Äynu is a
Turkic cryptolect spoken in Western
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 ...
. Some linguists call it a
mixed language,
having a mostly Turkic grammar, essentially
Uyghur, but a mainly
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
vocabulary.
Other linguists argue that it does not meet the technical requirements of a mixed language.
It is spoken by the
Äynu, a nomadic people, who use it to keep their communications secret from outsiders.
Name
The language is known by many different spellings, including Abdal,
Aini, Ainu, Ayni, Aynu, Eyni and Eynu.
The ''Abdal'' (ئابدال) spelling is commonly used in
Uyghur sources.
Russian sources use ''Eynu'', ''Aynu'', ''Abdal'' (Эйну, Айну, Абдал) and Chinese uses the spelling ''Ainu''. The Äynu people call their language ''Äynú'' (ئەينۇ, ).
Geographic distribution
Äynu is spoken in Western China among
Alevi Muslims 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 ...
on the edge of the
Taklimakan Desert in the
Tarim Basin.
Similarly mixed varieties of Turkic and Persian are spoken in other locations including Turkey and Uzbekistan. The speakers of these varieties are also referred to as "Abdal".
Use as a secret language
The only speakers of Äynu are adult men, who are found to speak it outside of their area of settlement in order to communicate without being understood by others. Uyghur is spoken with outsiders who do not speak Äynu and at home when it is not necessary to disguise one's speech.
Vocabulary
Most of basic vocabulary in Aynu comes from the
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
, which might be speculated that the language have been originally an Iranian language and have been turned into a Turkic language after a long period. There are three vocabulary formation methods in Ainu language: simple words, derived words and compound words. The affixes of derived words have both Uyghur and Persian origin. Old people mostly use Persian affixes, while the young people use Uyghur derived vocabulary and affixes.
Phonology
// is a
palatal consonant
Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex.
Characteris ...
. Phonemes on the left of a cell are
voiceless, while those on the right are
voiced.
Orthography
Due to Äynu's secretive nature, along with a lack of official status in areas which it is spoken in, it does not have any widely used writing system. However, the
Uyghur Arabic alphabet is typically used in the occasion where it needs to be written.
Numerals
Äynu numerals are completely Persian. However, ordinal adjectives are made by adding Uyghur -(I)ncI suffix.
Numbers
Ordinal adjectives
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
External links
Numerals in Äynu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aynu Language
Agglutinative languages
Languages of China
Language contact
Cant languages
Turkic languages
Mixed languages