Uyghur language
Turkic language of Xinjiang, formerly called Turki or Eastern Turki.
It is spoken primarily by the Uyghur people, most of whom live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China, and serves as a lingua franca in social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio.
- language_family
- Turkic, Karluk branch
- primary_region
- Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Western China
- writing_systems
- Modified Arabic-derived alphabet (standard in China); also Latin and Cyrillic alphabets
- notable_feature
- Mandatory marking of all vowels in Arabic script; vowel reduction and umlauting in northern dialects
- historical_ancestor
- Karluk language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, not Old Uyghur
Lore & Background
Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur but from the Karluk language spoken by the Kara-Khanid Khanate, as described by Mahmud al-Kashgari in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk. According to Gerard Clauson, Western Yugur is the true descendant of Old Uyghur. Frederik Coene notes that Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family—Karluk and Siberian Turkic, respectively. Robert Barkley Shaw wrote that the inhabitants of Kashgar and Yarkand knew their tongue simply as Túrki, not Uïghur. The Middle Turkic languages, through Perso-Arabic influence after the 13th century, developed into the Chagatai language, a literary language used across Central Asia until the early 20th century. After Chaghatai fell into extinction, standard versions of Uyghur and Uzbek were developed from dialects in the Chagatai-speaking region. Uyghur today shows considerable Persian influence from Chagatai.
Reader's Guide
The Uyghur language is significant as the lingua franca of Xinjiang, used by millions of Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities in the region. It belongs to the Karluk branch of Turkic languages, closely related to Uzbek and the extinct Chagatay. Its three main dialects—Central, Southern, and Eastern—are mutually intelligible to some extent, with Central dialects spoken by 90% of speakers. The language displays agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and has subject–object–verb word order. Vowel harmony is described as 'in atrophy,' similar to Uzbek. Historically influenced by Arabic and Persian, and more recently by Russian and Chinese, Uyghur uses a modified Arabic alphabet with mandatory vowel marking, alongside Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for auxiliary purposes. The Lop dialect, part of the Eastern branch, is critically endangered but valuable for comparative research. The language's modern identity was shaped by 20th-century political decisions, not direct descent from Old Uyghur, a point of scholarly consensus.
Did You Know?
- Modern Uyghur is not descended from Old Uyghur but from the Karluk language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate.
- The Uyghur Arabic alphabet is unique among Arabic-derived scripts in mandatorily marking all vowels.
- The Lop dialect of Uyghur is classified as critically endangered, spoken by less than 0.5% of Uyghur speakers.
More in Languages And Scripts 1-24
Elsewhere in the Languages And Scripts universe
Spotted an error? Know more?
This is a living reference — every entry is fact-audited, and reader corrections feed straight into our audit queue. Suggest an edit · See this site's audit record