Talk:Uyghur language

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Contents 1 Examples 2 Missing Unicode Points 3 Turkish alphabet comparison 4 Clarification required: "Arabic" vs. "Persian-Arabic" script 5 Native name 6 Scripts 7 Orthography confusion

[edit] Examples

The section "Examples" is rather useless. The texts are very long, without any annotation, explanation or translation. The spelling used has never been used in Xinjiang or the countries of the former Soviet Union and some characters are missing. Babelfisch June 14th, 2004

Agreed. Some anon added them. It's pointless. --Menchi 13:03, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

--- The text sample of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 1) in Uyghur Kona Yeziq has been corrected. - a concerned Uyghur 12:56, 13 Oct 2005.

[edit] Missing Unicode Points

Testing: “k̡” and “h̡”, compare with apparance of precomposed character “ȥ” or “z̡” for uniformity. Unicode doesn’t have anything called combining hook below but it has U+0321 COMBINING PALATALIZED HOOK BELOW. I’m thinking those might be the correct characters for the ones the article says are not in Unicode. —DÅ‚ugosz

Once again, Uighur, not Uyghur, is most common spelling in English. It may not be correct from Uighur phonetic point of view but it is used as a main spelling in every English dictionary I could find. Let put redirect here and main article in Uighur language Vassili Nikolaev 08:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

-The correct spelling in Arabic Uyghur Alphabet isئۇيغۇر , not ئۇغۇر

 -a concerned Uyghur

[edit] Turkish alphabet comparison

Is the chart meant to be comparing the Uyghur alphabet with the closest representable sounds in Turkish, diachronically determined correspondences, or just presenting a Turkish-based pan-Turkic system?

Some problems with the table, such as "ng" and the "?"s, could easily be solved once the answer to this question is decided.

—Firespeaker 20:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I support this point: it should be clarified. Also the sentence another Roman script is used in Turkey and on the internet is not clear enough: does it say that another Roman script is used in Turkey to write Uyghur (and there are rules how to do that), or this is simply a comparison to the way another Turkic language—Turkish—uses Roman script.--Imz 18:06, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification required: "Arabic" vs. "Persian-Arabic" script

Is there a point in the following extract in using two different words (for the same thing, I assume? it was reintroduced, which means it is the same thing, doesn't it?)

The language traditionally used the Arabic script since the 10th century. The Chinese government introduced a Roman script in 1969, but the Persian-Arabic script was reintroduced in 1983, but with extra diacritics to distinguish all vowels of Uyghur.

(Also, two times but in a sentence is awkward, I think.) Could someone who understands the matter make it more clear please?--Imz 21:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Native name

I've changed the "native name" in the language box from "ئۇيغۇرچه, 维吾尔语, Uyğurçe" to "ئۇيغۇرچه, Uyƣurqə", because "维吾尔语" is Chinese, not Uyghur; and "Uyğurçe" is a Turkish, not an Uyghur spelling. Today, Uyghur is officially written in an Arabic-Persian script and the Latin-based writing system that was used until the early 80s is supposedly still used for transcription purposes. —Babelfisch 01:04, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agress. However, I've re-added Uyğurçe. Even though this spelling is based on the Turkish alphabet, it is usual practice to add a transliteration of the native name in italics if that name is not in a Latin script. I feel that the presence of ƣ makes the official Latin script unusual enough for such a gloss. The Turkish-based transliteration will be familiar to anyone with any knowledge of Turkic languages, and will be easier for anyone with little knowledge of linguistics to interpret. --Gareth Hughes 13:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the Uyghur Latin script is unusual, but using the Turkish alphabet to transliterate Uyghur may be imprudent because the Turkish alphabet doesn't distinguish between certain distinct phonemes in Uyghur, specifically /æ/ & /e/, /k/ & /q/, and /x/ & /h/. This is, nonetheless, a useful tool for those familiar with the Latin scripts of other Turkic languages and should be included in the article, just perhaps not in the basic information box. That no further transliteration is provided in other cases of unusual Latin script, Azərbaycan dili for example, indicates that these transliterations are provided without the intention to facilitate pronunciation. —129.174.186.89 00:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Turkish orthography is lossy. The letter 'ƣ' is the difference: it is an unusual letter, and unusual enough to say that text containing it is not strictly in the Latin alphabet. The name of the language could be transliterated in IPA, but that would contain too much information, and be less readable to non-specialists. 'Azərbaycan' is easily understandable by most, even if 'ə' isn't understood as a mid-central vowel, and 'c' is /dʒ/ (we already have the fairly accurate English spelling 'Azerbaijan'). --Gareth Hughes 13:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Some works that transliterate Uyghur do so with a modified Turkish orthography similar to that of Tatar, Crimean Tatar, and Azerbaijani. All the values are the same as Turkish except for the additional sounds not in Turkish. These substitute ä or ə for Yengi Yezik̡ ə, x for h, q for k̡, ñ for ng, and w for v. This is compatible with Turkish and elements of it are used on some Turkey-based Uyghur websites, especially the x and q. LuiKhuntek 07:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scripts

Is there any way we can improve the Arabic symbols? They seem really hard to read (to this non-Arabic reader). cf. http://www.uighurlanguage.com/logs/2005/01/alphabet_chart.php . Also it is my understanding that there are (at least) 3 scripts for Uyghur - Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic-based. Are the "Latin" letters in this chart actually the ones in their script? (again see that page, which has different symbols - I don't know which is right) And it would be cool if we could put the cyrillic characters in as well. pfctdayelise (translate?) 09:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orthography confusion

I’m confused by the Latin orthographies of this language, or at least their presentation here. There seems to be at least three: the Chinese one, the Turkish one, and an Englishish-based random one used in the table of consonant phonemes, which also seems inconsistent with the IPA used in the presentation of the alphabets.

So does Uyghur have a glottal stop phoneme, and is it spelt q, implied by a word/syllable-initial vowel, or notated some other way? Does it it have a voiceless uvular stop phoneme, and is it spelt k, q or some other way? Does it have a voiceless palato-alveolar affricate, and is it spelt chinese-q & turkish-ç or some other way? Does it have an alveolar affricate, and is it spelt ch or some other way?

The orthography table does not present the letters h̡ and k̡, but by comparing the Turkish, Cyrillic and Chinese orthographies, I’m guessing they represent a glottal /h/ and a uvular stop /q/, in comparison with velar h /x/ and k /k/?

The text also appears to present ŋ as a letter of the alphabet, but the presentations always use ng. Which should it be?

Thanks!

—Felix the Cassowary 05:52, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Cassowary, this link http://www.xjyw.gov.cn/han/YWGZDT/wwesiyingwenzhuanxie.htm and this link http://ukij.org/teshwiq/UKY_Heqqide(KonaYeziq).htm may help you a little bit about that ...