Uyghur is a
Turkic language
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
with a long literary tradition spoken in
Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
by the
Uyghurs
The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...
. Today, the
Uyghur Arabic alphabet
The Uyghur Arabic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر ئەرەب يېزىقى, translit=Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi UEY) is a version of the Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghu ...
is the official writing system used for Uyghur in Xinjiang, whereas other alphabets like the
Uyghur Latin and
Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر كىرىل يېزىقى, or , ) is a Cyrillic-derived alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in Kazakhstan and former CIS countries.
It was devised around 1937 by ...
s are still in use outside China, especially in
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
.
History
Old Uyghur and Modern Uyghur
The Old Uyghur language and Modern Uyghur are distinct Turkic languages and are not different stages of the same language. The Old Uyghur language is ancestral to
Western Yugur, while modern Uyghur is descended from one of the
Karluk languages
The Karluk or Qarluq languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family that developed from the varieties once spoken by Karluks.
Many Middle Turkic works were written in these languages. The language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate was known ...
.
Old Uyghur alphabets
5th to 18th century
In the 5th century Old Uyghur was written for the first time using the
Sogdian alphabet
The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, a descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of t ...
. This fell out of use during the 10th century, when it evolved into the
Old Uyghur alphabet
The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing the Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language. The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading ...
, although it was taken into use again between the 15th and 16th century. While the Sogdian alphabet was still in use, it was written with the
Old Turkic alphabet
The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic peoples, Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to re ...
from the 6th-9th centuries.
The Old Uyghur language evolved into the modern Western Yugur, and remained in use until the 18th century among the
Yugur
The Yugurs, Yughurs, Yugu (; Western Yugur: ''Sarïg Yogïr''; Eastern Yugur: ''Šera Yogor''), traditionally known as Yellow Uyghurs, are a Turko- Mongolic ethnic group and one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, consisting ...
.
Modern Uyghur alphabets
10th century to 19th century
An Arabic alphabet introduced along with
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
in the 10th century to the
Karluk Kara Khanids, which evolved into the modern day
Uyghur Arabic alphabet
The Uyghur Arabic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر ئەرەب يېزىقى, translit=Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi UEY) is a version of the Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghu ...
.
The Arabic-derived alphabet taken into use first came to be the so-called Chagatai script, which was used for writing the
Chagatai language
Chagatai (چغتای, ''Čaġatāy''), also known as ''Turki'', Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (''Čaġatāy türkīsi''), is an extinct Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia and remained the shared literar ...
and the Turki (modern Uyghur) language, but fell out of use in the early 1920s, when the Uyghur-speaking areas variously became a part of, or under the influence of, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
The Chagatai alphabet was known as Kona Yëziq ("Old script") ().
The
Syriac alphabet
The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with ...
has also been used for writing Old Uyghur at some time between the 5th century and 19th century.
20th to 21st century
![KB Uyghur Arabic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/KB_Uyghur_Arabic.png)
The writing of Uyghur saw many changes during the 20th century mostly to do with political decisions, both from the Soviet and Chinese side. The
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
first tried to
romanize
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
the writing of the language, but soon after decided to promote a Cyrillic script during the late 1920s known as the Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet, fearing that a romanization of the language would strengthen the relationship of the Uyghurs with other
Turkic peoples
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.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging t ...
.
With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the promotion of a Cyrillic script began, but when the tensions between the Soviet Union and China grew during the late 1950s, the Chinese devised a new alphabet based upon
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
and Cyrillic (with some letters borrowed from the Soviet's
Uniform Turkic Alphabet
A uniform is a variety of clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are most often worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, ...
– a Cyrillic-influenced Latin alphabet, with Latin letters like
Ə,
Ƣ,
Ⱨ,
Ɵ, etc.), which is known as the Uyghur New Script and promoted this instead, and which soon became the official alphabet of usage for almost 10 years.
In 1982 Uyghur new script was abolished, the Arabic alphabet was reinstated in a modified form as the Uyghur Arabic alphabet. However, due to the increasing importance of
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
, there have been requests for a
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, for easier use on
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
s. This resulted in five conferences between 2000 and 2001, where a Latin-derived auxiliary alphabet was devised known as the Uyghur Latin alphabet.
Present situation
![UEY ULY Elipbesi Kichik](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/UEY_ULY_Elipbesi_Kichik.jpg)
Today, the Uyghur language is written using five different alphabets, which are:
* ''UEY'': the
Uyghur Arabic alphabet
The Uyghur Arabic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر ئەرەب يېزىقى, translit=Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi UEY) is a version of the Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghu ...
, the only official alphabet in the
Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
province of China and is widely used in government, social media and in everyday life;
* ''UKY'': the
Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر كىرىل يېزىقى, or , ) is a Cyrillic-derived alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in Kazakhstan and former CIS countries.
It was devised around 1937 by ...
is mostly used by Uyghurs living in Central Asian countries, especially in Kazakhstan;
* ''ALA-LC Uighur'': th
slightly-revised version dating from 2015 of the Romanized Uighur transliterationof the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
and the
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...
is the standard used by
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
(a union-catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions, mostly libraries, in many countries, that are current or past members of the
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
global cooperative) and also has variants that make typing of it on computer easier (such as that of De Jong, Frederick. ''A Grammar of Modern Uyghur''. Utrecht: Houtsma, 2007, who substitutes for its ''ă'', ''ö'', ''ü'', and ''v'' respectively ''ae'', ''oe'', ''ue'', and ''w'', these being options suggested by German);
* ''ULY'': the
Uyghur Latin alphabet
The Uyghur Latin alphabet (, ''Uyghur Latin Yëziqi'', ''ULY'', Уйғур Латин Йезиқи) is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in an Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cy ...
differs from the preceding in a few details and was introduced in 2008 and to be used solely in computer-related fields as an ancillary writing system,
but has now largely fallen into disuse after the expanded availability of UEY keyboards and keypads on all devices.
* ''UYY'': the mixed
Uyghur New Script (abbreviated UYY; literally "Uyghur New Script") or (literally "new script", ug, يېڭى يېزىقى, , ; zh, c = 新维文, p = Xīnwéiwén, l = New Uyghur script; sometimes falsely rendered as ''Yengi Yeziķ'' or ''Yengi Yezik̡''), is a La ...
(also called ''Pinyin Yeziⱪi'' or ''UPNY''), this alphabet is also Latin-based, but now most people who want to type in Latin use ULY instead.
In the table below, the alphabets are shown side-by-side for comparison, together with
phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
. It is only grouped by phonemic proximity; each alphabet has its own sorting order. Some letter forms that are used for words borrowed from other languages (notably proper names), or kept occasionally from older orthographic conventions, are shown in parentheses.
![Obelisk-in-minfeng-2007](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Obelisk-in-minfeng-2007.jpg)
As can be seen, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet, Uyghur New Script, ALA-LC Uighur Romanization, and Uyghur Latin alphabet each has a total of 32 letters (if one included their digraphs, which are: in all three Latin-based alphabets; also , , , & in ULY and ALA-CL, and in this last further , as well as their vowels bearing diacritics). Differences may still exist in texts using ULY (the most recently devised of the Latin orthographies) in that its standard is sometimes written by instead , that is to say, with the acute accent in place of the diaeresis, without this variation denoting any difference in Uyghur pronunciation.
The Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet has three additional letters, the Cyrillic soft letters/ligatures , , and , representing , , and , respectively, which are written with an independent consonant and vowel in the other alphabets. Some words may still use the Cyrillic soft sign. Also,
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s of
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
origin are often spelled as they are in Russian, and thus not adapted to Uyghur
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
.
Another notable feature of the Uyghur New Script is the use of the letter to represent (sometimes incorrectly rendered as ). This letter has erroneously been named ''LATIN LETTER OI'' in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
, although it is correctly referred to as ''gha'' and replaced by the digraph in the newer Uyghur Latin alphabet.
In the ALA-LC Uighur Romanization and the Uyghur Latin alphabet, only the
ISO basic Latin alphabet
The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and u ...
is needed plus in the way of diacritic marks that occur above vowels (which are supported by many fonts and encoding standards) only: in both spellings
diaeresis (umlaut) and in the ALA-LC
breve
A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...
as well. The letter is only used in the digraph, and the letter is normally not used in the Uyghur Latin except in loanwords, where a difference exists between foreign and native . Another detail of the Uyghur Latin is that may be interchangeably represented by either of two letter: either using or as — although the latter is also used for (and, when the thus becomes ambiguous by serving also in place of the , speakers can still resolve the ambiguity from facts such as that the tends to occur in words from Russian vs. the in ones from Perso-Tajik, Arabic, and Mandarin). One might view this in the Arabic-script and Cyrillic orthographies as merely as a graphic variant of the , effectively reducing the number of letters in these two alphabets from 32 to 31. Users have found this variation in spelling acceptable as long as it does not obscure any semantic distinction.
One of the major differences among the four alphabets is the rules of when the
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
is written.
In Uyghur Arabic alphabet, it is consistently written, using the
hamza
Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...
on a tooth , including at the beginning of words. However, in that position, the
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
is not considered by Uyghurs a separate letter, but rather to be just a support for the vowel that follow.
In the Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet and Uyghur New Script, the glottal stop was only written word-medially, using an
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
(), but it is not required and thus not very consistent.
And finally, in the ALA-LC Uighur Romanization and the Uyghur Latin alphabet, the glottal stop is written between
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s and
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s (likewise using an apostrophe, but consistently), and also to separate , , , , and when these represent two
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s rather than being digraphs for a single consonant (for example the word ''bashlan’ghuch'', pronounced and meaning ''beginning'', which could have been without the apostrophe).
Example
Below is the same text in Uyghur, but written using each of the four
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
s in common use today.
The text is taken from the first article of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
.
References
Citations
Sources
* Rev. ed. of its section about Uighur, at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/uighur.pdf, on line since 2015.
*
*
*
*
External links
A JavaScript-based web tool for converting among multiple Uyghur scriptsWeb tool for converting between Uyghur alphabetsAlso a web tool for converting between Uyghur alphabetsan open-source python program for converting between Uyghur alphabets*
ttps://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/97738/using-us-int-l-keyboard-layout-to-type-accented-characters How can I write "Öö Üü ëë" on my English keyboard?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uyghur Alphabet
Arabic alphabets
Cyrillic alphabets
Latin alphabets
Alphabets used by Turkic languages
Uyghur language
it:Alfabeto uiguro