonological processes, but vowel length distinctions are not indicated in the official orthographies, nor is the difference between front /i/ and back /ı/ which plays a phonological role. Of particular note is the Uyghur-specific feature of "vowel reduction" (or "vowel raising") in which unrounded non-high vowels in initial open syllables followed by /ı/ or /i/ (written i) are changed to and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to [ (written i); e.g. /al-Iŋ/ → eliŋ! (cf. Turkish alın!) ‘take!’, /ata-lAr-Im-Iz/ → atilirimiz (cf. Turkish atalarımız) ‘our fathers’—not *etilirimiz in Uyghur because the second syllable has an underlying /a/, not /ı/: ata ‘father’; cf. /at-Im-Iz/ → etimiz (cf. Turkish atımız) ‘our horse’).

Grammar

Uyghur has Subject Object Verb word order, postpositions, genitives, adjectives, numerals, relatives before noun heads, and initial question words. There are prefixes and suffixes. Word order distinguishes subjects and indirect objects, topic and comment. There are 8 noun cases shown by suffixes. Verb suffixes mark subject person, number, 2nd person marks plural and 3 levels of respect. Types of verbs include passive, reflexive, reciprocal and causative.

Vocabulary

Uyghur vocabulary is basically from Turkic stock, but like Uzbek has taken on a large quantity of loan words from Persian. Many internationalisms entered the Uyghur language via Russian, and there are some more recent loans from Chinese.

Writing system

The language traditionally used the Arabic script since the 10th century. The Chinese government introduced a Roman script closely resembling the Soviet Uniform Turkic Alphabet in 1969, but the Persian-Arabic script was reintroduced in 1983, but with extra diacritics to distinguish all vowels of Uyghur. Cyrillic script has been used and is in parts still being used to write Uyghur in areas previously dominated by Russians, and another Roman script, based on Turkish orthography, is used in Turkey and on the internet.

The following table is a comparison of the present Arabic alphabet (Kona Yezik, Qona Yeziq “Old Writing”), the Latin (Yengi Yezik, Yeŋi Yeziq “New Writing”) alphabet used from 1969 to 1987, corresponding modern Turkish spellings and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The table is arranged according to the order of the present alphabet.

**Comparison of Uyghur alphabets**
Arabic	Latin	Turkish	Arabic	Latin	Turkish	IPA
ئا	A a	A a	ق	K k	K k
ئە	Ə ə	E e	ك	K k	K k
ب	B b	B b	ڭ	-ng	-ng
پ	P p	P p	گ	G g	G g
ت	T t	T t	ل	L l	L l
ج	J j	C c	م	M m	M m
چ	Q q	Ç ç	ن	N n	N n
خ	H h	H h	ه	H h	H h
د	D d	D d	ئو	O o	O o
ر	R r	R r	ئۇ	U u	U u
ز	Z z	Z z	ئۆ		Ö ö
ژ	Z z	J j	ئۈ	Ü ü	Ü ü
س	S s	S s	ۋ	V v	V v
ش	X x	Ş ş	ئې	E e	E e
غ		Ğ ğ	ئى	I i	İ i/I ı	or
ف	F f	F f	ي	Y y	Y y

Note that the characters in the above table will not be diplayed correctly by your browser unless Unicode fonts are installed on your computer.

Text sample

Here the sample of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 1) in Uyghur:

English	Yengi Yezik	Cyrillic Uyghur	Turkish Uyghur	Kona Yezik	-	All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.			Hemme adem zatidinla erkin, izzet-hörmet we xoquqta babbarawer bolup tuğulğan. Ular eqilğe we wicdanğa ige hemde bir-birige qérindaşliq munasiwitige xaş rox bilen mu’amile qilişi kérek.	ھەممە ئادەم زاتىدىنلا ئەركىن، ئىززەت-ھۆرمەت ۋە ھوقۇقتا بابباراۋەر بولۇپ تۇغۇلغان. ئۇلار ئەقىلغە ۋە ۋىجدانغا ئىگە ھەمدە بىر-بىرىگە قېرىنداشلىق مۇناسىۋىتىگە خاس روھ بىلەن مۇئامىلە قىلىشى كېرەك

External links

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