Uyghur language


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Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people

Uyghur (ئۇيغۇرچە, Uyghurche;[3][4] formerly known as Eastern Turkish) is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. There are several writing systems used to write Uyghur. While Uyghurs usually use the Uyghur alphabet, an alphabet based on the Arabic alphabet, there are also two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet that can be used to write Uyghur.

Uyghur
Uighur
ئۇيغۇرچە / ئۇيغۇر تىلى

Uyghur written in Perso-Arabic script

Pronunciation[ʊjʁʊrˈtʃɛ], [ʊjˈʁʊr tili]
Native to China
 Mongolia
 Russia
 Kazakhstan
 Kyrgyzstan
 Tajikistan
 Afghanistan
 Pakistan
 India
EthnicityUyghur

Native speakers

25 million (2016)[1]

Early forms

Karakhanid

Arabic (official, Uyghur alphabet)
Latin
Cyrillic
Official status

Official language in

 China
Regulated byWorking Committee of Ethnic Language and Writing of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Language codes
ISO 639-1ug Uighur, Uyghur
ISO 639-2uig Uighur, Uyghur
ISO 639-3uig Uighur, Uyghur
Glottologuigh1240  Uighur
Uyghur is spoken in Northwest China

Geographical extent of Uyghur in China

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
  1. Uyghur at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. "China". Ethnologue.
  3. In English, the name of the ethnicity and its language is spelled variously as Uyghur, Uighur, Uygur and Uigur, with the preferred spelling being Uyghur. Many English speakers pronounce it as /ˈwiː.ɡər/, though the native pronunciation is [ʔʊjˈʁʊr]. See Mair, Victor (13 July 2009). "A Little Primer of Xinjiang Proper Nouns". Language Log. Retrieved 16 July 2009.
  4. Its name in other languages in which it might be often referred to is as follows: