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This article deals with the phonology and phonetics of the Bashkir language and its dialectal varieties.
| | This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it . Please introduce links to this page from related articles . (September 2025) |
This article deals with the phonology and phonetics of the Bashkir language and its dialectal varieties.
Bashkir language has the widest range of places of articulation of consonants out of all Turkic languages. Despite lacking affricates that are very common throughout Turkic languages, the Bashkir language still possesses a relatively high amount of phonemes.
Below is the chart of consonant phonemes. Phonemes only found in loanwords (such as the glottal stop /ʔ/) or allophones are not included.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | /m/ | /n/ | /ŋ/ | ||||||
| Plosives | Voiceless | /p/ | /t/ | /k/ | /q/ | ||||
| Voiced | /b/ | /d/ | /g/ | ||||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | /θ/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /h/ | ||||
| Voiced | /ð/ | /z/ | /ʒ/ | /ʁ/ | |||||
| Trill | /r/ | ||||||||
| Approximants | /l/ | /j/ | /w/ | ||||||
The most distinct feature of Bashkir consonantism among other Turkic languages is complete loss of affricates and debuccalization. Common Turkic /s/ has split into /h/ in onset and /θ/ in coda, creating unique (among Turkic languages) phonemes. Another notable feature of Bashkir consonantism is lenition of /z/ and intervocal /d/ into /ð/. Although both phonemes still exist in Bashkir, /z/ is extremely rare.
Consonant gemination is not present in Bashkir, although double consonants are still possible on morpheme boundaries.
Voiceless plosives are usually aspirated, although not very strongly, and some vowels (specifically the reduced series) block aspiration. Aspiration is also often lost word-finally. Unlike Tatar, the distinction between glottal fricative /h/ and velar/uvular fricative /χ/ is highlighted, even in northwestern dialects, despite them lacking the phoneme /h/ in native words. However under the influence of Russian language education and lack of Bashkir language usage outside home and family, a lot of speakers merge either one or both of those (in some cases also /ɣ/) into [ x ] (sometimes with further hypercorrection into [ h ]).
Most phonemes change their articulation depending on front or back vowels:
The consonant /n/ usually does not assimilate into [ ŋ ] when followed by a velar consonant, and is still pronounced as [ n ] anyway. There are even minimal pairs of such instances: унға [ũnˈʁɑ] "to 10" vs. уңға [ũɴˈʁɑ] (or [ũɴˈɢɑ]) "to the right".
Bashkir consonants often change their quality in intervocalic position. Both voiceless and voiced plosives get voiced and lenited, so /p/ and /b/ become [ β ], /k/ and /g/ (rarely) become [ ɣ̞ ] or [ ɰ ], and /q/ becomes /ʁ/. /t/ and /d/ are exempt from lenition — /t/ in itself is stable enough, and all instances of /d/ where it could be lenited have already evolved into /ð/ (even in some loanwords):
The glottal fricative /h/ is unusually stable in Bashkir language. While in most languages of the world it is often subject to lenition or even completely dropped, in Bashkir language it remains clearly pronounced even intervocally, not even getting voiced to [ ɦ ]. Moreover, in eastern dialects (historical Argayash and Yalan cantons), the consonants /θ/ and /ð/ are debuccalized into /h/ in syllable coda, completely eliminating the phoneme /θ/ and limiting /ð/ to the few words that start with /ð/.
However, in northwestern dialects, the /s/-/h/ shift did not occur, so this phoneme only exists in loanwords from Arabic and Persian. The Karaidel dialect /s/ corresponds to both /h/ and /s/ of standart Bashkir.
Bashkir has nine native vowels, and three or four loaned vowels (mainly in Russian loanwords). [1]
Phonetically, the native vowels are approximately thus (with the Cyrillic letter followed by the usual Latin romanization in angle brackets): [2]
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Close | и ⟨i⟩ [ ɪ ] | ү ⟨ü⟩ | ы ⟨ı⟩ [ ɯ ] | у ⟨u⟩ [ ʊ ] |
| Mid | э, е ⟨e⟩ | ө ⟨ö⟩ | о ⟨o⟩ | |
| Open | ә ⟨ä⟩ [ æ ] | а ⟨a⟩ [ ɑ ] | ||
In Russian loans there are also [ ɨ ], [ ɛ ], [ ɔ ] and [ ä ], written the same as the native vowels: ы, е/э, о, а respectively. [1]
Historically, the Proto-Turkic mid vowels have raised from mid to high, whereas the Proto-Turkic high vowels have become the Bashkir reduced mid series. (The same shifts have also happened in Tatar.) [3] [4] However, in most dialects of Bashkir, this shift is not as prominent as in Tatar.
| Vowel | Common Turkic | Tatar | Bashkir | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *e /ɛ/ | *et | it | it /it/ | 'meat' |
| *ö /œ/ | *söz | süz | hüź /hʏð/ | 'word' |
| *o /ɔ/ | *sol | sul | hul /huɫ/ | 'left' |
| *i /i/ | *it | et | et /ɪt/ | 'dog' |
| *ï /ɤ/ | *qïz | qız | qıź /qɯð/ | 'girl' |
| *u /u/ | *qum | qom | qom /qʊm/ | 'sand' |
| *ü /y/ | *kül | köl | köl /køl/ | 'ash' |
Bashkir language has 3 dialect groups: northwestern, southern and eastern. The standart language is based on southern and eastern dialects. All dialects are mutually intelligible, with some slight differences in phonology and sometimes in vocabulary.
The northwestern dialects are considered by most Tatar linguists to form a dialect continuum with Tatar language. The southern dialects are considered by some Bashkir linguists to form a dialect continuum with Nogai and Kazakh languages.
The northwestern Bashkir dialect is subject to intense debate over its status as a dialect of Bashkir or Tatar languages. There are very few differences between standart Bashkir and Tatar languages. The most prominent differences in phonology are the following:
Northwestern dialect has roughly the same differences, albeit /ɕ/ and /ʑ/ are usually articulated softer than Tatar sounds, as [ ç ] and [ ʝ ]. Some subdialects of Northwestern Bashkir, such as Karaidel subdialect, differ slightly more from Tatar. Some subdialects, such as Ğäynä, spoken in Perm Krai, differ slightly more from standart Bashkir.
There are also slight differences in morphology between standart Bashkir and Tatar. Northwestern Bashkir has the same morphology as standart Bashkir, and so does the eastern dialect of Tatar language, spoken along the border with Bashkortostan and by the Tatars in Bashkortostan itself.
The southern Bashkir dialects do not differ from standart Bashkir language in phonology, as they were the basis for standart Bashkir phonology. There are only slight differences in morphology. It is commonly perceived by Bashkir people to be the "purest" form of Bashkir language.
The eastern Bashkir dialects differ insignificantly from standart Bashkir language in phonology and morphology. These dialects were the basis for standart Bashkir morphology.
Key phonological differences are:
The maximal syllable structure is (C)V(C)(C). Although Bashkir words can take multiple final consonants, the possibilities are limited. Multi-syllable words are syllabified to have C.CV or V.CV syllable splits. C.V split is disallowed. V.V split is only found in loanwords, and is usually broken down by vowel hiatus.
The main rules of Bashkir syllable structure are as follows:
The syllable onset allows most consonants, with the exception of /ŋ/, /r/, /θ/, /ʒ/. The consonants /ʃ/, /p/, /ʁ/ and /ð/ only occur word-initially in loanwords (including the rather frequent word ҙур /ður/ "big", which is borrowed from Persian). No consonant clusters are allowed in syllable onset.
The syllable nucleus can contain any of the 9 vowel phonemes, although the close rounded vowels can not occur in non-initial and non-final syllables. Due to the vowel harmony rules, the only way vowels in non-initial syllables differ phonemically are by closedness or openness, effectively reducing the phonemic vowel count in non-initial syllables to 2.
All voiced consonants (not including nasals) get devoiced word-finally and before a voiceless consonant. Voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/, can not occur word-finally at all.
Below is the chart of consonant phones, with all the allophones, dialectal and foreign phonemes. Allophones are marked with square brackets, dialectal phonemes with a dagger † and foreign phonemes with a double dagger ‡.
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | /m/ | /n/ | /ŋ/ | |||||||
| Plosives | Voiceless | /p/ | /t/ | /k/ | /q/ | |||||
| Voiced | /b/ | /d/ | /g/ | |||||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | [ ɸ ] | /θ/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | [ ʂ ] | /χ/ | /h/ | ||
| Voiced | [ β ] | /ð/ | /z/ | /ʒ/ | [ ʐ ] | /ʁ/ | ||||
| Trill | /r/ | |||||||||
| Approximants | /l/ | /j/ | /w/ | |||||||
