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Mongolian language

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Mongolian is the principal language of the Mongolic language family that originated in the Mongolian Plateau . It is spoken by ethnic Mongols and other closely related Mongolic peoples who are native to modern Mongolia and surrounding parts of East and North Asia . Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia and a recognized language of Xinjiang and Qinghai .

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106-465: The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5–6 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia of China . In Mongolia , Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and the traditional Mongolian script . In Inner Mongolia, it is dialectally more diverse and written in

212-474: A Perso-Arabic-based alphabet , although a Cyrillic alphabet and two Latin alphabets also are in use to a much lesser extent. Unusually for an alphabet based on the Arabic script, full transcription of vowels is indicated. (Among the Arabic family of alphabets, only a few, such as Kurdish , distinguish all vowels without the use of optional diacritics .) The four alphabets in use today can be seen below. In

318-441: A "Mongolian language" consisting of just the three dialects Khalkha, Chakhar, and Ordos, with Buryat and Oirat judged to be independent languages. On the other hand, Luvsanvandan (1959) proposed a much broader "Mongolian language" consisting of a Central dialect (Khalkha, Chakhar, Ordos), an Eastern dialect (Kharchin, Khorchin), a Western dialect (Oirat, Kalmyk), and a Northern dialect (consisting of two Buryat varieties). Additionally,

424-668: A 0.45% increase from the 2010 national census. Most of them live in Inner Mongolia , Northeast China , Xinjiang and Qinghai . The Mongol population in China is nearly twice as much as that of the sovereign state of Mongolia . The Mongols in China are divided between autonomous regions and provinces as follows: Besides the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, there are other Mongol autonomous administrative subdivisions in China. Prefecture level: County level: China classifies different Mongolian groups like Buryats and Oirats into

530-486: A Mongolian writer, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. This isn't the first time China has made these kinds of arrests on foreign soil against Mongols either, as this is the fifth occurrence. The Chinese government has even gone as far as accusing Mongolian herders / nomads of causing climate change in order to justify the forced relocation of Mongolians out of their ancestral land. Under the "ecological migration" policy,

636-1000: A few suffixes. However, the conditions in which they are actually pronounced as distinct from their short counterparts have not been fully researched. The high vowels undergo some tensing when they occur adjacent to alveolars ( s, z, r, l ), palatals ( j ), dentals ( t̪, d̪, n̪ ), and post-alveolar affricates ( t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ ), e.g. chiraq [t͡ʃʰˈiraq] 'lamp', jenubiy [d͡ʒɛnʊˈbiː] 'southern', yüz [jyz] 'face; hundred', suda [suːˈda] 'in/at (the) water'. Both [ i ] and [ ɯ ] undergo apicalisation after alveodental continuants in unstressed syllables, e.g. siler [sɪ̯læː(r)] 'you (plural)', ziyan [zɪ̯ˈjɑːn] 'harm'. They are medialised after / χ / or before / l / , e.g. til [tʰɨl] 'tongue', xizmet [χɨzˈmɛt] 'work; job; service'. After velars, uvulars and / f / they are realised as [ e ] , e.g. giram [ɡeˈrʌm] 'gram', xelqi [χɛlˈqʰe] 'his [etc.] nation', Finn [fen] 'Finn'. Between two syllables that contain

742-461: A merely stochastic difference. In Inner Mongolia, official language policy divides the Mongolian language into three dialects: Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia , Oirat, and Barghu-Buryat. The Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia is said to consist of Chakhar, Ordos, Baarin , Khorchin, Kharchin, and Alasha. The authorities have synthesized a literary standard for Mongolian in whose grammar

848-532: A misnomer as applied to the modern language of Kashghar". Sven Hedin wrote, "In these cases it would be particularly inappropriate to normalize to the East Turkish literary language, because by so doing one would obliterate traces of national elements which have no immediate connection with the Kaschgar Turks, but on the contrary are possibly derived from the ancient Uigurs". Probably around 1077,

954-510: A multitude of Anti-Mongolian discriminations by the current Chinese government on the goal of assimilating the Mongolian population into the Han population. Some instances of discrimination include: barring teaching the Mongolian language in schools, arresting Mongols on Mongolian soil, and forced evictions of Mongolians in China. Recently the NPC mandated that "minority language-medium education

1060-538: A parameter called ATR ( advanced tongue root ); the groups are −ATR, +ATR, and neutral. This alignment seems to have superseded an alignment according to oral backness. However, some scholars still describe Mongolian as being characterized by a distinction between front vowels and back vowels, and the front vowel spellings 'ö' and 'ü' are still often used in the West to indicate two vowels which were historically front. The Mongolian vowel system also has rounding harmony. Length

1166-476: A postalveolar or palatalized consonant will be followed by an epenthetic [i] , as in [ˈatʃĭɮ] . Stress in Mongolian is nonphonemic (does not distinguish different meanings) and thus is considered to depend entirely on syllable structure. But scholarly opinions on stress placement diverge sharply. Most native linguists, regardless of which dialect they speak, claim that stress falls on the first syllable. Between 1941 and 1975, several Western scholars proposed that

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1272-494: A report on sports composed in Mongolian script on stone, which is most often dated at 1224 or 1225. The Mongolian- Armenian wordlist of 55 words compiled by Kirakos of Gandzak (13th century) is the first written record of Mongolian words. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Mongolian language texts were written in four scripts (not counting some vocabulary written in Western scripts): Uyghur Mongolian (UM) script (an adaptation of

1378-650: A role in vowel harmony and are separate phonemes. /e/ only occurs in words of non-Turkic origin and as the result of vowel raising. Uyghur has systematic vowel reduction (or vowel raising) as well as vowel harmony. Words usually agree in vowel backness, but compounds, loans, and some other exceptions often break vowel harmony. Suffixes surface with the rightmost [back] value in the stem, and /e, ɪ/ are transparent (as they do not contrast for backness). Uyghur also has rounding harmony. Uyghur voiceless stops are aspirated word-initially and intervocalically. The pairs /p, b/ , /t, d/ , /k, ɡ/ , and /q, ʁ/ alternate, with

1484-633: A rounded back vowel each, they are realised as back, e.g. qolimu [qʰɔˈlɯmʊ] 'also his [etc.] arm'. Any vowel undergoes laxing and backing when it occurs in uvular ( /q/, /ʁ/, /χ/ ) and laryngeal (glottal) ( /ɦ/, /ʔ/ ) environments, e.g. qiz [qʰɤz] 'girl', qëtiq [qʰɤˈtɯq] 'yogurt', qeghez [qʰæˈʁæz] 'paper', qum [qʰʊm] 'sand', qolay [qʰɔˈlʌɪ] 'convenient', qan [qʰɑn] 'blood', ëghiz [ʔeˈʁez] 'mouth', hisab [ɦɤˈsʌp] 'number', hës [ɦɤs] 'hunch', hemrah [ɦæmˈrʌh] 'partner', höl [ɦœɫ] 'wet', hujum [ɦuˈd͡ʒʊm] 'assault', halqa [ɦɑlˈqʰɑ] 'ring'. Lowering tends to apply to

1590-466: A sample of current Mongols of China ( n =175, including n =97 from Inner Mongolia, n =27 from Liaoning, n =10 from Heilongjiang, n =10 from Jilin, n =3 from Qinghai, n =3 from Xinjiang, and n =25 from elsewhere in China) and found different haplogroup O subclades (107/175 = 61.1% in total) to be the most frequently observed Y-DNA haplogroup: The second most frequently observed Y-DNA haplogroup among

1696-536: A scholar of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from Kashgar in modern-day Xinjiang , published a Turkic language dictionary and description of the geographic distribution of many Turkic languages, Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk (English: Compendium of the Turkic Dialects ; Uyghur: تۈركى تىللار دىۋانى ‎, Türki Tillar Diwani ). The book, described by scholars as an "extraordinary work," documents

1802-532: A second revival between 1977 and 1992, and a third decline between 1995 and 2012. However, in spite of the decline of the Mongolian language in some of Inner Mongolia's urban areas and educational spheres, the ethnic identity of the urbanized Chinese-speaking Mongols is most likely going to survive due to the presence of urban ethnic communities. The multilingual situation in Inner Mongolia does not appear to obstruct efforts by ethnic Mongols to preserve their language. Although an unknown number of Mongols in China, such as

1908-425: A short first syllable are stressed on the second syllable. But if their first syllable is long, then the data for different acoustic parameters seems to support conflicting conclusions: intensity data often seems to indicate that the first syllable is stressed, while F0 seems to indicate that it is the second syllable that is stressed. The grammar in this article is also based primarily on Khalkha Mongolian. Unlike

2014-450: A suffix alternate as governed by vowel harmony , where /ɡ/ occurs with front vowels and /ʁ/ with back ones. Devoicing of a suffix-initial consonant can occur only in the cases of /d/ → [t] , /ɡ/ → [k] , and /ʁ/ → [q] , when the preceding consonant is voiceless. Lastly, the rule that /g/ must occur with front vowels and /ʁ/ with back vowels can be broken when either [k] or [q] in suffix-initial position becomes assimilated by

2120-591: A system of vowel harmony : For historical reasons, these have been traditionally labeled as "front" vowels and "back" vowels, as /o/ and /u/ developed from /ø/ and /y/, while /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ developed from /o/ and /u/ in Middle Mongolian. Indeed, in Mongolian romanizations , the vowels /o/ and /u/ are often conventionally rendered as ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ , while the vowels /ɔ/ and /ʊ/ are expressed as ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩ . However, for modern Mongolian phonology, it

2226-629: Is Classical Mongolian , which is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. This is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kangyur and Tengyur as well as several chronicles. In 1686, the Soyombo alphabet ( Buddhist texts ) was created, giving distinctive evidence on early classical Mongolian phonological peculiarities. Mongolian

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2332-430: Is determined according to phonotactic requirements. The following table lists the consonants of Khalkha Mongolian. The consonants enclosed in parentheses occur only in loanwords. The occurrence of palatalized consonant phonemes, except /tʃ/ /tʃʰ/ /ʃ/ /j/ , is restricted to words with [−ATR] vowels. A rare feature among the world's languages, Mongolian has neither a voiced lateral approximant, such as [l] , nor

2438-408: Is ellipsis . The rules governing the morphology of Mongolian case endings are intricate, and so the rules given below are only indicative. In many situations, further (more general) rules must also be taken into account in order to produce the correct form: these include the presence of an unstable nasal or unstable velar, as well as the rules governing when a penultimate vowel should be deleted from

2544-574: Is CV(C)(C). Uyghur syllable structure is usually CV or CVC, but CVCC can also occur in some words. When syllable-coda clusters occur, CC tends to become CVC in some speakers especially if the first consonant is not a sonorant . In Uyghur, any consonant phoneme can occur as the syllable onset or coda , except for /ʔ/ which only occurs in the onset and /ŋ/ , which never occurs word-initially. In general, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis . The Karluk language started to be written with

2650-466: Is CVVCCC, where the last C is a word-final suffix. A single short vowel rarely appears in syllable-final position . If a word was monosyllabic historically, *CV has become CVV. In native words, the following consonants do not occur word-initially: /w̜/ , /ɮ/ , /r/ , /w̜ʲ/ , /ɮʲ/ , /rʲ/ , /tʰʲ/ , and /tʲ/ . [ŋ] is restricted to codas (else it becomes [n] ), and /p/ and /pʲ/ do not occur in codas for historical reasons. For two-consonant clusters,

2756-605: 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

2862-472: Is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly, Uyghur processes include vowel reduction and umlauting , especially in northern dialects. In addition to other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been strongly influenced by Arabic and Persian , and more recently by Russian and Mandarin Chinese . The modified Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and

2968-438: Is a +ATR vowel, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a +ATR vowel. In the case of suffixes, which must change their vowels to conform to different words, two patterns predominate. Some suffixes contain an archiphoneme /A/ that can be realized as /a, ɔ, e, o/ ; e.g. Other suffixes can occur in /U/ being realized as /ʊ, u/ , in which case all −ATR vowels lead to /ʊ/ and all +ATR vowels lead to /u/ ; e.g. If

3074-747: 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 . Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family , which includes languages such as Uzbek . Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination , lacks noun classes or grammatical gender , and

3180-545: Is based primarily on the Khalkha dialect as spoken in Ulaanbaatar , Mongolia's capital. The phonologies of other varieties such as Ordos, Khorchin, and even Chakhar, differ considerably. This section discusses the phonology of Khalkha Mongolian with subsections on Vowels, Consonants, Phonotactics and Stress. The standard language has seven monophthong vowel phonemes. They are aligned into three vowel harmony groups by

3286-579: Is found in Mongolia but not in Inner Mongolia, is often cited as a fundamental distinction, for example Proto-Mongolic *tʃil , Khalkha /tʃiɮ/ , Chakhar /tʃil/ 'year' versus Proto-Mongolic *tʃøhelen , Khalkha /tsoːɮəŋ/ , Chakhar /tʃoːləŋ/ 'few'. On the other hand, the split between the past tense verbal suffixes - /sŋ/ in the Central varieties v. - /dʒɛː/ in the Eastern varieties is usually seen as

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3392-715: Is grouped in the following way: There is no disagreement that the Khalkha dialect of the Mongolian state is Mongolian. However, the status of certain varieties in the Common Mongolic group—whether they are languages distinct from Mongolian or just dialects of it—is disputed. There are at least three such varieties: Oirat (including the Kalmyk variety ) and Buryat, both of which are spoken in Russia, Mongolia, and China; and Ordos , spoken around Inner Mongolia's Ordos City . The influential classification of Sanžeev (1953) proposed

3498-410: Is more appropriate to instead characterize the two vowel-harmony groups by the dimension of tongue root position. There is also one neutral vowel, /i/ , not belonging to either group. All the vowels in a non compound word, including all its suffixes, must belong to the same group. If the first vowel is −ATR, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a −ATR vowel. Likewise, if the first vowel

3604-738: Is more closely related to the Siberian Turkic languages in Siberia. Robert Dankoff wrote that the Turkic language spoken in Kashgar and used in Kara Khanid works was Karluk, not (Old) Uyghur. Robert Barkley Shaw wrote, "In the Turkish of Káshghar and Yarkand (which some European linguists have called Uïghur, a name unknown to the inhabitants of those towns, who know their tongue simply as Túrki), ... This would seem in many case to be

3710-427: Is not in line with the current international standard. Mongolian is a language with vowel harmony and a complex syllabic structure compared to other Mongolic languages, allowing clusters of up to three consonants syllable-finally. It is a typical agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While there is a basic word order, subject–object–verb , ordering among noun phrases

3816-1264: Is phonemic for vowels, and except short [e], which has merged into short [i], at least in Ulaanbaatar dialect, each of the other six phonemes occurs both short and long. Phonetically, short /o/ has become centralised to the central vowel [ɵ] . In the following table, the seven vowel phonemes, with their length variants, are arranged and described phonetically. The vowels in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet are: Khalkha also has four diphthongs : historically /ui, ʊi, ɔi, ai/ but are pronounced more like [ʉe̯, ʊe̯, ɞe̯, æe̯] ; e.g. ой in нохой ( nohoi ) [nɔ̙ˈχɞe̯] 'dog', ай in далай ( dalai ) [taˈɮæe̯] sea', уй in уйлах ( uilah ) [ˈʊe̯ɮɐχ] 'to cry', үй in үйлдвэр ( üildver ) [ˈʉe̯ɮtw̜ɘr] 'factory', эй in хэрэгтэй ( heregtei ) [çiɾɪxˈtʰe] 'necessary'. There are three additional rising diphthongs /ia/ (иа), /ʊa/ (уа) /ei/ (эй); e.g. иа in амиараа ( amiaraa ) [aˈmʲæɾa] 'individually', уа in хуаран ( huaran ) [ˈχʷaɾɐɴ] 'barracks'. This table below lists vowel allophones (short vowels allophones in non-initial positions are used interchangeably with schwa): Mongolian divides vowels into three groups in

3922-465: Is relatively free, as grammatical roles are indicated by a system of about eight grammatical cases . There are five voices . Verbs are marked for voice, aspect , tense and epistemic modality / evidentiality . In sentence linking, a special role is played by converbs . Modern Mongolian evolved from Middle Mongol , the language spoken in the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries. In

4028-656: Is said to be based on the Standard Mongolian of Inner Mongolia and whose pronunciation is based on the Chakhar dialect as spoken in the Plain Blue Banner . Dialectologically, however, western Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia are closer to Khalkha than they are to eastern Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia: e.g. Chakhar is closer to Khalkha than to Khorchin. Juha Janhunen (2003: 179) lists

4134-412: Is the official national language of Mongolia, where it is spoken (but not always written) by nearly 3.6 million people (2014 estimate), and the official provincial language (both spoken and written forms) of Inner Mongolia, where there are at least 4.1 million ethnic Mongols. Across the whole of China, the language is spoken by roughly half of the country's 5.8 million ethnic Mongols (2005 estimate) However,

4240-561: Is unconstitutional (People's Daily)," enforcing this within Inner Mongolian schools, banning the teaching of the Mongolian language, along with riding of different kinds of Mongolian material that are deemed to de-emphasize Chinese nationality and common identity. In 2023, a book on the history of the Mongols was banned for " historical nihilism ." Most recently on May 3, 2023, the Chinese government arrested Mr. Lhamjab Borjigin,

4346-399: Is word-final, it gets stressed anyway. In cases where there is only one phonemic short word-initial syllable, even this syllable can get the stress: More recently, the most extensive collection of phonetic data so far in Mongolian studies has been applied to a partial account of stress placement in the closely related Chakhar dialect. The conclusion is drawn that di- and trisyllabic words with

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4452-643: The Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk . According to Gerard Clauson , Western Yugur is considered to be the true descendant of Old Uyghur and is also called "Neo-Uyghur". According to Frederik Coene, Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the Southeastern Turkic languages and the Northeastern Turkic languages . The Western Yugur language , although in geographic proximity,

4558-529: The Altaic language family and contrasted with the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area . However, instead of a common genetic origin, Clauson, Doerfer, and Shcherbak proposed that Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages form a language Sprachbund , rather than common origin. Mongolian literature is well attested in written form from the 13th century but has earlier Mongolic precursors in

4664-591: The Chagatai language , a literary language used all across Central Asia until the early 20th century. After Chaghatai fell into extinction , the standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region, showing abundant Chaghatai influence. Uyghur language today shows considerable Persian influence as a result from Chagatai, including numerous Persian loanwords . Modern Uyghur religious literature includes

4770-759: The Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz , have access to schools and government services in their native language. Smaller minorities, however, do not have a choice and must attend Uyghur-medium schools. These include the Xibe , Tajiks , Daurs and Russians . According to reports in 2018, Uyghur script was erased from street signs and wall murals, as the Chinese government has launched a campaign to force Uyghur people to learn Mandarin. Any interest in Uyghur culture or language could lead to detention. Recent news reports have also documented

4876-669: The Kutadgu Bilig . Ahmad bin Mahmud Yukenaki (Ahmed bin Mahmud Yükneki) (Ahmet ibn Mahmut Yükneki) (Yazan Edib Ahmed b. Mahmud Yükneki) ( w:tr:Edip Ahmet Yükneki ) wrote the Hibat al-ḥaqāyiq (هبة الحقايق) ( Hibet-ül hakayik ) (Hibet ül-hakayık) (Hibbetü'l-Hakaik) (Atebetüʼl-hakayik) ( w:tr:Atabetü'l-Hakayık ). Middle Turkic languages , through the influence of Perso - Arabic after the 13th century, developed into

4982-697: The Language Policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949 , states that Mongolian can be classified into four dialects: the Khalkha dialect in the middle, the Horcin-Haracin dialect in the East, Oriat-Hilimag in the west, and Bargu–Buriyad in the north. Some Western scholars propose that the relatively well researched Ordos variety is an independent language due to its conservative syllable structure and phoneme inventory. While

5088-613: The Shuluun Huh/Zhènglán Banner , and is written in the traditional Mongolian script . The number of Mongolian speakers in China is still larger than in the state of Mongolia, where the majority of Mongolians in China speak one of the Khorchin dialects , or rather more than two million of them speak the Khorchin dialect itself as their mother tongue, so that the Khorchin dialect group has about as many speakers as

5194-508: The United States ( New York City ). The Uyghurs are one of the 56 recognized ethnic groups in China and Uyghur is an official language of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region , along with Standard Chinese . As a result, Uyghur can be heard in most social domains in Xinjiang and also in schools, government and courts. Of the other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, those populous enough to have their own autonomous prefectures , such as

5300-529: The Uyghur alphabet), 'Phags-pa script (Ph) (used in decrees), Chinese (SM) ( The Secret History of the Mongols ), and Arabic (AM) (used in dictionaries). While they are the earliest texts available, these texts have come to be called " Middle Mongol " in scholarly practice. The documents in UM script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language "Preclassical Mongolian". The Yuan dynasty referred to

5406-542: The extinct language Chagatay (the East Karluk languages), and more distantly to Uzbek (which is West Karluk). It is widely accepted that Uyghur has three main dialects, all based on their geographical distribution. Each of these main dialects have a number of sub-dialects which all are mutually intelligible to some extent. The Central dialects are spoken by 90% of the Uyghur-speaking population, while

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5512-545: The historical development of the Mongolian dialect continuum , as well as for its sociolinguistic qualities. Though phonological and lexical studies are comparatively well developed, the basis has yet to be laid for a comparative morphosyntactic study, for example between such highly diverse varieties as Khalkha and Khorchin. In Juha Janhunen's book titled Mongolian , he groups the Mongolic language family into four distinct linguistic branches: The Common Mongolic branch

5618-553: The syllable 's position in the word. In word-initial syllables, there is a phonemic contrast in vowel length . A long vowel has about 208% the length of a short vowel. In word-medial and word-final syllables, formerly long vowels are now only 127% as long as short vowels in initial syllables, but they are still distinct from initial-syllable short vowels. Short vowels in noninitial syllables differ from short vowels in initial syllables by being only 71% as long and by being centralized in articulation. As they are nonphonemic, their position

5724-699: The Arabic-based Uyghur alphabets have 32 characters each; the Uyghur Cyrillic alphabet also uses two iotated vowel letters (Ю and Я). The Middle Turkic languages are the direct ancestor of the Karluk languages , including Uyghur and the Uzbek language . Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur , rather, it is a descendant of the Karluk language spoken by the Kara-Khanid Khanate , as described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in

5830-434: The Chinese government has moved thousands of Mongolians into city/urban areas away from their home grasslands on the basis that the Mongolian nomadic lifestyle is destroying the grasslands and causing climate change symptoms like desertification and sandstorms . The Chinese government also justifies the movement of Mongols, calling it poverty relief, as hundreds of thousands of Mongols live in extreme poverty, however many of

5936-516: The Chinese government. Mandarin has been deemed the only language of instruction for all subjects as of September 2023. Mongolian belongs to the Mongolic languages . The delimitation of the Mongolian language within Mongolic is a much disputed theoretical problem, one whose resolution is impeded by the fact that existing data for the major varieties is not easily arrangeable according to a common set of linguistic criteria. Such data might account for

6042-830: The Imams will leave this world without faith and on Judgement Day their faces will be black ..." in the Tazkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams . Shaw translated extracts from the Tazkiratu'l-Bughra on the Muslim Turki war against the "infidel" Khotan. The Turki-language Tadhkirah i Khwajagan was written by M. Sadiq Kashghari. Historical works like the Tārīkh-i amniyya and Tārīkh-i ḥamīdi were written by Musa Sayrami . The Qing dynasty commissioned dictionaries on

6148-580: The Islamic conquest of Khotan, Yarkand and Kashgar by Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Qarakhanid leader. The shrines of Sufi Saints are revered in Altishahr as one of Islam's essential components and the tazkirah literature reinforced the sacredness of the shrines. Anyone who does not believe in the stories of the saints is guaranteed hellfire by the tazkirahs. It is written, "And those who doubt Their Holinesses

6254-464: The Khalkha dialect group in the State of Mongolia. Nevertheless, the Chakhar dialect, which today has only about 100,000 native speakers and belongs to the Khalkha dialect group, is the basis of standard Mongolian in China. The characteristic differences in the pronunciation of the two standard varieties include the umlauts in Inner Mongolia and the palatalized consonants in Mongolia (see below) as well as

6360-847: The Mongolian language in Chinese as "Guoyu" ( Chinese : 國語 ), which means "National language", a term also used by other non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages such as the Manchu language during the Qing dynasty , the Jurchen language during the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) , the Khitan language during the Liao dynasty , and the Xianbei language during the Northern Wei period. The next distinct period

6466-598: The Perso-Arabic script (Kona Yëziq) in the 10th century upon the conversion of the Kara-Khanids to Islam. This Perso-Arabic script (Kona Yëziq) was reformed in the 20th century with modifications to represent all Modern Uyghur sounds including short vowels and eliminate Arabic letters representing sounds not found in Modern Uyghur. Unlike many other modern Turkic languages , Uyghur is primarily written using

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6572-482: The Taẕkirah, biographies of Islamic religious figures and saints. The Taẕkirah is a genre of literature written about Sufi Muslim saints in Altishahr . Written sometime in the period between 1700 and 1849, the Chagatai language (modern Uyghur) Taẕkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams provides an account of the Muslim Karakhanid war against the Khotanese Buddhists, containing a story about Imams, from Mada'in city (possibly in modern-day Iraq) came 4 Imams who travelled to help

6678-421: The Tumets, may have completely or partially lost the ability to speak their language, they are still registered as ethnic Mongols and continue to identify themselves as ethnic Mongols. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim to be and are registered as ethnic Mongols so they can benefit from the preferential policies for minorities in education, healthcare, family planning, school admissions,

6784-458: The Uyghur language is of Turkic stock, but due to different kinds of language contact throughout its history, it has adopted many loanwords . Kazakh , Uzbek and Chagatai are all Turkic languages which have had a strong influence on Uyghur. Many words of Arabic origin have come into the language through Persian and Tajik , which again have come through Uzbek and to a greater extent, Chagatai. Many words of Arabic origin have also entered

6890-424: The accusative, while it must take the nominative if it is indefinite . In addition to case, a number of postpositions exist that usually govern the genitive, dative-locative, comitative and privative cases, including a marked form of the nominative (which can itself then take further case forms). There is also a possible attributive case (when a noun is used attributively ), which is unmarked in most nouns but takes

6996-504: The bases of height, backness and roundness. It has been argued, within a lexical phonology framework, that / e / has a back counterpart / ɤ / , and modern Uyghur lacks a clear differentiation between / i / and / ɯ / . Uyghur vowels are by default short , but long vowels also exist because of historical vowel assimilation (above) and through loanwords. Underlyingly long vowels would resist vowel reduction and devoicing , introduce non-final stress, and be analyzed as |Vj| or |Vr| before

7102-747: The displaced Mongols actually fall deeper into poverty, while also feeling out of their element and feeling like outcasts in their new homes. The basis of moving the Mongols by the claim of climate/environment protection is one that lacks support, as it has been found that nomadic lifestyles, like that of the grassland Mongols, actually harm the environment far less than permanent settlement lifestyles. Uyghur language Uyghur or Uighur ( / ˈ w iː ɡ ʊər , - ɡ ər / ; ئۇيغۇر تىلى , Уйғур тили , Uyghur tili, Uyƣur tili , IPA: [ʊjˈʁʊɾ.tɪ.lɪ] or ئۇيغۇرچە , Уйғурчә , Uyghurche, Uyƣurqə , IPA: [ʊj.ʁʊɾˈtʃɛ] , CTA : Uyğurçä; formerly known as Turki or Eastern Turki )

7208-401: The exact number of Mongolian speakers in China is unknown, as there is no data available on the language proficiency of that country's citizens. The use of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia has witnessed periods of decline and revival over the last few hundred years. The language experienced a decline during the late Qing period, a revival between 1947 and 1965, a second decline between 1966 and 1976,

7314-412: The examples given above, the words are phonetically [ˈxɔjɔ̆r] , [ˈatʃĭɮ] , and [ˈsaːrmăɢ] . The phonetic form of the epenthetic vowel follows from vowel harmony triggered by the vowel in the preceding syllable. Usually it is a centralized version of the same sound, with the following exceptions: preceding /u/ produces [e] ; /i/ will be ignored if there is a nonneutral vowel earlier in the word; and

7420-487: The existence of mandatory boarding schools where children are separated from their parents; children are punished for speaking Uyghur, making the language at a very high risk of extinction. The Chinese government have implemented bi-lingual education in most regions of Xinjiang. The bi-lingual education system teaches Xinjiang's students all STEM classes using only Mandarin Chinese, or a combination of Uighur and Chinese. However, research have shown that due to differences in

7526-434: The following Mongol dialects, most of which are spoken in Inner Mongolia . There are two standard varieties of Mongolian. Standard Mongolian in the state of Mongolia is based on the northern Khalkha Mongolian dialects, which include the dialect of Ulaanbaatar , and is written in the Mongolian Cyrillic script . Standard Mongolian in Inner Mongolia is based on the Chakhar Mongolian of the Khalkha dialect group, spoken in

7632-444: The following restrictions obtain: Clusters that do not conform to these restrictions will be broken up by an epenthetic nonphonemic vowel in a syllabification that takes place from right to left. For instance, hoyor 'two', azhil 'work', and saarmag 'neutral' are, phonemically, /xɔjr/ , /atʃɮ/ , and /saːrmɡ/ respectively. In such cases, an epenthetic vowel is inserted to prevent disallowed consonant clusters. Thus, in

7738-539: The former set near front vowels and the latter near a back vowels. Some speakers of Uyghur distinguish /v/ from /w/ in Russian loans, but this is not represented in most orthographies. Other phonemes occur natively only in limited contexts, i.e. /h/ only in few interjections, /d/ , /ɡ/ , and /ʁ/ rarely initially, and /z/ only morpheme-final. Therefore, the pairs */t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ/ , */ʃ, ʒ/ , and */s, z/ do not alternate. The primary syllable structure of Uyghur

7844-682: The government of the People's Republic of China do not currently speak any form of Mongolic language . Such populations include the Sichuan Mongols (most of whom speak a form of Naic language ), the Yunnan Mongols (most of whom speak a form of Loloish language ), and the Mongols of Henan Mongol Autonomous County in Qinghai (most of whom speak Amdo Tibetan and/or Chinese ). As of July 2023 , official publications have avoided references to Mongolians in China and instead used

7950-593: The hiring and promotion, the financing and taxation of businesses, and regional infrastructural support given to ethnic minorities in China. In 2020, the Chinese government required three subjects—language and literature, politics, and history—to be taught in Mandarin in Mongolian-language primary and secondary schools in the Inner Mongolia since September, which caused widespread protests among ethnic Mongol communities. These protests were quickly suppressed by

8056-499: The history of the people. In one of his books the term Uyghur was deliberately not used by James A. Millward . The name Khāqāniyya was given to the Qarluks who inhabited Kāshghar and Bālāsāghūn, the inhabitants were not Uighur, but their language has been retroactively labelled as Uighur by scholars. The Qarakhanids called their own language the "Turk" or "Kashgar" language and did not use Uighur to describe their own language, Uighur

8162-581: The independent words derived using verbal suffixes can roughly be divided into three classes: final verbs , which can only be used sentence-finally, i.e. ‑ na (mainly future or generic statements) or ‑ ö (second person imperative); participles (often called "verbal nouns"), which can be used clause-finally or attributively, i.e. ‑ san ( perfect - past ) or ‑ maar 'want to'; and converbs , which can link clauses or function adverbially , i.e. ‑ zh (qualifies for any adverbial function or neutrally connects two sentences ) or ‑ tal (the action of

8268-573: The language directly through Islamic literature after the introduction of Islam around the 10th century. Chinese in Xinjiang and Russian elsewhere had the greatest influence on Uyghur. Loanwords from these languages are all quite recent, although older borrowings exist as well, such as borrowings from Dungan , a Mandarin language spoken by the Dungan people of Central Asia . A number of loanwords of German origin have also reached Uyghur through Russian. Code-switching with Standard Chinese

8374-611: The language to diaspora children online as well as publishing a magazine written by children for children in Uyghur. Uyghur has a seven-vowel inventory, with [i] and [e] not distinguished. The vowel letters of the Uyghur language are, in their alphabetical order (in the Latin script), ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨ë⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , ⟨ü⟩ . There are no diphthongs. Hiatus occurs in some loanwords. Uyghur vowels are distinguished on

8480-417: The leftmost heavy syllable gets the stress. Yet other positions were taken in works published between 1835 and 1915. Walker (1997) proposes that stress falls on the rightmost heavy syllable unless this syllable is word-final: A "heavy syllable" is defined as one that is at least the length of a full vowel; short word-initial syllables are thereby excluded. If a word is bisyllabic and the only heavy syllable

8586-578: The literature of the Khitan and other Xianbei peoples. The Bugut inscription dated to 584 CE and the Inscription of Hüis Tolgoi dated to 604–620 CE appear to be the oldest substantial Mongolic or Para-Mongolic texts discovered. Writers such as Owen Lattimore referred to Mongolian as "the Mongol language". The earliest surviving Mongolian text may be the Stele of Yisüngge  [ ru ] ,

8692-418: The main clause takes place until the action expressed by the suffixed verb begins). Roughly speaking, Mongolian has between seven and nine cases : nominative ( unmarked ), genitive , dative - locative , accusative , ablative , instrumental , comitative , privative and directive , though the final two are not always considered part of the case paradigm. If a direct object is definite , it must take

8798-550: The major languages of China which included Chagatai Turki language, such as the Pentaglot Dictionary . The historical term "Uyghur" was appropriated for the language that had been known as Eastern Turki by government officials in the Soviet Union in 1922 and in Xinjiang in 1934. Sergey Malov was behind the idea of renaming Turki to Uyghurs. The use of the term Uyghur has led to anachronisms when describing

8904-506: The non-high vowels when a syllable-final liquid assimilates to them, e.g. kör [cʰøː] 'look!', boldi [bɔlˈdɪ] 'he [etc.] became', ders [dæːs] 'lesson', tar [tʰɑː(r)] 'narrow'. Official Uyghur orthographies do not mark vowel length, and also do not distinguish between /ɪ/ (e.g., بىلىم ‎ /bɪlɪm/ 'knowledge') and back / ɯ / (e.g., تىلىم ‎ /tɯlɯm/ 'my language'); these two sounds are in complementary distribution , but phonological analyses claim that they play

9010-469: The only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all vowels due to modifications to the original Perso-Arabic script made in the 20th century. Two Latin alphabets and one Cyrillic alphabet are also used, though to a much lesser extent. The two Latin-based and

9116-489: The only vowel in the word stem is /i/ , the suffixes will use the +ATR suffix forms. Mongolian also has rounding harmony, which does not apply to close vowels. If a stem contains /o/ (or /ɔ/ ), a suffix that is specified for an open vowel will have [o] (or [ɔ] , respectively) as well. However, this process is blocked by the presence of /u/ (or /ʊ/ ) and /ei/ ; e.g. /ɔr-ɮɔ/ 'came in', but /ɔr-ʊɮ-ɮa/ 'inserted'. The pronunciation of long and short vowels depends on

9222-565: The order of words and grammar between the Uighur and the Chinese language, many students face obstacles in learning courses such as Mathematics under the bi-lingual education system. Uyghur language has been supported by Google Translate since February 2020. About 80 newspapers and magazines are available in Uyghur; five TV channels and ten publishers serve as the Uyghur media . Outside of China, Radio Free Asia provides news in Uyghur. Poet and activist Muyesser Abdul'ehed teaches

9328-486: The other due to the preceding consonant being such. Loan phonemes have influenced Uyghur to various degrees. /d͡ʒ/ and /χ/ were borrowed from Arabic and have been nativized, while /ʒ/ from Persian less so. /f/ only exists in very recent Russian and Chinese loans, since Perso-Arabic (and older Russian and Chinese) /f/ became Uyghur /p/ . Perso-Arabic loans have also made the contrast between /k, ɡ/ and /q, ʁ/ phonemic, as they occur as allophones in native words,

9434-443: The phonology, most of what is said about morphology and syntax also holds true for Chakhar, while Khorchin is somewhat more diverse. Modern Mongolian is an agglutinative —almost exclusively suffixing—language, with the only exception being reduplication. Mongolian also does not have gendered nouns, or definite articles like "the". Most of the suffixes consist of a single morpheme . There are many derivational morphemes. For example,

9540-486: The placement of a variety like Alasha , which is under the cultural influence of Inner Mongolia but historically tied to Oirat, and of other border varieties like Darkhad would very likely remain problematic in any classification, the central problem remains the question of how to classify Chakhar, Khalkha, and Khorchin in relation to each other and in relation to Buryat and Oirat. The split of [tʃ] into [tʃ] before *i and [ts] before all other reconstructed vowels, which

9646-481: The rich literary tradition of Turkic languages; it contains folk tales (including descriptions of the functions of shamans ) and didactic poetry (propounding "moral standards and good behaviour"), besides poems and poetry cycles on topics such as hunting and love and numerous other language materials. Other Kara-Khanid writers wrote works in the Turki Karluk Khaqani language. Yusuf Khass Hajib wrote

9752-578: The same single category as Mongol along with Inner Mongols. The Chinese government also classifies the Tuvans as Mongols, despite Tuvans being a Turkic, non-Mongolic ethnic group. The official language used for all of these Mongols in China is a literary standard based on the Chahar dialect of Mongol. The ethnic classification might be inaccurate due to lack of information regarding the registering policy. Some populations officially classified as Mongols by

9858-463: The sampled Mongols from China was C2 (22.9%, including 16.6% "Northern" i.e. Mongolian/Siberian C2b1a, 1.7% typically Mongolic C2c1a1a1-M407, and 4.6% "Southern" i.e. East Asian C2c1(xC2c1a1a1)), followed by N1-CTS3750 (6.3%, including 2.9% N1a2a1a~, 1.1% N1a2b2a1c~, 1.1% N1b2a2~, 0.6% N1a1a1a1a3a, and 0.6% N1b1), Q (4.6%, including 4.0% Q1a1a1 and 0.6% Q2a1a1), R1a1a1b2a-Z94 (2.3%), and D-M533 (1.1%). Y-chromosomal haplogroup E1b1b1a1b2 (V22)

9964-608: The splitting of the Middle Mongol affricates * ʧ ( ᠴ č ) and * ʤ ( ᠵ ǰ ) into ʦ ( ц c ) and ʣ ( з z ) versus ʧ ( ч č ) and ʤ ( ж ž ) in Mongolia: Aside from these differences in pronunciation, there are also differences in vocabulary and language use: in the state of Mongolia more loanwords from Russian are being used, while in Inner Mongolia more loanwords from Chinese have been adopted. The following description

10070-503: The stem with certain case endings (e.g. цэрэг  ( tsereg ) → цэргийн  ( tsergiin )). The additional morphological rules specific to loanwords are not covered. Mongols in China Mongols in China , also known as Mongolian Chinese , are ethnic Mongols who live in China. They are one of the 56 ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese government . As of 2020, there are 6,290,204 Mongols in China,

10176-428: The suffix ‑ н  (‑ n ) when the stem has an unstable nasal. Nouns can also take a reflexive-possessive suffix , indicating that the marked noun is possessed by the subject of the sentence: bi najz-aa avar-san I friend- reflexive-possessive save- perfect "I saved my friend". However, there are also somewhat noun-like adjectives to which case suffixes seemingly cannot be attached directly unless there

10282-817: The table below the alphabets are shown side-by-side for comparison, together with a phonetic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet . Like other Turkic languages, Uyghur is a head-final agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case , but not gender and definiteness like in many other languages. There are two numbers: singular and plural and six different cases: nominative , accusative , dative , locative , ablative and genitive . Verbs are conjugated for tense : present and past ; voice : causative and passive ; aspect : continuous and mood : e.g. ability. Verbs may be negated as well. The core lexicon of

10388-555: The term "northern frontier culture" ( bei jiang wenhua ). Among the Mongols of China, mitochondrial haplogroup D was in first place (27.07%), followed by mitochondrial haplogroups B (11.60%), F (10.77%), Z (8.01%), G (7, 73%), C (6.91%), A (6.08%), N (5.25%) and M7 (5.25%). Other mitochondrial haplogroups (HV, H, I, M8, M9, M10, M11, R, T, U, W and Y) were sporadically distributed among the studied Mongols of China with frequencies of no more than 1.66%. Guang-Lin He et al. (2022) examined

10494-668: The traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of it is also valid for vernacular (spoken) Khalkha and other Mongolian dialects, especially Chakhar Mongolian . Some classify several other Mongolic languages like Buryat and Oirat as varieties of Mongolian, but this classification

10600-456: The transition, a major shift in the vowel-harmony paradigm occurred, long vowels developed, the case system changed slightly, and the verbal system was restructured. Mongolian is related to the extinct Khitan language . It was believed that Mongolian was related to Turkic , Tungusic , Korean and Japonic languages but this view is now seen as obsolete by a majority of (but not all) comparative linguists. These languages have been grouped under

10706-983: The two other branches of dialects only are spoken by a relatively small minority. Vowel reduction is common in the northern parts of where Uyghur is spoken, but not in the south. Uyghur is spoken by an estimated 8–11 million people in total. In addition to being spoken primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China , mainly by the Uyghur people , Uyghur was also spoken by some 300,000 people in Kazakhstan in 1993, some 90,000 in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 1998, 3,000 in Afghanistan and 1,000 in Mongolia , both in 1982. Smaller communities also exist in Albania , Australia , Belgium , Canada , Germany , Indonesia , Pakistan , Saudi Arabia , Sweden , Tajikistan , Turkey , United Kingdom and

10812-408: The voiced member devoicing in syllable-final position, except in word-initial syllables. This devoicing process is usually reflected in the official orthography, but an exception has been recently made for certain Perso-Arabic loans. Voiceless phonemes do not become voiced in standard Uyghur. Suffixes display a slightly different type of consonant alternation. The phonemes /ɡ/ and /ʁ/ anywhere in

10918-422: The voiceless velar plosive [k] ; instead, it has a voiced alveolar lateral fricative , /ɮ/ , which is often realized as voiceless [ɬ] . In word-final position, /n/ (if not followed by a vowel in historical forms) is realized as [ŋ] . Aspirated consonants are preaspirated in medial and word-final contexts, devoicing preceding consonants and vowels. Devoiced short vowels are often deleted. The maximal syllable

11024-547: The word baiguullagiinh consists of the root bai 'to be', an epenthetic ‑ g ‑, the causative ‑ uul ‑ (hence 'to found'), the derivative suffix ‑ laga that forms nouns created by the action (like - ation in organisation ) and the complex suffix ‑ iinh denoting something that belongs to the modified word (‑ iin would be genitive ). Nominal compounds are quite frequent. Some derivational verbal suffixes are rather productive , e.g. yarih 'to speak', yarilc 'to speak with each other'. Formally,

11130-461: Was observed in one Mongol individual from Hohhot , G2a2b2a1a1a2a1a (L654.2) was observed in one Mongol individual from Alxa League , and I2a1b2a1a1a1 (BY128/Y5596) was observed in one Mongol individual from Hinggan League . Not all groups of people related to the medieval Mongols are officially classified as Mongols under the current system. Other official ethnic groups in China which speak Mongolic languages include: Mongols living in China face

11236-525: Was used to describe the language of non-Muslims but Chinese scholars have anachronistically called a Qarakhanid work written by Kashgari as "Uighur". The name " Altishahri-Jungharian Uyghur " was used by the Soviet educated Uyghur Qadir Haji in 1927. The Uyghur language belongs to the Karluk Turkic ( Qarluq ) branch of the Turkic language family . It is closely related to Äynu , Lop , Ili Turki ,

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