That’s the debate going in one of the bbs threads on uighurbiz and something that i am altogether not familiar with. Of course I don’t know much about what happens in that region at all, but that is what informative sites like New Dominion are for.
According to the posters, who are writing in Chinese, many of the other Central Asian Turkic languages have already transliterated their languages into Latin and Slavic alphabets, which facilitates the spread and accessibility of the language. This increase in cultural fecundity is good for the obvious reasons that most of these ethnicities have or currently are part of larger political formations such as the USSR or China, and often find their cultures subsumed, especially during the age of ideology (latter half of the 20th c.). However, some people are against it, because they argue that continuity is quite impt, and they remark that the reason why Chinese people have sustained that contact with their ancient culture is precisely because they are using essentially the same characters as they did thousands of years ago. They are afraid of the cultural rupture that might occur if this language “reform” is too radical–and eschewing one type of alphabet for another might certainly qualify as radical.
Definitely no need to write in Cyrillic. There is no cultural link, although Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan use it.
Really, Uighurs are culturally and linguistically very, very similar to Uzbeks, who have converted the Roman alphabet, so that would make the most sense.
Yeah that should be Cyrillic, not slavic. Ugh.
I think the question, other than finding a linguistic “best fit” for their language among foreign alphabets, ought to be the process by which such things are decided. I mean, is it a democratic thing, or should it be? Who is a in a position to speak or act with authority on such matters?
Hey Peijin, delighted to see that you read our site and think it’s worth a mention!
I’m a fan of the Latin transliteration, specifically the Uyghur Latin Script (Uyghur Latin Yéziqi) that was put together by Xinjiang University in 2001. I also have the obvious bias that my native language is written in Latin characters.
As for Uzbek – I’ve had the lucky privilege to be able to study Uzbek for a short period of time with a great guy. Apparently the Latin script in Uzbekistan has been a long running joke for several years. The date for the full switch to Latin has been delayed several times, the last one apparently being in 2005 and I think the newest one is 2010. From what I understand most people still use Cyrillic and the only places where Latin is used are government apparatuses and even then it’s usually haphazardly hodgepodged together. My teacher laughed as he told us that the first page of Uzbek newspapers are in Latin but the rest are in Cyrillic – really, it’s no joke, he showed us. Regardless my prof believes that eventually will get around to it – even if it takes a few decades.
Although Uyghurs and Uzbeks have a lot of shared history and language, I still think personally Uyghurs should go with Latin regardless of what the Uzbeks used because a vast majority of Uyghurs I’ve met are far more interested in traveling to, studying in, and aligning themselves with Western countries than the former Soviet sphere, when it comes to their third language choice (the second obviously being Chinese). A ton of Uyghurs here learn English. I’ve met only a handful of Uyghurs who study or know Russian.
Er I should qualify that the opinion I expressed was an answer to your question – if we were to choose between Latin or Cyrillic, I’d say go with Latin. But I realize I should also express my general opinion that Uyghur as a whole should stay with the Arabic script – because that’s their script. And it’s great. What I said above is more along the lines of what should be a learning standard for students of the Uyghur language or for diaspora Uyghurs – what should be Uyghur’s “pinyin.” A learning medium or a mode of accessibility for Uyghurs who don’t know the Arabic script. But my absolute rock solid bottom line opinion as far as Uyghur in Xinjiang is concerned is keep the Arabic.
i uyghur… from the xinjiang…
In my opinion a script should reflect the current language. This was done in Mongolia by using the cyrillic alphabet, adding two letters. That is not a pinyin-like alphabet but it is one everybody understands.
Also there exists a latin scripts most residents in Mongolia (WeiMengGu) use for chatting. But this is only a temporary solution and is difficult for foreighers because this doesn’t reflect the language precisely enough.
Further in Inner Mongolia (Nei MengGu) people use the Uighur script…. probably to have some privacy, but they use a phonetic script nobody can type on any computer.
I also studied Kasak language. The Kasaks wrote traditionally in persian script, later at 1880 the russians introduced the “standard” cyrillic script, later….. a latin script barely understandable…. the cyrillic alphabet stroke back: nearly 60 characters, a perfect phonetic representation of the Kasak (and Kyrgyz) languages. Again an alphabet turning my mind mad if I ever try to type these letters on a standard keyboard.
I think the mongolians love the Uighur script because it looks “classical”, but it doesn’t represent the actual language, therefore it takes some days to learn the characters and some months to learn the conversion rules for written to spoken language.
The chinese script probably serves the best job, because they write words and not phonetics (except for the Secret History of the Mongols)
Unfortunately the efforts for learning Chinese characters are immense
My final opinion is, use what ever represent the logics in a language well. E.G. if you have 7 differnet vowels including ä,ö,ü sou should not use the latin alphabet because THAT confuses learners very much. A simple example are the words “ug” (уг) and “üg” (үг), therefore exists ög (өг), and all of them could be written as latin “ug”. But you don’t know if you have said “root” or “word” or “give!”
I meant the University in Hohot (PR China) developed a latin phonetic script nobody can type on a computer keyboard because there are lots of special characters, accents, dieresisses nobody has on an english keyboard. How to type this? For scientific purpose it serves well, but not for every day’s communication.
Also it is not consistent with the latin script used in Mongolia – the latin “q” is in China the cyrillic letter “x”, but the Mongolians in Mongolia write “h” and some write “kh”.
The cyrillic script adapted for Mongolian is probably the best choice, a good compromise between quality in phonetic representation and ease of computer use.
Often people complain “oh, my web server doesn’t support the Ö/Ө character. My browser…. my keyboard… guys, there are solutions for this and anybody can write, process and store cyrillic script on unicode capable systems, programs and tools. This is standard since Windows XP came out, and that is 8 years ago.