About Uyghur Alphabets

written by abduwali
Uyghur is a Turkic language with about 10 million speakers mainly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, and also in Afghanistan, Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Turkey, the USA and Uzbekistan.

Uyghur was originally written with the Orkhon alphabet, a runiform script derived from or inspired by the Sogdian script, which was ultimately derived from the Aramaic script.

Between the 8th and the 16th century, Uyghur was written with an alphabet derived from Sogdian known as Old Uyghur. Unlike Sogdian, which was written from right to left in horizontal lines, the Old Uyghur alphabet was written from left to right in vertical columns, or in other words, it was a version of Sogdian rotated 90° to the left.

From the the 16th century until the early 20th century, Uyghur was written with a version of the Arabic alphabet known as 'Chagatai'. During the 20th century a number of versions of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were adopted to write Uyghur in different Uyghur-speaking regions. However the Latin alphabet was unpopular and in 1987 the Arabic script was reinstated as the official script for Uyghur in China.

The name of this language is variously spelt Uigur, Uiguir, Uighuir, Uygur, Uighur, Uygur, Uyghur or in Chinese, 维吾尔语 (Wéiwú'ěryǔ). Uyghur is the preferred spelling in the Latin alphabet: this was confirmed at a conference of the Ethnic Languages and script Committe of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region held in October 2006 .

Old Uyghur alphabet

Most of the Old Uyghur letters have different shapes depending on their position in a word. The initial shapes are used at the beginning of words, the medial shapes in the middle, and the final shapes at the ends of words.

Arabic alphabet for Uyghur

Cyrillic alphabet for Uyghur
Sample text in Uyghur (Arabic alphabet)

Sample text in Uyghur (Cyrillic alphabet)

Һемме адем занидинла еркин, иззет-һөрмет ве һоқуқта бапбаравер болуп туғулған. Улар еқилге ве вийдан'ға иге һемде бир-бириге қэриндашлиқ мунасивитиге хас роһ билен билен муамил қилиши кэрек.

Sample text in Uyghur (Latin alphabet)

Hemme adem zanidinla erkin, izzet-hörmet we hoquqta bapbarawer bolup tughulghan. Ular eqilge we wijdan'gha ige hemde bir-birige qérindashliq munasiwitige xas roh bilen muamile qilishi kérek.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Sample text in Uyghur (Arabic alphabet)