Kyrgyz language

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. This resulted in the Kyrgyz language absorbing Persian and Arabic loanwords, but to a much lesser extent than Kazakh, Uzbek and Uyghur.

Dialects

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

Phonology

Vowels

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.

Vowel harmony

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

The strict vowel harmony system causes some notable phonotactical restrictions in vowels:

1. A word can only contain one vowel from each column, so if a word has Ö in its initial syllable, it will not contain A, O or E. And, since Ö points at Ü, the word also won't contain I, U or İ.
2. This system effectively makes the only distinction of vowels in non-initial syllables by height.

Some notable exceptions include the long rounded vowels (/oː/ /uː/ /øː/ /yː/), which can appear in suffixes regardless of roundedness of the previous vowels (although still following the front-back row harmony), and back rounded vowels, which unround to A after U, therefore creating the following order of vowels in a word with O in its initial syllable: O → U → A ↔︎ I

Consonants

/x/ only occurs in loanwords.

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

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 the chairman of Kyrgyzstan's National Commission for the State Language and Language Policies, Kanybek Osmonaliev, announced that Kyrghyz would 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 ⟨г⟩ and ⟨к⟩ 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.

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

Men

I

эмнени

emneni

what-ACC.DEF

көргөнүмдү

körgönümdü

see-ing-1SG-ACC.DEF

билбейм

bilbeym

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, -Ar 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 بەدەلىندە جانا ۇقۇقتارىندا ەركىن جانا تەڭ ۇقۇقتۇۇ بولۇپ جارالات. الاردىن اڭ-سەزىمى مەنەن ابئيىرى بار جانا بئرى-بىرىنە بئر تۇۇعاندىق مامئلە قىلۇۇعا تئيىش.

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.