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Uyghur language
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Uyghur (//, or //) is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 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, with the preferred spelling being Uyghur.
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Encyclopedia
Uyghur (//, or //) is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 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, with the preferred spelling being Uyghur. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native .
Classification
The Uyghur language belongs to the Uyghuric group of the Turkic language family, which is among the Altaic languages.
Geographic distribution
Uyghur is spoken by 10 million (2007)(20 million according to some unofficial sources) 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, Albania, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Kingdom, USA, and Uzbekistan.
History
Old Uyghur is an ancient form of Turkic used from the 7th to the 13th centuries in Mongolia and Uyghurstan/East Turkestan,(language used in Orhon monuments and Turpan texts), and origin of the southeastern turkic languages, also called as Uyghur-Chaghtai, including morden Uyghur and Uzbek languages. While, Yugur, also called as Sari-Uygur, has northern turkic origin.
Uyghur-Chaghatai is the literacy language of central Asia developed through the influence of Arabic and Persian elements in the Old Uyghur langaugage (after 13th century).
Whereas colloquial Uyghur-Chagatai 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, Kumul (Hami), Turpan and Gulja (Ili), notably the Indo-European substrates of Khotan and Turpan. Kashgar, being an important political and religious center of the Uyghurstan 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 intelligentsia, 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 Uyghur 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 Uyghur Autonomous Region: Uyghur and Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is not spoken widely in southern Xinjiang. About 80 newspapers and magazines are available in Uyghur; five TV channels and ten publishers serve as the Uyghur media.
Sounds
Syllable structure can be CV, CVC, or CVCC. However, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis. 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 and back 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 or are changed to and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to ; e.g. || ? (cf. Turkish alin) ‘take!’, || ? (cf. Turkish atalarimiz) ‘our fathers’ — not *etilirimiz in Uyghur because the second syllable has an underlying , not : ata ‘father’; cf. || ? (cf. Turkish atimiz) ‘our horse’).
Another phonological Uyghur feature, which is rare among Turkic languages, is that the language is “non-rhotic”, similar to many English dialects of Southern England and New England. Syllable-final /r/ is “dropped;” more correctly speaking, it is assimilated to the preceding vowel and lengthens it; e.g., Uyghurlar [] ‘Uyghurs’. Many speakers occasionally do sound syllable-final /r/, for instance when they enunciate very carefully, such as in recitation or song or when wanting to teach non-Uyghurs “good” Uyghur, and in so doing they often overcompensate by inserting an [r] after a long vowels where there is no phonemic /r/.
Uyghur consonants
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!
! Labial
! Dental
! Palatal
! Velar
! Glottal
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! Nasal
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! Stop
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! Fricative
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! Trill
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! Approximant
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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 eight noun cases marked by suffixes. Verb suffixes mark person, number, 2nd person marks plural and three levels of respect. Types of verbs include passive, reflexive, reciprocal and causative.
Vocabulary
Uyghur vocabulary is basically from Turkic stock; however, like Uzbek, it has taken on a large quantity of loan words from Persian. Many internationalisms entered the Uyghur language from Russian, and there are some more recent loans from Chinese.
Writing system
"Old Uyghur" is a name sometimes applied to the Uyghur Alphabet. From the 9th to the 13th century it was used for writing the Old Uyghur language, especially in Buddhist texts. Forms of it survived till the 18th century for other languages used in Uyghurstan/East Turkestan. It is ultimately derived from the Syriac alphabet, but differs from it by being written from top to bottom instead of right to left. The Manchu and Mongolian alphabets are descended from it.
The Uyghur language traditionally used a modified Arabic alphabet, known as Chagatai script or Kona Yeziq (old script), since the 10th century. The Chinese government introduced a Roman script (Yengi Yeziq, “new script”) closely resembling the Soviet Uniform Turkic Alphabet in 1969. A further modification of the Arabic script, with additional diacritics to distinguish Uyghur vowels, was introduced in 1983: this is known as Uyghur Ereb Yéziqi (Uyghur Arabic script) and is still widely used. 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.
ULY: Between November 2000 and July 2001, five conferences were held at Xinjiang University in Ürümchi to introduce a unified Latin-Script Uyghur alphabet (Uyghur Latin Yéziqi – ULY).
The ULY project was covered by the official XUAR media and on the internet to inform the public of the effort. The media, in particular, was very careful not to send the wrong signal of an incipient writing reform. Nevertheless, even today some people still hesitate to use the term ULY since they fear its potential association with an attempt to reform the common script. Others think it is important to have one-to-one correspondence (or a norm) between Latin-Script Uyghur and Arabic-Script Uyghur.
The following table is a comparison of the present Arabic alphabet (Kona Yezik, Kona Yeziq “Old Writing”), the Latin (Yengi Yeziq, Ye?i Yeziq “New Writing”) alphabet used from 1969 to 1987, the Cyrillic script currently used in the former Soviet Union, the ULY, 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 | Perso-Arabic script | Latin | Cyrillic | ULY | Turkish | IPA | | Perso-Arabic script | Latin | Cyrillic | ULY | Turkish | IPA |
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| ?? | A a | A a | A a | A a | | ? | K k | ? ? | Q q | K k | | | ?? | ? ? | ? ? | E e | E e | | ? | K k | K k | K k | K k | | | ? | B b | ? ? | B b | B b | | ? | -ng | ? ? | -ng | -ng | | | ? | P p | ? ? | P p | P p | | ? | G g | ? ? | G g | G g | | | ? | T t | ? ? | T t | T t | | ? | L l | ? ? | L l | L l | | | ? | J j | ? ? | J j | C c | | ? | M m | ? ? | M m | M m | | | ? | Q q | ? ? | CH ch | Ç ç | | ? | N n | ? ? | N n | N n | | | ? | H h | X x | X x | H h | | ? | | ? h | H h | H h | | | ? | D d | ? ? | D d | D d | | ?? | O o | ? ? | ? ? | O o | | | ? | R r | ? ? | R r | R r | | ?? | U u | ? ? | U u | U u | | | ? | Z z | ? ? | Z z | Z z | | ?? | | ? ? | Ö ö | Ö ö | | | ? | | ? ? | J j | J j | | ?? | Ü ü | ? ? | Ü ü | Ü ü | | | ? | S s | ? ? | S s | S s | | ? | V v | ? ? | W w | V v | | | ? | X x | ? ? | SH sh | S s | | ?? | E e | E e | É é | E e | | | ? | | ? ? | GH gh | G g | | ?? | I i | ? ? | I i | I i/I i | or | | ? | F f | ? ? | F f | F f | | ? | Y y | ? ? | Y y | Y y | | |
The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet has two additional letters, which are a combination of two sounds. Here they are with the Perso-Arabic script and Latin equivalents.
| Cyrillic | Perso-Arabic script | Latin |
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| ? ? | ?? | yu | | ? ? | ?? | ya |
Reference: http://www.uyghurdictionary.org/excerpts/An%20Introduction%20to%20LSU.pdf
Note that the characters in the above tables will not be displayed 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:
Sample of writing in various Uyghur orthographies | ????? ????? ????????? ??????? ??????-?????? ?? ??????? ?????????? ????? ????????. ????? ??????? ?? ???????? ???? ????? ???-?????? ??????????? ???????????? ??? ??? ????? ???????? ?????? ????? |
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| Cyrillic Uyghur | |
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| ULY | Hemme adem zatidinla erkin, izzet-hörmet we hoquqta babbarawer bolup tughulghan. Ular eqilghe we wijdan'gha ige hemde bir-birige qérindashliq munasiwitige xash rox bilen muamile qilishi kérek. |
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Turkish Uyghur | Hemme adem zatidinla erkin, izzet-hörmet we xoquqta babbarawer bolup tugulgan. Ular eqilge we wicdanga ige hemde bir-birige qérindasliq munasiwitige xas rox bilen mu’amile qilisi kérek. | | English | 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. |
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Further reading
- Hahn, R. F., & Ibrahim, A. (1991). Spoken Uyghur. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295970154
See also
External links
- (China National Radio 8, part of the time Kazakh, Korean, Mongolian and Uyghur are broadcast, but Lhasa Tibetan dominates.)
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