Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken mostly in the west of China.
LIM:limitative case LMT:limitative case DV:direction voice PRN:pronominaliser SIM:similitude case EQU:equivalence case EQV:equivalence case INTENT:intention state INDIR:indirect statement mood HEARSAY:hearsay mood SUBJASS:subjective assessment mood OBJASS:objective assessment mood
Uyghur exhibits the agglutination characteristic to the Turkic family and its basic word order is subject-object-verb. It lacks grammatical gender and does not use articles. The language's inventory of 24 consonants and eight vowels features both vowel harmony and consonant harmony. Nouns are marked for ten cases, in general with suffixes and are additionally inflected for number.
This article uses both the Arabic script (official for the language) and Latin script for Uyghur words.
General characteristics
The typical word order in Uyghur is subject–object–verb, as in the sentence "men uyghurche oquymen", lit., "I Uyghur study" Compare this to English, where the sentence would be expressed with subject–verb–object order: "I study Uyghur".
Uyghur is an agglutinative language, meaning that potentially many suffixes (denoting person, number, case, mood, etc.) are usually all attached to one word stem. For example "to your house," the main word, house, occurs first, and the modifying elements are attached directly to the right and written all in one word:
Nouns are not distinguished for gender (e.g. male, female), unlike in such languages as French, Spanish and German. Nouns are usually pluralized (with the suffix +lAr) except when preceded by a numeral: compare "atlar" ("horses") and "ikki at" (two horses). Instead of using articles (like English "a", "the"), Uyghur uses demonstrative pronouns ("this", "that") and no marker or the numeral one (bir) to indicate definiteness and indefiniteness, respectively, "this cat/the cat" vs. بىر مۈشۈك(bir müshük) "a/one cat" or مۈشۈك(müshük) "cat/cats."
Uyghur verbs take, usually at least for tense (present, past) and person (I, you, s/he, they, etc.), for example
Uyghur verbs can also take other suffixes to mark voice (causative, passive), aspect (continuous), mood (e.g. ability), as well as suffixes that change verbs into nouns—sometimes many all together:
Negation usually also appears as a verb suffix, e.g.
Uyghur has vowel and consonant harmony, a system where vowels or consonants in a word come to match or become similar to each other, especially as suffixes and other elements are attached. Many but not all words and grammatical elements in Uyghur behave according to these harmonic principles. If a suffix is written with one or more capital letters (e.g. +DA, +lAr, +GA, etc.), these capital letters indicate that these sounds are harmonic, that is, variable: D= d/t, G= gh/q/g/k; K= k/q; A= a/e; I= i/u/ü or ø/i/u/ü.
Sound system
There are 32 basic sounds in Modern Uyghur.
Consonants
Uyghur has 24 consonants (listed here according to the Arabic-script alphabet): b, p, t, j, ch, x, d, r, z, zh, s, sh, gh, f, q, k, g, ng, l, m, n, x, h, w, y (and 25 consonants if the glottal stop ‘ is counted). Most are not pronounced much differently than their English counterparts (e.g. Uyghur j in baj "tax" is pronounced like j in judge; Uyghur ch in üch "three" is pronounced like ch in itch; Uyghur h in he’e "yes" is pronounced like h in hello), except that l has palatal or velar variants. A few sounds are not found in English: q gh and x. The voiceless uvular stop q [q] is pronounced like a back k, with the back of the tongue touching the soft palate, as in aq "white," Qeshqer "Kashgar." The sound gh is typically a voiced fricative version of q, also pronounced at the very back of the mouth and sounds like French or German r, as in Roissy or Ruhr. (Near front vowels, gh is often pronounced more front, like French Rue or German Rübe.) Finally, the Uyghur voiceless velar or uvular fricative x is pronounced like ch in Scottish loch, or further back in the mouth, like a back version of German ach.
The four sounds k, g, q and gh are subject to consonant harmony: (1) within a stem (main word), they potentially determine its backness and (2) within a variable suffix, they conform to the backness and voicing of the preceding stem. Consonant harmony is discussed below.
The ژ zh (sounds like English garage), is only for foreign and onomatopoeic words like zhurnal ‘magazine, journal’ and pizh-pizh "sizzling." The letter ج j (normally pronounced as in baj ‘tax’) is in southern Xinjiang often pronounced . Initial y can also be pronounced before i, e.g. yilan ‘snake’.
In Uyghur words of Turkic origin, sh is rare, except as a suffix; similarly, since f was borrowed into Uyghur from Arabic and Persian, it is often replaced by p, especially in colloquial and rural usage: fakultët~pakultët ‘academic department’.
Vowels
Uyghur has eight vowels. Vowels are rounded (o, u, ü, ö) and unrounded (a, i, e, ë); this distinction is sometimes termed labial vs. non-labial; they are front (ü, ö, e, ë) or back (u, o, a). These distinctions are critical for harmonic purposes, since Uyghur words are subject to vowel harmony. The orthographic vowel i represents both a front [i] and a back [ɨ] and is not subject to vowel harmony.
Stress
Uyghur accent (stress or high pitch, which this article will for convenience call stress) is not well understood, yet some general remarks can be made to aid language learning. In Uyghur, stress is mostly determined by the length of syllables. This means that a syllable which is closed (i.e., ends in consonants [CVC or CVCC]) tends to attract stress, while a syllable which is open (i.e. ends in a vowel [CV]) does not. A rule of thumb is: stress the last syllable of the stem, e.g. ayagh "foot," Turpan'gha "to Turfan."
Words without closed syllables are likely to have the final syllable stressed.
Certain suffixes attract and repel stress.
Attract stress: -GAn, -Gu, (A)m, -(I)wat.
Repel stress (to the preceding vowel): -(I)wer.
Harmonic Rules Word-internal harmony is relatively weak in Uyghur, but when suffixes are added to a word stem, certain suffix vowels and consonants harmonize with those of the stem. There are three variable vowels in Uyghur, A (a/e), I (i/u/ü), and U (u/ü). There are three harmonically variable consonant types: G (k/g/q/gh), K (k/q) and D (d/t). Uyghur's harmony system has three relevant components: voicing, backness and roundness harmony. Note that -AK will always be either -ek or -aq, and -IK can only be ik, iq, uq, or ük. +Archiphoneme tablePreceding vowel A IUGö e üük/güeiuëiaq/ghaouu Remember that i represents both a front [i] and a back [ɨ], and is a neutral vowel and thus this can affect vowel harmony in suffixes. For instance: Takes the front versions of archiphonemes G and A, as the word is solely made up of [i]s, but:Takes the back versions, as the word is phonetically [kɑtɨpqɑ], with the /i/ turning to the back vowel [ɨ], due to the /ɑ/.
A-raising When a stem ends in unstressed a or e (as part of the archiphoneme A), and it is followed by a consonant-initial suffix that contains a vowel, this a/e is usually raised to i. When a monosyllabic stem ends in a/e, and is followed by a consonant, its a/e is usually raised to ë. This is reflected in the orthography. Other vowels do not change.
For example:Here the -a of /ˈtʃo.kɑ/ is raised to /i/ to make the plural, /ˈtʃo.ki.lɑr/.As the suffix here, -m, does not have a vowel, the final a is not raised. Here is an example of a monosyllabic stem changingːWhile the stem /mɑŋ/ is not an open syllable, as Uyghur syllable structure is onset-mandatory, when the stem takes the suffix -(I)wat- the /ŋ/ of the stem breaks off to form a syllable with the /i/ of the suffix, like soː /me.ŋi.wɑ.ti.du/ (here the [me] is not stressed).
Where the a or e is stressed, the vowel does not raise, for instance with:As the syllable is stressed, it does not raise: /ʔɑ.ˈwɑz/, /ʔɑ.ˈwɑ.zim/. Words like this with a stressed final syllable are known as strong nouns and add a y or r between their stem and first/second person personal suffixes. Monosyllabic words ending in a rounded verb always add y.
Names, unfamiliar place names, and non-nativised loan words do not change. Loan words are frequent sources of stressed open final syllables, such as the Arabic loan /dun.ˈjɑ/, from .
Sound changes not reflected in writing A-raising also takes place across word boundaries, but this is not reflected in writing, see:Which is pronounced /ˈlɑ.ti xɛdʒ/.
Some loan words ending in p and b change that p/b to w when a vowel-initial suffix is added to them. This is not reflected in any orthography other than Cyrillic.
The table below shows some other sound changes in words that are not reflected in writing. Orthographic PronouncedNotes -nb- mb -lm-mm -ln-ll -ts-ss -zs- -ghq-qqwhen the dative -GA is attached to a stem ending in -gh it is orthographically written as -ghqA and pronounced as -qqa -ghqonly word-final -qxonly in some wordsVkVgVqVghch(t/k)sh -bponly word-finalVr(C/.)/Vː/this lengthens the preceding voweli(t/k)/ɪ̥ʃ/(t/k)ë in the initial syllableio in a syllable before uuö in a syllable before üü
Pronouns
Personal pronouns In Uyghur there is one set of personal pronouns used for the first- and third person, while there are three in the second person. The use of the three sets in the second person depends on the formality and politeness.
The personal pronouns are inflected for number and case. Follow the links of each of the personal pronouns to see them inflected.
Singular PluralFirst person men bizSecond person Informal sen senler Polite siz siler Respectful sili -Third person u ular
The second person personal pronoun mostly used among people is the polite سىز, siz, while the informal سەن, sen is used between very close friends or when parents are addressing their children. The informal سەن, sen is also used when the speaker has a higher social rank than the addressed person.
The respectful سىلى, sili is used for respectfully addressing elders, grandparents or other notable persons of a community. Royalty is also addressed using سىلى, sili and sometimes even customers in stores.
The declension of the pronouns is outlined in the following chart, with some exhibiting irregularities (in bold): NumberSingularPluralPerson1st2nd3rd1st2nd3rdInf.PoliteResp.Politenominative men sen siz sili u biz siler ulargenitive mëning sëning sizning silining uning bizning silerning ularningdative ma'nga sa'nga sizge silige uninggha bizge silerge ularghaaccusative mëni sëni sizni silini uni bizni silerni ularnilocative mende sende sizde silide uningda bizde silerde ulardaablative mendin sendin sizdin silidin uningdin bizdin silerdin ulardinlocative- qualitative mendiki sendiki sizdiki silidiki uningdiki bizdiki silerdiki ulardikilimitative men'giche sen'giche sizgiche siligiche uninggiche bizgiche silergiche ulargichesimilitude mendek sendek sizdek silidek uningdak bizdek silerdek ulardekequivalence menchilik senchilik sizchilik silichilik uningchilik bizchilik silerchilik ularchilik
Demonstrative pronouns Uyghur has several demonstrative pronouns with some of them being used for emphasis or as intensifiers, while others have less specific uses. Common for all of the demonstrative pronouns is that their use depends on the distance between the speaker and the thing or person to which is referred.
The demonstrative pronouns are inflected for number and case, but must take the genitive case suffix -ning first before other cases (other than in the genitive and accusative case). In the table below, the demonstrative pronouns can be seen, although only in the singular. Follow the links of each of the demonstrative pronouns to see them inflected.
MeaningForm Basic Specific FamiliarExact Location this bu mawu mushumeshe that u awu ashueshe that (distant) shu eshu ––