Uyghur language

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{{language |name=Uyghur |nativename=ئۇيغۇرچه Uyƣurqə |states=China, Kazakhstan |region=Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region |speakers=7.6 million |rank=98 |familycolor=Altaic |fam2=Turkic |fam3=Eastern |nation=Xinjiang |agency=Working Committee of Ethnic Language and Writing of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region |iso1=ug|iso2=uig|iso3=uig}} Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچه Uyƣurqə, or ئۇيغۇر تىلى Uyƣur tili; Template:Zh-stp) is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghuristan), China. The name of the language is spelled variously as Uyghur, Uighur, Uygur and Uigur.

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Classification

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

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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.

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Official status

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

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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 autonmous 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.

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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. 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 [e] and unrounded vowels in other non-final open syllables are changed to [[[Template:IPA]]] (written i); e.g. /al-Iŋ/ → eliŋ! (cf. Turkish alın!) ‘take!’, /ata-lAr-Im-Iz/ → atilirimiz (cf. Turkish atalarımız) ‘our fathers’).

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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 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.

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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.

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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 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 (K̡ona Yezik̡, Qona Yeziq “Old Writing”), the Latin (Yengi Yezik̡, 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 IPA   Arabic Latin Turkish IPA
ئا A a A a Template:IPA   ق K̡ k̡ K k Template:IPA
ئە Ə ə E e Template:IPA ك K k K k Template:IPA
ب B b B b Template:IPA ڭ -ng -ng Template:IPA
پ P p P p Template:IPA گ G g G g Template:IPA
ت T t T t Template:IPA ل L l L l Template:IPA
ج J j C c Template:IPA م M m M m Template:IPA
چ Q q Ç ç Template:IPA ن N n N n Template:IPA
خ H h H h Template:IPA ه H̡ h̡ H h Template:IPA
د D d D d Template:IPA ئو O o O o Template:IPA
ر R r R r Template:IPA ئۇ U u U u Template:IPA
ز Z z Z z Template:IPA ئۆ Ɵɵ Ö ö Template:IPA
ژ Z̡ z̡ J j Template:IPA ئۈ Ü ü Ü ü Template:IPA
س S s S s Template:IPA ۋ V v V v Template:IPA
ش X x Ş ş Template:IPA ئې E e E e Template:IPA
غ Ƣƣ Ğ ğ Template:IPA ئى I i İ i/I ı Template:IPA or Template:IPA
ف F f F f Template:IPA ي Y y Y y Template:IPA

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

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Text sample

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

Yengi Yezik̡ English K̡ona Yezik̡
H̡əmmə adəm zatidinla ərkin, izzət-h̡ɵrmət wə hok̡uk̡ta babbarawər bolup tuƣulƣan. Ular ək̡ilƣə wə wijdanƣa igə h̡əmdə bir-birigə k̡erindaxlik̡ munasiwitigə hax roh bilən mu’amilə k̡ilixi kerək. 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. 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
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See also

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External links

Template:Interwiki

br:Ouigoureg ca:Uigur de:Uigurische Sprache eo:Ujgura lingvo fa:اویغوری fi:Uiguurin kieli fr:Ouïgour id:Bahasa Uighur ja:ウイグル語 ko:위구르어 nl:Oejgoers no:Uigurisk ru:Уйгурский язык zh:维吾尔语

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