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The Uyghur Arabic alphabet ( ug, ئۇيغۇر ئەرەب يېزىقى, translit=Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi UEY) is a version of the Arabic alphabet used for writing the
Uyghur language The Uyghur or Uighur language (; , , , or , , , , CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki), is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8-11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xi ...
, primarily by
Uyghurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia, Cent ...
living in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. It is one of several Uyghur alphabets and has been the official alphabet of the Uyghur language since 1982. The first Perso-Arabic derived alphabet for Uyghur was developed in the 10th century, when
Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
was introduced there. The version used for writing the Chagatai language. It became the regional literary language, now known as the
Chagatay alphabet Chagatai (چغتای, ''Čaġatāy''), also known as ''Turki'', Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (''Čaġatāy türkīsi''), is an extinct Turkic literary language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia and remained the shared litera ...
. It was used nearly exclusively up to the early 1920s. Alternative Uyghur scripts then began emerging and collectively largely displaced Chagatai; ''Kona Yëziq'', meaning 'old script', now distinguishes it and UEY from the alternatives that are ''not'' derived from Arabic. Between 1937 and 1954, the Perso-Arabic alphabet used to write Uyghur was modified by removing redundant letters and adding markings for vowels. A Cyrillic alphabet was adopted in the 1950s and a
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
in 1958. The modern Uyghur Perso-Arabic alphabet was made official in 1978 and reinstituted by the Chinese government in 1983, with modifications for representing Uyghur vowels. The Arabic alphabet used before the modifications (Kona Yëziq) did not represent Uyghur vowels and according to
Robert Barkley Shaw Robert Barkley Shaw (12 July 1839 – 15 June 1879) was a British explorer and diplomat. He was an early English traveller to Kashgar in Central Asia, and he established a relation with the local leader; he was later a member of a diplomatic exp ...
, spelling was irregular and long vowel letters were frequently written for short vowels since most Turki speakers were unsure of the difference between long and short vowels. The pre-modification alphabet used Arabic diacritics (, and ) to mark short vowels. Robert Shaw wrote that Turki writers either "inserted or omitted" the letters for the long vowels , and at their own fancy so multiple spellings of the same word could occur and the was used to represent a short a by some Turki writers. The reformed modern Uyghur Arabic alphabet eliminated letters whose sounds were found only in Arabic and spelled Arabic and Persian loanwords such as Islamic religious words, as they were pronounced in Uyghur and not as they were originally spelled in Arabic or Persian.


Current Official Alphabet

The table below lists all 32 letters of the current official Uyghur alphabet used in Xinjiang in alphabetical order, along with their IPA transcriptions. Note: also represents /ʔ/ but it is usually ignored at the beginning of words. It still reads /ʔ/ in the middle, such as /saʔɛt/ ''hour''.


Spelling of Suffixes

Uyghur spelling borrowed heavily from Chagatai influences. The spelling of the suffixes from Uyghur also matched Chagatai spellings which were kept largely static. Below is an incomplete list of suffixed spellings and their vowel harmony alternatives. Frequently, some Chagatai suffixes were separated from their root words by a zero width non-joiner while in modern Uyghur the root+suffix would be joined. Several of these alternatives were influenced by security-policy considerations of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
or the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. (Soviet Uyghur areas experienced several non-Arabic alphabets and the former CIS countries, especially
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
, now use primarily a
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
-based alphabet, called '' Uyghur Siril Yëziqi''.) A
Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
-derived Latin-based alphabet (with additional letters borrowed from Cyrillic), then called "New script" or '' Uyghur Yëngi Yëziq'' or ''UYY'', was for a time the only officially approved alphabet used for Uyghur in
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
. It had technical shortcomings and met social resistance; Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi (UEY), an expansion of the old Chagatai alphabet based on the
Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...
, is now recognized, along with a newer Latin-based alphabet called '' Uyghur Latin Yëziqi'' or ''ULY'', replacing the former Pinyin-derived alphabet; ''UEY'' is sometimes intended when the term "''Kona Yëziq''" is used.


Historical Spellings


Old and Modern Alphabet Spelling Comparisons


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Uyghur Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabets Uyghur language Alphabets used by Turkic languages