Bashkir language

Classification

Bashkir and Tatar belong to the Kipchak-Bulgar (Russian: кыпчакско-булгарская) subgroup of the Kipchak languages. These languages have a similar vocabulary by 94.9%, and have not only a common origin but also a common ancestor in written language—Volga Turki. But Bashkir differs from Tatar in several important ways:

• Bashkir has dental fricatives and in the place of Turkic , , and . For example, Turkish dost and Bashkir дуҫ (duś), Turkish adım and Bashkir аҙым (aźım), Turkish usta and Bashkir оҫта (ośta), or Turkish uzun and Bashkir оҙон (oźon). Bashkir and cannot begin a word (with exceptions: ҙур (źur) 'big', and the particle/conjunction ҙа (źa) or ҙә (źä) ). The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is Turkmen. But in Bashkir, and are two independent phonemes, distinct from and , whereas in Turkmen [θ] and [ð] are the two main realizations of the common Turkic and . In other words, there are no and phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir, which has both and and and .
• The word-initial and morpheme-initial turns into . An example of both features is Tatar сүз (süz) and Bashkir һүҙ (hüź), both meaning "word".
• Common Turkic (Tatar ) turns into Bashkir , e.g., Turkish ağaç , Tatar агач (ağaç) , and Bashkir ағас (ağas) , all meaning "tree".
• The word-initial in Tatar always corresponds to in Standard Bashkir, e.g., Tatar җылы (cılı) and Bashkir йылы (yılı) , both meaning "warm". But the eastern and northern dialects of Bashkir have the > /~/ shift.

Bashkir orthography is more explicit. and are written with their own letters, Ҡ ҡ and Ғ ғ, whereas in Tatar they are treated as positional allophones of and , written К к and Г г.

Labial vowel harmony in Bashkir is written explicitly, e.g., Tatar тормышым (tormışım) and Bashkir тормошом (tormoşom, both pronounced , meaning "my life".

Sample text

Orthography

After the adoption of Islam, which began in the 10th century and lasted for several centuries, the Bashkirs began to use Turki as a written language. Turki was written in a variant of the Arabic script.

In 1923, a writing system based on the Arabic script was specifically created for the Bashkir language. At the same time, the Bashkir literary language was created, moving away from the older written Turkic influences. At first, it used a modified Arabic alphabet. In 1930 it was replaced with the Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet, which was in turn replaced with an adapted Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.

The modern alphabet used by Bashkir is based on the Russian alphabet, with the addition of the following letters: Ә ә , Ө ө , Ү ү , Ғ ғ , Ҡ ҡ , Ң ң , Ҙ ҙ , Ҫ ҫ , Һ һ .

Bashkir Latin alphabet based on the Common Turkic alphabet

Phonology

Vowels

Bashkir has nine native vowels, and three or four loaned vowels (mainly in Russian loanwords).

Phonetically, the native vowels are approximately thus (with the Cyrillic letter followed by the usual Latin romanization in angle brackets):

In Russian loans there are also , , and , written the same as the native vowels: ы, е/э, о, а respectively.

• The vowel may also be realized as .
• The vowel might sometimes be realized as .
• The vowel might sometimes be realized either as , or as .
• The vowels and might sometimes be realized as and , especially in southern dialects.

Historical shifts

Historically, the Proto-Turkic mid vowels have raised from mid to high, whereas the Proto-Turkic high vowels have become the Bashkir reduced mid series. (The same shifts have also happened in Tatar.) However, in most dialects of Bashkir, this shift is not as prominent as in Tatar.

Consonants

Notes

^¹ The phonemes , , are found only in loanwords, and, in the case of , in a few native onomatopoeic words.

^² is an intervocal allophone of , and it is distinct from . is an allophone of in back vowel contexts. and occur as allophones of and before , and both occur only in front vowel contexts.

• are dental , and is apical alveolar . The exact place of articulation of the other dental/alveolar consonants is unclear.

Grammar

A member of the Turkic language family, Bashkir is an agglutinative, SOV language. A large part of the Bashkir vocabulary has Turkic roots; and there are many loan words in Bashkir from Russian, Arabic and Persian sources.

Plurality

The form of the plural suffix is heavily dependent on the letter which comes immediately before it. When it's a consonant, there is a four-way distinction between "л" (l), "т" (t), "ҙ" (ź) and "д" (d); The vowel's distinction is two-way between "а" (after back vowels "а" (a), "ы" (ı), "о" (o), "у" (u)) and "ә" (after front vowels "ә" (ə), "е" (e), "и" (i), "ө" (ö), "ү" (ü)). Some nouns are also less likely to be used with their plural forms such as "һыу" (hıw, "water") or "ҡом" (qom, "sand").

Declension table