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The Uyghurs, alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as the titular nationality of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities.
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.
Chagatai, also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic, is an extinct Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan, Eastern Turkestan, Crimea, the Volga region, etc. Chagatai is the ancestor of the Uzbek and Uyghur languages. Turkmen, which is not within the Karluk branch but in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, was nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.
The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu, traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turkic-Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting of 16,719 persons, according to the 2000 census. The Yugur live primarily in Sunan Yugur Autonomous County in Gansu. They are mostly Tibetan Buddhists. The majority of Yugurs speak a Turkic language, while Mongolic and Chinese are also used in eastern provinces.
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, 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.
The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, Northwestern China occupying an area of about 888,000 km2 (343,000 sq mi) and one of the largest basins in Northwest China. Located in China's Xinjiang region, it is sometimes used synonymously to refer to the southern half of the province, that is, Southern Xinjiang or Nanjiang, as opposed to the northern half of the province known as Dzungaria or Beijiang. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern boundary is the Kunlun Mountains on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin. The historical Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr, which means 'six cities' in Uyghur. The region was also called Little Bukhara or Little Bukharia.
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Western Yugur, also known as Neo-Uygur, is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the endonym of the Yugur.
Old Uyghur is a Turkic language which was spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu.
Abdurehim Tileshüp Ötkür was a popular Uyghur author and poet who is considered the "father of modern Uyghur poetry".
The Äynu are a Turkic people native to the Xinjiang region of China, where they are an unrecognized ethnic group legally counted as Uyghurs. They speak the Äynu language and mainly adhere to Alevism. There are estimated to be around 30,000 to 50,000 Äynu people, mostly located on the fringe of the Taklamakan Desert.
Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, by the Uyghur people. It is a language with two standard languages and several dialects. However, these are all mutually intelligible at large, in spite of the various differences.
This article covers the phonology of the Uyghur language. Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region features both vowel harmony and vowel reduction.
Hezhou, also known as Linxia, is a creolized mixed language spoken in Gansu Province, China. It has been the lingua franca of Linxia for several centuries. It is based on Uyghur and perhaps Salar. It has been relexified by Mandarin Chinese, so that nearly all roots are of Chinese origin, but grammatically it remains a Turkic language, with six noun cases, agglutinative morphology and an SOV word order. Grammatical suffixes are either Turkic or Chinese in origin; in the latter case they have been divorced from their original function and bear little to no relation to Chinese semantics. The phonology is largely Chinese, with three tones, though Hezhou tone sandhi is unusual from a Chinese perspective. It may be that Hezhou tone differs between ethnic Chinese, Hui, Dongxiang and Bao'an speakers, though there is no indication that such differences occur among native speakers.
Abdurehim Heyit is a Uyghur folk singer and compositor. The Uyghur people are a Turkic language-speaking group and a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry described Abdurehim as a "distinguished poet".
Orkhon Turkic, is the first stage of Old Turkic, known as the oldest Turkic literary language preceding Old Uyghur. It is generally used for the language in which the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions are written.
Uyghur or Uighur literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Uyghur language, a Turkic language used primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.
References
- ↑ Uighur at Ethnologue (12th ed., 1992).
- ↑ Abdurehim (2014).
- ↑ Abdurehim (2014), p. 28.
- ↑ Abdurehim (2014), p. 45.
- General
- Abdurehim, Esmael (2014). The Lopnor Dialect of Uyghur: A Descriptive Analysis (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). Publications of the Institute for Asian and African Studies 17. Helsinki: Unigrafia. hdl: 10138/136392 . ISBN 978-951-51-0384-0.