Uygur writing

The question of the continuity of the ancient Uigur and modern Uigur languages ​​is debatable. However, experts consider it possible to single out the period of functioning of the Old Uygur language as one of the stages of development of the Uigur language ^[1] .

Old Uygur used various writing systems. Thus, in the 5th century, the Manichaean letter was used to write it , in the 5th — 8th centuries - the Turkic runic letter , and from the 8th century - the Old Uigur letter , developed from Sogdian ^[1] . Ancient Uygur texts recorded in Tibetan writing , Estrangelo and Central Asian Brahmi writing are also known ^[2] .

After the adoption of Islam by the Uighurs from the 11th — 12th centuries, the Old Uyghur letter was supplanted by Arabic writing. In general, this process was completed by the XVI century, although some documents written by an Old Uighur letter date back to the XVIII century, and yellow Uighurs used it until the XIX century ^[3] .

The Arabic letter to record the Uyghur language began to be used in the XI-XII centuries. Until the early 1920s, the Uygurs of China and Central Asia used 28 letters ^[3] :

In the early 1920s, the USSR raised the question of the approximation of the Arabic alphabet to Uigur phonetics. On this issue in the Uygur newspaper "Kәmbüllür Avazi" there was a controversy. Its result was the convening in 1925 of the 1st Uygur meeting of educators. At this meeting, letters representing Arabic sounds alien to the Uigur language were excluded from the alphabet and letters for specific Uygur sounds were entered: پ - [p], چ - [ʧ], ژ - [ʒ], گ - [g], ڭ - [ŋ], ئە - [æ], ئۈ - [y]. In the new alphabet was 27 letters:

In 1930 in the USSR, the Uyghur alphabet on the Arabic basis was officially replaced by the Latinized alphabet ^[3] . However, in fact, even in 1936, the newspaper Shқrқ Kakқiti, published in Tashkent , was partly printed in the Arabic alphabet ^[4] .

In the mid-1920s, an active campaign for the romanization of writing was launched in the USSR. Not bypassed this process and Uygur writing. In February-March 1928, a number of drafts of the Uigur alphabet on a Latin basis were published in the Kәmbüllür Avazi newspaper. In April-May of the same year, at the 1st Uygur linguistic conference, held in Samarkand , a romanized alphabet of 31 letters was approved. In May 1930, the 2nd Uygur Linguistic Conference in Almaty accepted it unchanged. In the mid-1930s, the letter F f was added to the alphabet to denote the corresponding sound in Russian borrowings ^[3] .

Latinized alphabet of the USSR Uigurs : ^[5]

In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union began the process of translating alphabets from Latin to Cyrillic. The Uyghur alphabet was Cyrillic one of the last. The draft Cyrillic alphabet was published by A. Sh. Shamiev in 1946, and on February 4, 1947 it was approved by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR . The alphabet included all 33 letters of the Russian alphabet , as well as 8 additional characters ( Қ қ, Ң ң, Ғ ғ, Ү ү, Җ җ, Ө ө, Ә ә, Һ һ ), which stood at the very end of the alphabet, after the letter I am . In 1960, the order of the letters in the alphabet was changed and it assumed the current form ^[3] :

The letter ғ means a uvular ringing spirant , һ is a pharyngeal deaf, ә is a wide non-labial vowel of the front row, җ is a voiced affricate [j], қ is a uvular deaf occlusive, ң is a back lingual nasal sonoric, ө is a lip of the front row, губ is a lip of the front row labial narrow front vowel. The letters ё, ф, ц, щ, ь are used only in borrowings from the Russian language ^[3] .

In September 2017, after the decision of the authorities of Kazakhstan to translate the Kazakh script into the Latin alphabet, representatives of some Uigur publics proposed translating the Latin script of the Uigurs to Kazakhstan ^[6] . In May 2018, the draft of the Uygur alphabet for Kazakhstan was published in print. According to the draft, the alphabet has the following form: A a, Á á, B b, D d, E e, F f, G g, Ǵ ǵ, H h, I i, Y y, J j, C c, K k, L l, M m, N n, Ń ñ, O o, Ó ó, P p, Q q, R r, S s, T t, U u, Ú ú, V v, Z z, X x, Sh sh, Ch ch ^[7] .

The Uighurs of China before the beginning of the 20th century also used the “old” Arabic letter. In 1951 and 1954 this letter was reformed and, as previously in the Soviet Union, was brought closer to the norms of Uyghur phonetics. Thus, the reform of 1951 removed 8 letters for consonants from the Uigur alphabet - ﺙ [θ], ﺫ [ð], ﺡ [ħ], ﻁ [tˁ], ﻅ [ðˁ], ﺹ [sˁ], ﺽ [ðˤ], ﻉ [ʕ], and also entered 6 letters for vowels - ا [ɑ], [ɛ], ئي [e], ئى [i], و [o, ø], قق [u, y]. The reform of 1954 introduced small changes in the vowels. In May 1954, the Xinjiang government officially approved the reformed alphabet ^[8] .

In August 1956, a conference on the languages ​​of XUAR was held in Urumqi . It featured both Chinese scientists and their colleagues from the USSR. The resolution of the conference indicated that the translation of the written language of the peoples of the XUAR (including Uigur) on a Cyrillic basis is necessary ^[9] . The project of the new alphabet was similar to the one used by the Uighurs of the Soviet Union, however, in contrast to the Soviet version, the letters Һ ц, C, U, U, U, E, Yu, I, I but the letter Ҳ ҳ ^{[10] was} present. However, this project was soon curtailed, since in 1957 the Institute of Minority Languages ​​of China recommended that national minorities switch to the Latin alphabet ^[11] . Finally, the question of the transition of the Uygurs of the PRC to the Cyrillic was closed after Zhou Enlai ’s speech in January 1958, when he expressed the assertion that the national minorities of China should use a script based on pinyin . On March 25, 1958, the Uygur Cyrillic alphabet in China was officially abolished ^[12] .

In November-December 1959, at the 2nd conference on minority languages ​​of the XUAR, it was decided to introduce a Latinized alphabet for the Uygur language. It had the following form ^{[13] [14]} :

For political reasons, the introduction of the new alphabet was postponed, and only in October 1964, the State Council of the People's Republic of China officially approved it ^[15] . However, the “ Cultural Revolution ”, which began soon, once again postponed the introduction of the new Uigur alphabet. The work on the introduction of the Latinized alphabet for the Uigurs was resumed in 1973, and since 1976 this alphabet has been introduced into all official spheres ^[16] .

However, already in 1980, the Arabic letter for the Uigur language was again allowed to be used. Finally, in 1982, the standing committee of the Assembly of People’s Representatives of the XUAR decided to cancel the Uigur romanized alphabet and return to the Arabic schedule ^[17] . By the end of 1986, the Latinized alphabet was completely derived from all official spheres ^[18] .

The modern Uygur alphabet in China looks like this ^[19] :

In November 2000, the auxiliary alphabet based on the Latin alphabet, developed by the Xinjiang University - Uyghur Latin Yëziqi (ULY), was adopted in the PRC. He gained great popularity in Western publications and on the Internet ^[20] . He has no official status, however.

Uyghur Latin Yëziqi: A a, B b, Ch ch, D d, E e, Yo, F f, G g, Gh gh, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, Ng ng, O o, Ö ö, P p, Q q, R r, S s, Sh sh, T t, U u, xy, W w, X x, Y y, Z z, Zh zh

In addition, the Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet has two more additional letters, which in the other two systems are written in two characters each:

in Russian

• Moskalyov A. A. The policy of the People's Republic of China in the national language issue (1949-1978). - M .: "Science" , 1981. - 214 p.
• Sadvakasov G. S. Uigur language // Languages ​​of the World. Turkic languages. - M .: Indrik, 1997. - p . 438 . - ISBN 5-85759-061-2 .
• Sadvakasov G.S. Alphabet of the literary language of the Soviet Uigurs // Issues of improving the alphabets of the Turkic languages ​​of the USSR. - M .: Science, 1972.

in other languages

• Minglang Zhou. Multilingualism in China for the minority languages ​​1949-2002 . - Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. - ISBN 3-11-017896-6 .

• Waris Abdukerim Janbaz. An Introduction to Latin-Script Uyghur (English) . 2006 Middle East & Central Asia Politics, Economics, and Society Conference. Sept 7-9, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA. The appeal date is December 14, 2015.