Kyrgyz language

Classification

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 two distinct varieties; Northern and Southern Kyrgyz.

Kyrgyz should not be confused with Old Kyrgyz (Yenisei Kyrgyz), which is a member of the South Siberian branch of Turkic languages. The living successor languages of Yenisei Kyrgyz are the Khakas language in the Russian Federation and the Fuyu Kyrgyz language in Northeastern China.

History

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 Uyghur.

Dialects

Kyrgyz is divided into two main dialects, Northern and Southern. Northern having more Mongolian loanwords and Southern having more Uzbek ones. Standard Kyrgyz is based on Northern Kyrgyz. There is also a third smaller dialect called Pamiri Kyrgyz.

Phonology

Main article: Kyrgyz phonology

appears only in borrowings from Persian or when followed by a front vowel later in the word (regressive assimilation), e.g. 'sloping' instead of . In most dialects, its status as a vowel distinct from is questionable.

The United States Peace Corps trains its volunteers using a "Left-Right Shift" method when carrying out language training in Kyrgyzstan.

Lexicon

Kyrgyz has spent centuries in contact with numerous other languages, and as such has borrowed extensively from them. These languages include: Uzbek, Oirat, Mongolian, Russian, and Arabic.

Orthography

Main article: Kyrgyz alphabets

Historically the Old Turkic Script was the first script used to write Kyrgyz.

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.

Morphology and syntax

Kyrgyz follows a subject-object-verb word order, Kyrgyz also has no grammatical gender with gender being implied through context. Kyrgyz lacks several analytic grammatical features that English has, these include: auxiliary verbs (ex: to have), definite articles (ex: the), indefinite articles (ex: a/an), and modal verbs (ex: should; will), dependent clauses, and subordinating conjugations (ex: that; before; while). Kyrgyz instead replaces these with various synthetic grammatical structures.

Case

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).

Normally the decision between the velar (, ) and uvular ( and ) pronunciation of and 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 , not as predicted by the following vowel.

Pronouns

Kyrgyz has eight personal pronouns:

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.

In addition to the pronouns, there are several more sets of morphemes dealing with person.

Verbs

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.

Subordinate clauses

To form complement clauses, Kyrgyz nominalises verb phrases. For example, "I don't know what I saw" would be: |Мен эмнени көргөнүмдү билбейм |Men emneni körgönümdü bilbeym |I what-ACC.DEF see-ing-1SG-ACC.DEF 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.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

; Cyrillic script: 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. ; Arabic script: 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. ; Latin script: Bardyk adamdar öz bedelinde jana ukuktarynda erkin jana teng ukuktuu bolup jaralat. Alardyn ang-sezimi menen abiiri bar jana biri-birine bir tuugandyk mamile kyluuga tiish. ; IPA transcription: ; English translation: 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.

Notes

References

Bibliography

• {{citation
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• Library of Congress, Country Studies, Kyrgyzstan.
• Comrie, Bernard. 1983. The languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Beckwith, Christopher I. 1987/1993. "The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia." Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Tchoroev, Tyntchtykbek. 2003. The Kyrgyz.; in: The History of Civilisations of Central Asia, Vol. 5, Development in contrast: from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century /Editors: Ch. Adle and Irfan Habib. Co-editor: Karl M. Baipakov. – UNESCO Publishing. Multiple History Series. Paris. – Chapter 4, p. 109–125. ().
• {{citation |access-date=2007-04-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070113052100/http://jnw.name/papers/2006wi-kgvowels.pdf |archive-date=2007-01-13 |url-status=dead
• {{citation |access-date=2015-06-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160113003703/http://jnw.name/papers/2007su-kyrgyz_handout.pdf |archive-date=2016-01-13 |url-status=dead

References

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17. [https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-kyrgyzstan-dairy-products-banned-cyrillic-latin/32373802.html Russia Suspends Dairy Products From Kyrgyzstan After Calls In Bishkek To Drop Cyrillic Script]. [[Radio Free Europe]], 21 April 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023
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