Uyghur language

Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچە‎/Uyƣurqə/Уйғурчә, or ئۇيغۇر تىلى‎/Uyƣur tili/Уйғур тили)^[2] is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghurstan), 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, with the preferred spelling being Uyghur. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" (IPA: [ˈwi.ɡɚ]) but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" (IPA: [uj.ˈɡur]) is closer to native [ʔʊɪ'ʁʊː].

Classification

The Uyghur language belongs to the Qarluq group of the Turkic language family, which is among the Altaic languages.

Geographic distribution

A bilingual sign using Uyghur, Chinese and Hanyu Pinyin in Yining.

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 9th to the 13th centuries in East Turkestan/Uyghurstan.

In the later Uyghur language, any element of Old Uyghur was strongly overlaid by the Chagatai language common to Central Asian regions under the Chagatai and Timurid dynasties. Chagatai was the common literary language of Central Asia between the 13th and 19th centuries, and is also the ancestor of modern Uzbek. Chagatai in turn owed its origin to the Göktürk language, that is the Turkic dialects of the Qarluks and the Karakhanid state, centered around Kashgar, thus having a common origin with Old Uyghur, but is distinguishable from it partly by the influence of literary Persian.

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 Chagatai 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 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, and the distinctive Turkic language in Hami and Turpan, which was closer to Yugur than Chagatai Turkic. 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 used 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 /i/ and back /ɯ/ 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 /ɯ/ or /i/ are changed to [e] and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to [ɪ]; 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 /ɯ/: ata ‘father’; cf. |at-Im-Iz| → /etimiz/ (cf. Turkish atımız) ‘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 [ʔʊɪ'ʁʊːlaː] ‘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