Uyghur language

Uyghur language
Uyghur language
Uyghur dialects
Uyghur grammar
Uyghur alphabet
Sogdian · Old Uyghur · Old Turkic
Ⱪona Yeziⱪ · Latin Yéziqi
Yengi Yeziⱪ · Cyrillic Yéziqi

Uyghur, formerly known as Eastern Turki,^[6] is a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by China, mainly by the Uyghur people. It is also spoken by some 300,000 people in Kazakhstan as of 1993, some 90,000 in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as of 1998, 3,000 in Afghanistan and 1,000 in Mongolia, both as of 1982.^[4] Smaller communities also exist in Albania, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.^[3]

The Uyghurs are one of the 56 official nationalities in China, and Uyghur is an official language of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, along with Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is not spoken widely in southern Xinjiang. However, due to the policy of mandatory Mandarin-language education for all of Xinjiang, knowledge of Mandarin is increasing.^[7][8] Today the Uyghur language is also used as a lingua franca among non-Uyghurs, such as the Xibes, Wakhis, Tajiks of Xinjiang and Daurs, and even some Russians. A number of ethnic minorities in China even use Uyghur as a first language, these include the Tatars, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.^[4]

The language can be heard in most social domains, and also in schools, government and courts.^[4] About 80 newspapers and magazines are available in Uyghur; five TV channels and ten publishers serve as the Uyghur media. Outside of China, Radio Free Asia and TRT provide news in Uyghur.

Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with Subject Object Verb word order.

History

The Old Turkic language is an ancient Turkic language used from the 7th to 13th centuries in Mongolia and the East Turkestan region, and is especially found among the Orkhon inscriptions and Turpan texts. It is the direct ancestor of the Uyghur Turkic languages, including Uyghur and the Uzbek language. By contrast, the Western Yugur language, although in geographic proximity, is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia.^[9]

Probably around 1077,^[10] a scholar of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from Kashgar in modern-day Xinjiang, published a Turkic language dictionary and description of the geographic distribution of many Turkic languages, Divān-ul Lughat-ul Turk (English: Compendium of the Turkic Dialects; Uyghur: تۈركى تىللار دىۋانى). The book, described by scholars as an "extraordinary work,"^[11][12] documents the rich literary tradition of Turkic languages; it contains folk tales (including descriptions of the functions of shamans^[12]) and didactic poetry (propounding "moral standards and good behaviour"), besides poems and poetry cycles on topics such as hunting and love,^[13] and numerous other language materials.^[14]

Old Turkic, through the influence of Perso-Arabic after the 13th century, developed into the Chagatai language, a literary language used all across Central Asia until the early 20th century. After Chaghatai fell into extinction, the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, including numerous Persian loanwords.^[15] Modern Uyghur uses the Urumchi dialect in Xinjiang as its standard, while the similar Ili dialect is used in the former Soviet Union.^[16] Russian sources cite the central dialect of Ghulja as the pronunciation norm for modern Standard Uyghur. The similar pronunciation of Zhetysu and Fergana Uyghurs is considered standard for Uyghurs living in the CIS countries.^[17][18]

Classification

The Uyghur language belongs to the Uyghur Turkic branch of the Turkic language family, which is controversially a branch of the Altaic language family. It is closely related to Western Yugur, Salar, Aini, Lop, Ili Turki, the extinct languages Old Turkic and Chagatay, and more distantly Uzbek.

Early linguistic scholarly studies of Uyghur include Julius Klaproth's 1812 Dissertation on language and script of the Uighurs (Abhandlung über die Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren) which was disputed by Isaak Jakob Schmidt. In this period, Klaproth correctly asserted that Uyghur was a Turkic language, while Schmidt believed that Uyghur should be classified with Tangut languages.^[19]

Dialects

It is widely accepted that Uyghur has three main dialects, all based on their geographical distribution. Each of these main dialects have a number of sub-dialects which all are mutual intelligible to some extent.

• Central: Spoken in an area stretching from Kumul towards south to Yarkand
• Southern: Spoken in an area stretching from Guma towards east to Charqaliq
• Eastern: Spoken in an area stretching from Charqaliq towards north to Chongköl

The Central dialects are spoken by 90% of the Uyghur-speaking population, while the two other branches of dialects only are spoken by a relatively small minority.^[20]

Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south.^[21]

Phonology

The primary syllable structure of Uyghur is CV(C)(C).^[3]

Vowels

Uyghur vowels are by default short, but some phonologists have argued that long vowels also exist because of historical vowel assimilation (above) and through loanwords. Underlyingly long vowels would resist vowel reduction and devoicing, introduce non-final stress, and be analyzed as |Vj| or |Vr| before a few suffixes. However, the conditions in which they are actually pronounced as distinct from their short counterparts have not been fully researched.^[22]

Official Uyghur orthographies do not mark vowel length, and also do not distinguish between /ɪ/ (e.g., بىلىم /bɪlɪm/ "knowledge") and back /ɯ/ (e.g., تىلىم /tɯlɯm/ "my language"); these two sounds are in complementary distribution, but phonological analyses claim that they play a role in vowel harmony and are separate phonemes.^[23]

Uyghur has systematic vowel reduction (or vowel raising) in which unrounded non-high vowels (/a/ and /æ/) in initial open syllables followed by /ɪ/ are changed to /e/ and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to /ɪ/. The former process is applied before the latter; As with other phenomena, long vowels are exempt. For example:

/ɑl + ɪŋ/ → /elɪŋ/ (cf. Turkish alın) ‘take!’

/ɑtɑ + lɑr + ɪmɪz/ → /ɑtɪlɪrɪmɪz/ (cf. Turkish atalarımız) ‘our fathers’ (not *etɪlɪrɪmɪz in Uyghur because reduction to /e/ can only be applied before reduction to /ɪ/ in a word)

/ɑt + ɪm/ → /etɪm/ (cf. Turkish atım) ‘my horse’)

/pæːr + ɪm/ → /pæ(ː)rɪm/ 'my feather' (in some loanwords, vowel raising does not occur)

The high vowels /ɪ/, /u/, and /y/ are devoiced in non-stressed positions when they occur between two voiceless consonants, or in word-initial position before a voiceless consonant: e.g. uka [ʊ̥kɑ] 'older brother', pütün [pʏ̥tʏn] 'entire', ikki [ɪ̥kkɪ].

/e/ only occurs in words of non-Turkic origin and as the result of vowel raising.^[24]

Vowel harmony

Uyghur, like other Turkic languages, displays vowel harmony. Words usually agree in vowel backness, but compounds, loans, and some other exceptions often break vowel harmony. Suffixes surface with the rightmost [back] value in the stem, and /e, ɪ/ are transparent (as they don't contrast for backness). Uyghur also has rounding harmony.^[25]

Consonants

In Uyghur, any consonant phoneme can occur as the syllable onset or coda, except for /ʔ/ which only occurs in the onset and /ŋ/, which never occurs word-initially. Uyghur syllable structure is usually CV or CVC, but CVCC can occur if the third element is a sonorant. In general, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis.^[26]

Uyghur voiceless stops are aspirated word-initially and intervocalically.^[27] The pairs /p, b/, /t, d/, /k, ɡ/, and /q, ʁ/ alternate, with the voiced member devoicing in syllable-final position, except in word-initial syllables. This devoicing process is usually reflected in the official orthography, but an exception has been recently made for certain Perso-Arabic loans.^[28] Voiceless phonemes do not become voiced in standard Uyghur.^[29]

Suffixes display a slightly different type of consonant alternation. The phonemes /g/ and /ʁ/ anywhere in a suffix alternate as governed by vowel harmony, where /g/ occurs with front vowels and /ʁ/ with back ones. Devoicing of a suffix-initial consonant can occur only in the cases of /d/ → [t], /g/ → [k], and /ʁ/ → [q], when the preceding consonant is voiceless. Lastly, the rule that /g/ must occur with front vowels and /ʁ/ with back vowels can be broken when either [k] or [q] in suffix-initial position becomes assimilated by the other due to the preceding consonant being such.^[30]

Stops and affricates lenite when preceding a dissimilar consonant. /t͡ʃ/ goes to [ʃ], /d͡ʒ/ to [ʒ], /k/ to [ç], and /q/ to [χ]. /g/ goes to /ɣ/ in word-initial syllables, but in non-initial syllables, /g/ and /ʁ/ behave like their unvoiced equivalents and go to [ç] and [χ] respectively.^[27] These changes are not reflected in orthography, except when /b/ lenites to [v] or [w] as <w>. Similarly, /h/ tends to become [χ] before another consonant.^[31] Lenition also occurs in certain intervocalic contexts, e.g. /b/ lenites to [β] and /g/ as [ɣ] (not marked).^[32]

Uyghur displays vocalic assimilation, atypical among Turkic languages. Syllable-final /r/, /l/, and /j/ are optionally assimilated to the preceding vowel which is lengthened, in the case of e and u, made lower and less tense; e.g., xelqlar [xæːqlaː] ‘the nations’. However, this never occurs when /l/ and /j/ are word final. This phenomenon occurs most common in colloquial speech, but is often avoided when reciting, reading, or singing. As a result, Uyghur speakers often hypercorrect by inserting an [r] after a long vowel where there is no phonemic /r/, especially after attaching a vowel-initial suffix. (e.g. bina 'building', binarim or binayim 'my building'. In addition, although this is not represented orthographically, a few cases of "r-deletion" have been lexicalized, such as تۆت töt "four".^[33]

Loan phonemes have influenced Uyghur to various degrees. /d͡ʒ/ and /x/ were borrowed from Arabic and have been nativized, while /ʒ/ from Persian less so. /f/ only exists in very recent Russian and Chinese loans, since Perso-Arabic (and older Russian and Chinese) /f/ became Uyghur /p/. Perso-Arabic loans have also made the contrast between /k, g/ and /q, ʁ/ phonemic, as they occur as allophones in native words, the former set near front vowels and the latter near a back vowels. Some speakers of Uyghur distinguish /v/ from /w/ in Russian loans, but this is not represented in most orthographies. Other phonemes occur natively only in limited contexts, i.e. /h/ only in few interjections, /d/, /g/, and /ʁ/ rarely initially, and /z/ only morpheme-final. Therefore, the pairs */t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ/, */ʃ, ʒ/, and */s, z/ do not alternate.^[34][35]

Orthography

A signboard in front of the Military Museum of Xinjiang written in Uyghur (using Ereb Yéziqi) and Mandarin Chinese

A sign in Ghulja, Xinjiang, written in Uyghur (using Ereb Yéziqi) and Mandarin (both Hanzi and Pinyin)

Since the beginning of the literary tradition of Uyghur in the 5th century it has been written in numerous different writing systems and continues to be. Unlike many other Turkic languages, Uyghur is primarily written using a Arabic-derived alphabet, although a Cyrillic-derived alphabet and two Latin-derived alphabets also are in use, but to a much lesser extent.

The four alphabets in use today can be seen below.

• Uyghur Ereb Yéziqi or UEY
• Uyghur Latin Yéziqi or ULY
• Uyghur Siril Yéziqi or USY
• Uyghur Pinyin Yéziqi or UPNY

In the table below the alphabets are shown side-by-side for comparison, together with a phonetic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Grammar

Uyghur is an agglutinative language with a Subject Object Verb-word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case, but not gender and definiteness like in many other languages. There are two numbers: singular and plural; and six different cases: nominative, accusative, dative, locative, ablative and genitive.^[36][37] Verbs are conjugated for tense: present and past; voice: causative and passive; aspect: continuous; and mood: e.g. ability. Verbs may be negated as well.^[36]

Lexicon

The core lexicon of the Uyghur language is of Turkic stock, but due to different kinds of language contact through the history of the language, it has adopted many loanwords. Kazakh, Uzbek and Chagatai are all Turkic languages which have had a strong influence on Uyghur. Many words of Arabic origin have come into the language through Persian and Tajik, which again have come through Uzbek, and to a greater extent, Chagatai. Many words of Arabic origin have also entered the language directly through Islamic literature after the introduction of the Islamic religion around the 10th century.

Russian and Chinese are the greatest influencers in more recent times, Russian mostly outside Xinjiang, and Chinese in Xinjiang. Loanwords from these languages are all quite recent, although older borrowings exist as well, such as borrowings from Dungan, a Mandarin dialect spoken by the Dungan people of Central Asia. A number of loanwords of German origin have also reached Uyghur, although through Russian.^[38]

Below are some examples of loanwords which have entered the Uyghur language.

See also

• Languages of China

References

Notes

General

• Duval, Jean Rahman; Janbaz, Waris Abdukerim (2006), An Introduction to Latin-Script Uyghur, Salt Lake City: University of Utah, http://www.uyghurdictionary.org/excerpts/An%20Introduction%20to%20LSU.pdf 
• Dwyer, Arienne (2001), "Uyghur", in Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl, Facts About the World's Languages, H. W. Wilson, pp. 786–790, ISBN 978-0-824209-70-4 
• Dwyer, Arienne (2005), The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse, Policy Studies, 15, Washington: East-West Center, ISBN 1-932728-29-5, http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/PS015.pdf 
• Engesæth, Tarjei; Yakup, Mahire; Dwyer, Arienne (2009), Greetings from the Teklimakan: A Handbook of Modern Uyghur, Volume 1, Lawrence: University of Kansas Scholarworks, ISBN 978-1-936153-03-9, http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/5624/3/EngYakDwy2009_Uyg1full_10.pdf 
• Hahn, Reinhard F. (1991), Spoken Uyghur, London and Seattle: University of Washington Press, ISBN 978-0-295986-51-7 
• Hahn, Reinhard F. (1998), "Uyghur", in Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Ágnes, The Turkic Languages, Routledge, pp. 379–396, ISBN 978-0-415082-00-6 
• Johanson, Lars, "Uyghur", in Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Ágnes, History of Turkic, Routledge, pp. 81–125, ISBN 978-0-415082-00-6 
• Vaux, Bert (2001), Disharmony and derived transparency in Uyghur Vowel Harmony, Cambridge: Harvard University, http://www.uwm.edu/~vaux/uyghur.pdf 
• Tömür, Hamüt (2003), Modern Uyghur Grammar (Morphology), trans. Anne Lee, Istanbul: Yɪldɪz, ISBN 975-7981-20-6 
• Yakup, Abdurishid (2005), The Turfan Dialect of Uyghur, Turcologica, 63, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 3-447-05233-3 

External links

Dictionaries

• Uyghur-Chinese Dictionary
• Online Uyghur-English Multiscript Dictionary
• Online Uyghur-English Dictionary

Radio

• Radio Free Asia
• TRT: Uyghur
• Uyghur language radio 1000-1100 1600-1700 UTC daily

Fonts

• Arabic Uyghur in different fonts
• Unicode based TrueType/OpenType fonts of the Uyghur Computer Science Association