Kyrgyz | |
---|---|
Кыргыз тили قىرعىز تىلى | |
Pronunciation | [qɯɾʁɯzˈtʃɑ] |
Native to | Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, China |
Region | Central Asia |
Ethnicity | Kyrgyz |
Native speakers | 5.15 million (2009 census) [1] |
Turkic
| |
Dialects | |
Kyrgyz alphabets (Cyrillic script, Perso-Arabic script, Kyrgyz Braille) | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Kyrgyzstan |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | ky |
ISO 639-2 | kir |
ISO 639-3 | kir |
Glottolog | kirg1245 |
Linguasphere | 44-AAB-cd |
Places where Kyrgyz is spoken | |
Kyrgyz [2] [lower-roman 1] is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia. Kyrgyz is the official language of Kyrgyzstan and a significant minority language in the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China and in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan. There is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Altay. A dialect of Kyrgyz known as Pamiri Kyrgyz is spoken in north-eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
Kyrgyz is also spoken by many ethnic Kyrgyz through the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Turkey, parts of northern Pakistan, and Russia.
Kyrgyz was originally written in Göktürk script, [3] gradually replaced by the Perso-Arabic alphabet (in use until 1928 in the USSR, still in use in China). Between 1928 and 1940 a Latin-script alphabet, the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, was used. In 1940, Soviet authorities replaced the Latin script with the Cyrillic alphabet for all Turkic languages on its territory. When Kyrgyzstan became independent following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, a plan to adopt the Latin alphabet became popular. Although the plan has not been implemented, it remains in occasional discussion. [4]
Kyrgyz is a Common Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch of the family. It is considered to be an East Kipchak language, forming a subfamily with the Southern Altai language within the greater Kipchak branch. Internally, Kyrgyz has three distinct varieties; Northern and Southern Kyrgyz. [5]
In 925, when the Liao dynasty defeated the Yenisei Kyrgyz and expelled them from the Mongolian steppes, some Ancient Kyrgyz elites settled in Altai and Xinjiang where they mixed with the local Kipchaks, resulting in a language shift.
After the Mongol conquest in 1207 and a series of revolts against the Yuan dynasty, Kyrgyz-speaking tribes started to migrate to Tian Shan, which was already populated by various Turco-Mongol tribes. As Chaghatai Ulus subjects, the Kyrgyz converted to Islam. Persian and Arabic vocabulary loaned to the Kyrgyz language, but to a much lesser extent than Kazakh, Uzbek and Uighur.
Front | Back | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
Close | i | y | ɯ | u |
Mid | e | ø | o | |
Open | ( a ) | ɑ |
/a/ appears only in borrowings from Persian or when followed by a front vowel later in the word (regressive assimilation), e.g. /ajdøʃ/ 'sloping' instead of */ɑjdøʃ/. [7] In most dialects, its status as a vowel distinct from /ɑ/ is questionable. [8]
Left Shift (<) | Right Shift (>) | Shift Direction |
---|---|---|
а | ы | Straight Across Left-Right Shift |
о | у | ("y" Left-shifts up-diagonally to "a") |
е (э) | и | Straight Across Left-Right Shift |
ө | ү | Straight Across Left-Right Shift |
The United States Peace Corps trains its volunteers using a "Left-Right Shift" method when carrying out language training in Kyrgyzstan.
Labial | Dental/ alveolar | Post- alveolar | Dorsal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |
voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||
Affricate | voiceless | t͡s [lower-alpha 1] | t͡ʃ | ||
voiced | d͡ʒ | ||||
Fricative | voiceless | f [lower-alpha 1] | s | ʃ | x [lower-alpha 1] |
voiced | v [lower-alpha 1] | z | |||
Approximant | l | j | |||
Trill | r |
The Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan use a Cyrillic alphabet, which uses all the Russian letters plus ң, ө and ү.
In the Xinjiang region of China, an Arabic alphabet is used.
Between 1928 and 1940 a Latin alphabet was used for many minority languages in the USSR, including Kyrgyz. There have been attempts after 1990 to introduce other Latin alphabets which are closer to the Turkish alphabet, e.g. the Common Turkic Alphabet. There are political shades to the Cyrillic-Latin debate. In April 2023, Russia suspended dairy exports to Kyrgyzstan after a proposal by the chairman of Kyrgyzstan's National Commission for the State Language and Language Policies, Kanybek Osmonaliev, to change the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin to bring the country in line with other Turkic nations. Osmonaliev was reprimanded by President Sadyr Japarov, who later clarified that Kyrgyzstan had no plans to replace the Cyrillic alphabet. [10]
Cyrillic script | Perso-Arabic script | Latin script | IPA transcription | English translation |
---|---|---|---|---|
Бардык адамдар өз беделинде жана укуктарында эркин жана тең укуктуу болуп жаралат. Алардын аң-сезими менен абийири бар жана бири-бирине бир туугандык мамиле кылууга тийиш. | باردىق ادامدار ۅز بەدەلينده جانا وُقوُقتارىندا ەرکین جانا تەڭ ۇقۇقتۇۇ بولۇپ جارالات. الاردىن اڭ-سەزیمی مەنەن ابئییری بار جانا بئرى-بئرینه بئر توُوُعاندىق مامئلە قىلوُوُعا تئییش. | Bardık adamdar öz bedelinde jana ukuktarında erkin jana teñ ukuktuu bolup jaralat. Alardın añ-sezimi menen abiyiri bar jana biri-birine bir tuugandık mamile kıluuga tiyiş. | [bɑr.ˈdɯq ɑ.dɑm.ˈdɑr øz be.de.lɪn.ˈde d͡ʑɑ.nɑ ʊ.ˌqʊχ.tɑ.rɯn.ˈdɑ er.ˈkɪn d͡ʑɑ.ˈnɑ teŋ ʊ.qʊχ.ˈtuː bɔ.ˈɫʊp d͡ʑɑ.rɑ.ˈɫɑt ‖ ɑ.ɫɑr.ˈdɯn ɑŋ se.zɪ.ˈmɪ me.ˈnen ɑ.bɪ.ʝɪ.ˈrɪ bɑr d͡ʑɑ.ˈnɑ bɪ.ˈrɪ bɪ.rɪ.ˈne bɪr tuː.ʁɑn.ˈdɯq mɑ.mɪ.ˈle qɯ.ɫuː.ˈʁɑ tɪ.ˈʝɪɕ ‖] | 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. |
Nouns in Kyrgyz take a number of case endings that change based on vowel harmony and the sort of consonant they follow (see the section on phonology).
Case | Underlying form | Possible forms | "boat" | "air" | "bucket" | "hand" | "head" | "salt" | "eye" |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nominative | — | кеме | аба | челек | кол | баш | туз | көз | |
Genitive | -NIn | -нын, -нин, -дын, -дин, -тын, -тин, -нун, -нүн, -дун, -дүн, -тун, -түн | кеменин | абанын | челектин | колдун | баштын | туздун | көздүн |
Dative | -GA | -га, -ка, -ге, -ке, -го, -ко, -гө, -кө | кемеге | абага | челекке | колго | башка | тузга | көзгө |
Accusative | -NI | -ны, -ни, -ды, -ди, -ты, -ти, -ну, -нү, -ду, -дү, -ту, -тү | кемени | абаны | челекти | колду | башты | тузду | көздү |
Locative | -DA | -да, -де, -та, -те, -до, -дө, -то, -тө | кемеде | абада | челекте | колдо | башта | тузда | көздө |
Ablative | -DAn | -дан, -ден, -тан, -тен, -дон, -дөн, -тон, -төн | кемеден | абадан | челектен | колдон | баштан | туздан | көздөн |
Normally the decision between the velar ([ɡ~ɣ], [k]) and uvular ([ɢ~ʁ] and [χ~q]) pronunciation of ⟨г⟩ and ⟨к⟩ is based on the backness of the following vowel—i.e. back vowels imply a uvular rendering and front vowels imply a velar rendering—and the vowel in suffixes is decided based on the preceding vowel in the word. However, with the dative suffix in Kyrgyz, the vowel is decided normally, but the decision between velars and uvulars can be decided based on a contacting consonant, for example банк /bank/ 'bank' + GA yields банкка /bankka/, not /bankqa/ as predicted by the following vowel.
Kyrgyz has eight personal pronouns:
singular | plural | ||
---|---|---|---|
1st person | Мен (Men) | Биз (Biz) | |
2nd person | informal | Сен (Sen) | Силер (Siler) |
formal | Сиз (Siz) | Сиздер (Sizder) | |
3rd person | Ал (Al) | Алар (Alar) |
The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart. Singular pronouns (with the exception of сиз, which used to be plural) exhibit irregularities, while plural pronouns don't. Irregular forms are highlighted in bold.
Singular | Plural | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | |||
informal | formal | informal | formal | |||||
Nom | мен | сен | сиз | ал | биз | силер | сиздер | алар |
Acc | мени | сени | сизди | аны | бизди | силерди | сиздерди | аларды |
Gen | менин | сенин | сиздин | анын | биздин | силердин | сиздердин | алардын |
Dat | мага | сага | сизге | ага | бизге | силерге | сиздерге | аларга |
Loc | менде | сенде | сизде | анда | бизде | силерде | сиздерде | аларда |
Abl | менден | сенден | сизден | андан | бизден | силерден | сиздерден | алардан |
In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.
pronouns | copulas | present tense | possessive endings | past/conditional | imperative | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st sg | мен | -mIn | -mIn | -(I)m | -(I)m | -AyIN | |
2nd sg | informal | сен | -sIŋ | -sIŋ | -(I)ŋ | -(I)ŋ | —, -GIn |
formal | сиз | -sIz | -sIz | -(I)ŋIz | -(I)ŋIz | -GIlA | |
3rd sg | ал | — | -t | -(s)I(n) | — | -sIn | |
1st pl | биз | -BIz | -BIz | -(I)bIz | -(I)K | -AyIK | |
2nd pl | informal | силер | -sIŋAr | -sIŋAr | -(I)ŋAr | -(I)ŋAr | |
formal | сиздер | -sIzdAr | -sIzdAr | -(I)ŋIzdAr | -(I)nIzdAr | ||
3rd pl | алар | — | -(I)şAt | -(s)I(n) | — | -sIn, -IşsIn |
Verbs are conjugated by analyzing the root verb: 1) determine whether the end letter is a vowel or consonant 2) add appropriate suffix while following vowel-harmony/shift rules.
Per. Pronoun | Vowel | Consonant | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1st sg | Мен | -м | -м | |
2nd pl | informal | Сен | -йс<ң | -йс<ң |
formal | Сиз | -йс<з | -йс<з | |
3rd sg | Ал | -йт | -йт | |
1st pl | Биз | -йб>з | -<б>з | |
2nd pl | informal | Силер | ||
formal | Сиздер | |||
3rd pl | Алар |
To form complement clauses, Kyrgyz nominalises verb phrases. For example, "I don't know what I saw" would be:
Мен
Men
I
эмнени
emneni
what-ACC.DEF
көргөнүмдү
körgönümdü
see-ing-1SG-ACC.DEF
билбейм
bilbeym
know-NEG-1SG
roughly "I don't know my having seen what," where the verb phrase "I saw what" is treated as a nominal object of the verb "to know."
The sentence above is also an excellent example of Kyrgyz vowel harmony; notice that all the vowel sounds are front vowels.
Several nominalisation strategies are used depending on the temporal properties of the relativised verb phrase: -GAn(dIK) for general past tense, -AAr for future/potential unrealised events, and -A turgan(dɯq) for non-perfective events are the most common. The copula has an irregular relativised form экен(дик) which may be used equivalently to forms of the verb бол- be (болгон(дук), болор). Relativised verb forms may, and often do, take nominal possessive endings as well as case endings.
Kazakh or Qazaq is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of Kazakhstan and a significant minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, north-western China and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of western Mongolia. The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union, Germany, and Turkey.
Uzbek, formerly known as Turki, is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language also known as "Turki", as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.
Chechen is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by approximately 1.7 million people, mostly in the Chechen Republic and by members of the Chechen diaspora throughout Russia and the rest of Europe, Jordan, Austria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Central Asia and Georgia.
Tatar is a Turkic language spoken by the Volga Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan, as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar, which are closely related but belong to different subgroups of the Kipchak languages.
Chagatai, also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic, is an extinct Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia and remained the shared literary language there until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan, eastern or Chinese Turkestan, the Crimea, the Volga region, etc. Literary Chagatai is the predecessor of the modern Karluk branch of Turkic languages, which includes Uzbek and Uyghur. Turkmen, which is not within the Karluk branch but in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, was nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.
Turkmen, sometimes referred to as Turkmen Turkic or Turkmen Turkish, is a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 4.3 million native speakers in Turkmenistan, and a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern Iran and 1.5 million people in northwestern Afghanistan, where it has no official status. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and by diaspora communities, primarily in Turkey and Russia.
Ğ is a Latin letter found in the Turkish and Azerbaijani alphabets as well as the Latin alphabets of Zazaki, Laz, Crimean Tatar, Tatar, and Kazakh. It traditionally represented the voiced velar fricative or the voiced uvular fricative. However, in Turkish, the phoneme has in most cases been reduced to a silent letter, serving as a vowel-lengthener.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
Bashkir is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan. It is spoken by 1.09 million native speakers in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia and other neighboring post-Soviet states, and among the Bashkir diaspora. It has three dialect groups: Southern, Eastern and Northwestern.
Kalmyk Oirat, commonly known as the Kalmyk language, is a variety of the Oirat language, natively spoken by the Kalmyk people of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia. In Russia, it is the standard form of the Oirat language, which belongs to the Mongolic language family. The Kalmyk people of the Northwest Caspian Sea of Russia claim descent from the Oirats from Eurasia, who have also historically settled in Mongolia and Northwest China. According to UNESCO, the language is "Definitely endangered". According to the Russian census of 2021, there are 110,000speakers of an ethnic population consisting of 178,000 people.
Altai is a set of Turkic languages, which are in turn hypothesized by some to be a set of Altaic languages spoken officially in the Altai Republic, Russia. The standard vocabulary is based on the Southern Altai language, though it's also taught to and used by speakers of the Northern Altai language as well. Gorno–Altai refers to a subgroup of languages in the Altai Mountains.The languages were called Oyrot (ойрот) prior to 1948.
Crimean Tatar, also called Crimean, is a Kipchak Turkic language spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as small communities in the United States and Canada. It should not be confused with Tatar, spoken in Tatarstan and adjacent regions in Russia; the two languages are related, but belong to different subgroups of the Kipchak languages, while maintaining a significant degree of mutual intelligibility. Crimean Tatar has been extensively influenced by nearby Oghuz dialects and is also mutually intelligible with them, to varying degrees.
Kha, Khe, Chi or Ha is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It looks the same as the Latin letter X, in both uppercase and lowercase, both roman and italic forms, and was derived from the Greek letter Chi, which also bears a resemblance to both the Latin X and Kha.
Karakalpak is a Turkic language spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan. It is divided into two dialects, Northeastern Karakalpak and Southwestern Karakalpak. It developed alongside Nogai and neighbouring Kazakh languages, being markedly influenced by both. Typologically, Karakalpak belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, thus being closely related to and highly mutually intelligible with Kazakh and Nogai.
The Kyrgyz language is written in the Kyrgyz alphabet, a modification of Cyrillic. There is no commonly accepted system of romanization for Kyrgyz, i.e. a rendering of Kyrgyz in the Latin alphabet. For geographic names, the Kyrgyz government adopted the BGN/PCGN romanization system.
The Kyrgyz alphabets are the alphabets used to write the Kyrgyz language. Kyrgyz uses the following alphabets:
Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world. The creator is Saint Clement of Ohrid from the Preslav literary school in the First Bulgarian Empire.
Kyrgyzstan is one of four former Soviet republics in Central Asia to have Russian as a de jure official language. The Kyrgyz language was adopted as the official language in 1991. After pressure from the Russian and other minorities in the country, the republic adopted Russian as an official language as well in 1997, to become an officially bilingual country.
Yakutyə-KOOT, also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa, is a Turkic language belonging to Siberian Turkic branch and spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic Yakuts and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia), a federal republic in the Russian Federation.
Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken mostly in the west of China.