Language

According to the UCLA Language Materials Project, the Kyrgyz language is spoken by about 2 million people in the Kyrgyz Republic where it is the Official State Language, (Russian is also recognized as an official language).

The first reference to the language is recorded in an eighth Century inscription – when the Kyrgyz lived in Northern Central Mongolia. The rise of the Mongol empire caused the Kyrgyz to migrate towards the Tian Shan, (i.e. the present day Kyrgyzstan). In the face of many different invasions Kyrgyz speakers often migrated to other parts of Central Asia and now Kyrgyz speakers can be found in China (mainly in the Xingjian-Uighur Autonomous region), Western Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and even as far afield as in Afghanistan, Turkey and Pakistan.

For the linguists to whom this means something … Kyrgyz is a member of the Central Turkic group of languages which also includes Kazakh and a number of other less well known, languages. (There is often some confusion in the West between Kazakh and Kyrgyz languages - as there was between the peoples themselves). Other Turkic languages include Turkish, Uighur, Uzbek and Tajik. Some experts think that there is also a relationship between these languages and both Korean and Japanese, but this point is not proven. Grammatical functions are indicated by adding various suffixes to fixed stems, as in other Turkic languages. Separate suffixes added to nouns indicate both gender and number (but there is no grammatical gender). There are six cases - Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Locative and Ablative.  Like other Turkic languages, the word order in Kyrgyz tends to be Subject-Object-Verb. Also the sounds of word stem and suffix must harmonize (i.e. if the stem has a rounded vowel, then suffix must also). The language can be divided into two distinct dialects - Northern and Southern. The Southern dialects can further be sub-divided into South-Eastern and South Western variants. "Standard" Kyrgyz as defined in the Soviet period is based upon the Northern variations of the language which have borrowed large number of words from Mongolian languages, whilst the Southern dialects have borrowed mainly from Uzbek, but also from Persian and Tajik. Modern Kyrgyz has also borrowed a large number of words from other languages, such as Russian.

Today, Kyrgyz is written in a modified form of Cyrillic which was introduced in 1940. Other modified alphabets were introduced for other Central Asian languages (such as Kazakh and Uzbek) at about the same time. Prior to this, until 1923 an Arabic script was used - as it is still for Uighur across the border in China. Following the standardization of the language, in 1924, a modified form of Arabic was used, but this was replaced in 1924 by the Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet (UTLA).

Transliteration into English using the Latin alphabet is sometimes a little confusing. This is partly due to the fact that in many cases Kyrgyz words have undergone a double transliteration – first of all into Russian and then into English. This means that names are sometimes recorded in different ways in different places – for example: Æàëàë Àáàä may be written as Djalal Abad, Jalal Abad, or (more recently) Jalal Abat. Also, many names in the Soviet period were written with a hyphen – Jalal-Abad, but the tendency is drop the hyphen (Jalal Abad) and sometimes even to join the two words together (Jalalabad).  

There was no Kyrgyz language press before the Russian Revolution. By 1983, however, 61 newspapers and 16 journals were published in Kyrgyz.  In 1983 there were 513 books published in Kyrgyz in the Kyrgyz SSR. Now there are a wide variety of publications in Kyrgyz as well as Radio and Television programmes and even films in Kyrgyz.

There are often differences between different dialects.  The language used in the southern oblasts (Osh, Batken and Jalal Abad) are often influenced by Uzbek.  In the Northern regions the title often afforded to older men as a sign of respect is “baike” – whereas in the south it would be aka (or ake).

Although Russian is understood almost everywhere in Kyrgyzstan, and many Russian words have entered the Kyrgyz language, there are places (especially in the rural regions) where Kyrgyz is the definitive mother tongue and Russian is most definitely a second language. Kyrgyz is generally considered to be easier to learn than Russian, with a smaller vocabulary and lack of stress in spoken form. 

As in English, the Kyrgyz employ many wordless sounds to express meanings:

• … as they listen to somebody else they make sounds like “un hun”, “aah” or “mmm”.  
• … to indicate No, they may utter “uh uh” and shake their heads  
• … “oy” is used like “oops” in English to indicate a mistake
• … “ahyee” or “oy voy yuy” is used to express surprise or amazement, equivalent to “really” or “wow” in English
• … “erah” is used to show disappointment, 
• … “hunh” indicates pain,
• … “oof” suggests that they are tired, and
• … “erf” that something is terrible or disgusting.