The Uyghur or Uighur language ( ئۇيغۇر
تىلى, Уйғур тили, Uyghur tili,
Uyƣur tili or ئۇيغۇرچە, Уйғурчә,
Uyghurche, Uyƣurqə), formerly known as Eastern
Turki, is a Turkic language with 10 to 15
million speakers, spoken primarily by the
Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region of Western China. Significant communities
of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and various other
countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate
communities. Uyghur is an official language
of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
and is widely used in both social and official
spheres, as well as in print, radio, and television,
and is used as a common language by other
ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.Uyghur belongs
to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language
family, which also includes languages such
as Uzbek. 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. More distinctly Uyghur processes
include, especially in northern dialects,
vowel reduction and umlauting. In addition
to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur
has historically been influenced strongly
by Persian and Arabic, and more recently by
Mandarin Chinese and Russian.
The modified Arabic-derived writing system
is the most common and the only standard in
China, although other writing systems are
used for auxiliary and historical purposes.
Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur
Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all
vowels due to modifications to the original
Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century.
Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are also
used, though to a much lesser extent. The
Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters.
== History ==
The Middle Turkic languages are the direct
ancestor of the Karluk languages, including
Uyghur and the Uzbek language.
Kagan Arik wrote that Modern Uyghur is not
descended from Old Uyghur, rather, it is a
descendant of the Karluk language spoken by
the Kara-Khanid Khanate. According to Gerard
Clauson, Western Yugur is considered to be
the true descendant of Old Uyghur, and is
also called "Neo-Uyghur". Modern Uyghur is
not a descendant of Old Uyghur, but is descended
from the Xākānī language described by Mahmud
al-Kashgari in Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk.
According to Frederik Coene, Modern Uyghur
and Western Yugur belong to entirely different
branches of the Turkic language family, respectively
the southeastern Turkic languages and the
northeastern Turkic languages. The Western
Yugur language, although in geographic proximity,
is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic
languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote
that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar
and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk,
not (Old) Uyghur.Robert Barkley Shaw wrote,
"In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand (which
some European linguists have called Uïghur,
a name unknown to the inhabitants of those
towns, who know their tongue simply as Túrki),
... This would seem in many case to be a misnomer
as applied to the modem language of Kashghar".
Sven Hedin wrote, "In these cases it would
be particularly inappropriate to normalize
to the East Turkish literary language, because
by so doing one would obliterate traces of
national elements which have no immediate
connection with the Kaschgar Turks, but on
the contrary are possibly derived from the
ancient Uigurs".Probably around 1077, 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, Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk (English:
Compendium of the Turkic Dialects; Uyghur:
تۈركى تىللار دىۋانى Türki
Tillar Diwani). The book, described by scholars
as an "extraordinary work," documents the
rich literary tradition of Turkic languages;
it contains folk tales (including descriptions
of the functions of shamans) and didactic
poetry (propounding "moral standards and good
behaviour"), besides poems and poetry cycles
on topics such as hunting and love, and numerous
other language materials. Other Kara-Khanid
writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani
language. Yusuf Khass Hajib wrote the Kutadgu
Bilig. Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki (Ahmed bin
Mahmud Yükneki) (Ahmet ibn Mahmut Yükneki)
(Yazan Edib Ahmed b. Mahmud Yükneki) (w:tr:Edip
Ahmet Yükneki) wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq
(هبة الحقايق) (Hibet-ül hakayik)
(Hibet ül-hakayık) (Hibbetü'l-Hakaik) (Atebetüʼl-hakayik)
(w:tr:Atabetü'l-Hakayık).
Middle Turkic languages, 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.Modern Uyghur religious
literature includes the Taẕkirah, biographies
of Islamic religious figures and saints. The
Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written
about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr. Written
sometime in the period between 1700 and 1849,
the Chagatai language (modern Uyghur) Taẕkirah
of the Four Sacrificed Imams provides an account
of the Muslim Karakhanid war against the Khotanese
Buddhists, containing a story about Imams,
from Mada'in city (possibly in modern-day
Iraq) came 4 Imams who travelled to help the
Islamic conquest of Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar
by Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Qarakhanid leader.
The shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in
Altishahr as one of Islam's essential components
and the tazkirah literature reinforced the
sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does
not believe in the stories of the saints is
guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs. It is
written, "And those who doubt Their Holinesses
the Imams will leave this world without faith,
and on Judgement Day their faces will be black
..." in the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed
Imams. Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratu'l-Bughra
on the Muslim Turki war against the "infidel"
Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan
was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari. Historical
works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i
ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami.
The Qing dynasty commissioned dictionaries
on the major languages of China which included
Chagatai Turki language, such as the Pentaglot
Dictionary.
Shaw and Christian missionaries such as George
W. Hunter (missionary), Johannes Avetaranian,
Magnus Bäcklund, Nils Fredrik Höijer, Father
Hendricks, Josef Mässrur, Anna Mässrur,
Albert Andersson (missionary), Gustaf Ahlbert,
Stina Mårtensson, John Törnquist, Gösta
Raquette, Oskar Hermannson, the convert to
Christianity Nur Luke, Harold Whitaker, and
Turkologist Gunnar Jarring studied the Uyghur
language and wrote works on it, calling it
"Eastern Turki". Shaw wrote in his book that
it was Europeans at his time who called the
language "Uighur" while the native inhabitants
of Yarkand and Kashgar did not call it by
that name and but called it "Turki", and Shaw
wrote that the name "Uighur" was a misnomer
when referring to Kashgar's language. A Turkish
convert to Christianity, Johannes Avetaranian
went to China to spread Christianity to the
Uyghurs. Yaqup Istipan, Wu'erkaixi, and Alimujiang
Yimiti are other Uyghurs who converted to
Christianity.
The Bible was translated into the Kashgari
dialect of Turki (Uyghur).The historical term
"Uyghur" was appropriated for the language
that had been known as Eastern Turki by government
officials in the Soviet Union in 1922 and
in Xinjiang in 1934. Sergey Malov was behind
the idea of renaming Turki to Uyghurs. The
use of the term Uyghur has led to anachronisms
when describing the history of the people.
In one of his books the term Uyghur was deliberately
not used by James Millward. The name Khāqāniyya
was given to the Qarluks who inhabited Kāshghar
and Bālāsāghūn, the inhabitants were not
Uighur, but their language has been retroactively
labelled as Uighur by scholars. The Qarakhanids
called their own language the "Turk" or "Kashgar"
language, and did not use Uighur to describe
their own language, Uighur was used to describe
the language of non-Muslims but Chinese scholars
have anachronistically called a Qarakhanid
work written by Kashgari as "Uighur". The
name "Altishahri-Jungharian Uyghur" was used
by the Soviet educated Uyghur Qadir Haji in
1927.
== Classification ==
The Uyghur language belongs to the Karluk
Turkic (Qarluq) branch of the Turkic language
family. It is closely related to Äynu, Lop,
Ili Turki, the extinct language Chagatay (the
East Karluk languages), and more distantly
to Uzbek (which is West Karluk).
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.
=== 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
mutually 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 Qarkilik
Eastern: Spoken in an area stretching from
Qarkilik towards north to QongkölThe 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.Vowel reduction is common in the
northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken,
but not in the south.
== Status ==
Uyghur is spoken by about 8-11 million people
in total. In addition to being spoken primarily
in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of
Western China, mainly by the Uyghur people,
Uyghur was also spoken by some 300,000 people
in Kazakhstan in 1993, some 90,000 in Kyrgyzstan
and Uzbekistan in 1998, 3,000 in Afghanistan
and 1,000 in Mongolia, both in 1982. Smaller
communities also exist in Albania, Australia,
Belgium, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan,
Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States
(New York City).The Uyghurs are one of the
56 recognized ethnic groups in China, and
Uyghur is an official language of Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region, along with Standard
Chinese. As a result, Uyghur can be heard
in most social domains in Xinjiang, and also
in schools, government and courts. Of the
other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, those
populous enough to have their own autonomous
prefectures, such as the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz,
have access to schools and government services
in their native language. Smaller minorities,
however, do not have a choice and must attend
Uyghur-medium schools. These include the Xibe,
Tajiks, Daurs, and Russians. In some instances
Uyghur parents decide to enroll their children
at Mandarin schools over Uyghur schools because
of the better quality education offered, leading
to many Uyghur children having more trouble
learning their native language over Mandarin.
However, according to Radio Free Asia, Xinjiang's
Hotan government have issued a directive completely
banning the use of the Uyghur language at
all education levels up to and including secondary
school in 2017.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.
== Phonology ==
=== 
Vowels ===
The vowels of the Uyghur language are, in
their alphabetical order (in the Latin script),
⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩,
⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. There are no
diphthongs in Uyghur and when two vowels come
together, which occurs in some loanwords,
each vowel retains its individual sound. And
disregarding vowel length distinction in current
Uyghur orthographies.
The Uyghur vowel system is characterised by
the oppositions front vs. back, high vs. low
and unrounded vs. rounded.
The Uyghur vowel system may be subcategorized
on the basis of height, backness and roundness.
It has been argued, within a lexical phonology
framework, that /e/ has a back counterpart
/ɤ/, and modern Uyghur lacks a clear differentiation
between /i/ and /ɯ/.
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.The
high vowels undergo some tensing when they
occur adjacent to alveolars (s, z, r, l),
palatals (j), dentals (t̪, d̪, n̪), and
post-alveolar affricates (t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ), e.g.
chiraq [t͡ʃʰˈiraq] 'lamp', jenubiy [d͡ʒɛnʊˈbiː]
'southern', yüz [jyz] 'face; hundred', suda
[suːˈda] 'in/at (the) water'.
Both [i] and [ɯ] undergo apicalisation after
alveodental continuants in unstressed syllables,
e.g. siler [sɪ̯læː(r)] 'you (plural)',
ziyan [zɪ̯ˈjɑːn] 'harm'. They are medialised
after /χ/ or before /l/, e.g. til [tʰɨl]
'tongue', xizmet [χɨzˈmɛt] 'work; job;
service'. After velars, uvulars and /f/ they
are realised as [e], e.g. giram [ɡeˈrʌm]
'gramme', xelqi [χɛlˈqʰe] 'his [etc.]
nation', Finn [fen] 'Finn'. Between two syllables
that contain a rounded back vowel each, they
are realised as back, e.g. qolimu [qʰɔˈlɯmʊ]
'also his [etc.] arm'.
Any vowel undergoes laxing and backing when
it occurs in uvular (/q/, /ʁ/, /χ/) and
laryngeal (glottal) (/ɦ/, /ʔ/) environments,
e.g. qiz [qʰɤz] 'girl', qëtiq [qʰɤˈtɯq]
'yogurt', qeghez [qʰæˈʁæz] 'paper', qum
[qʰʊm] 'sand', qolay [qʰɔˈlʌɪ] 'convenient',
qan [qʰɑn] 'blood', ëghiz [ʔeˈʁez] 'mouth',
hisab [ɦɤˈsʌp] 'number', hës [ɦɤs]
'hunch', hemrah [ɦæmˈrʌh] 'partner', höl
[ɦœɫ] 'wet', hujum [ɦuˈd͡ʒʊm] 'assault',
halqa [ɦɑlˈqʰɑ] 'ring'.
Lowering tends to apply to the non-high vowels
when a syllable-final liquid assimilates to
them, e.g. kör [cʰøː] 'look!', boldi [bɔlˈdɪ]
'he [etc.] became', ders [dæːs] 'lesson',
tar [tʰɑː(r)] 'narrow'.
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. /e/ only occurs in
words of non-Turkic origin and as the result
of vowel raising.Uyghur has systematic vowel
reduction (or vowel raising) as well as 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 do not
contrast for backness). Uyghur also has rounding
harmony.
=== Consonants ===
Uyghur voiceless stops are aspirated word-initially
and intervocalically. 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. Voiceless phonemes do not become voiced
in standard Uyghur.Suffixes display a slightly
different type of consonant alternation. The
phonemes /ɡ/ and /ʁ/ anywhere in a suffix
alternate as governed by vowel harmony, where
/ɡ/ occurs with front vowels and /ʁ/ with
back ones. Devoicing of a suffix-initial consonant
can occur only in the cases of /d/ → [t],
/ɡ/ → [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.Loan phonemes have influenced
Uyghur to various degrees. /d͡ʒ/ and /χ/
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, ɡ/ 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/, /ɡ/,
and /ʁ/ rarely initially, and /z/ only morpheme-final.
Therefore, the pairs */t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ/, */ʃ,
ʒ/, and */s, z/ do not alternate.
=== Phonotactics ===
The primary syllable structure of Uyghur is
CV(C)(C). Uyghur syllable structure is usually
CV or CVC, but CVCC can also occur in some
words. When syllable-coda clusters occur,
CC tends to become CVC in some speakers especially
if the first consonant is not a sonorant.
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. In general,
Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic
consonant clusters by means of elision and
epenthesis.
== Orthography ==
The Karluk language started to be written
with the Perso-Arabic script (Kona Yëziq)
in the 10th century upon the conversion of
the Kara-Khanids to Islam. This Perso-Arabic
script (Kona Yëziq) was reformed in the 20th
century with modifications to represent all
Modern Uyghur sounds including short vowels
and eliminate Arabic letters representing
sounds not found in Modern Uyghur. Unlike
many other modern Turkic languages, Uyghur
is primarily written using an Arabic alphabet,
(with 4 alphabets like che-Pe-Zhe and Ga)
although a Cyrillic alphabet and two Latin
alphabets also are in use to a much lesser
extent. Unusually for an alphabet based on
the Persian, full transcription of vowels
is indicated. (Among the Arabic family of
alphabets, only a few, such as Kurdish, distinguish
all vowels.)
The four alphabets in use today can be seen
below.
Uyghur Arabic alphabet or UEY
Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet or USY
The Uyghur New Script or UYY
Uyghur Latin alphabet or ULYIn 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. 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.
== 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.
Chinese in Xinjiang and Russian elsewhere
had the greatest influence on Uyghur. Loanwords
from these languages are all quite recent,
although older borrowings exist as well, such
as borrowings from Dungan, a Mandarin language
spoken by the Dungan people of Central Asia.
A number of loanwords of German origin have
also reached Uyghur through Russian.Below
are some examples of loanwords which have
entered the Uyghur language.
== See also ==
Languages of China
Turkic languages
Uyghur people
