Uighur

Ui·ghur

U0005400 (wē′go͝or)n. Variant of Uyghur.

Ui•ghur

or Ui•gur or Uy•ghur

(wē′gər)

n., pl. -ghurs or -gurs, (esp. collectively) -ghur or -gur. 1. a member of a Turkic people of Central Asia, living mainly in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of W China. 2. the language of the Uighurs.

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	Uighur - a member of a people who speak Uighur and live in Xinjiang and adjacent areasUigur, UygurSinkiang, Xinjiang, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region - an autonomous province in far northwestern China on the border with Mongolia and Kazakhstan; the largest province in the People's Republic of China and the homeland of the Uighur peopleTurki - any member of the peoples speaking a Turkic language
	2.	Uighur - the Turkic language spoken by approximately 7,000,000 Uighur in extreme northwestern ChinaUigur, UygurTurkic, Turkic language, Turko-Tatar, Turki - a subfamily of Altaic languages
	3.	Uighur - the script (derived from Aramaic) used to write the Uighur languageUigur, Uygurscript - a particular orthography or writing system

Uighur

enUK

Uighur

(New-Uighur), the language of the Uighurs, spoken in the Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China by 5.5 million people (1975, estimate). Uighur is also spoken in certain regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India and in the Kazakh, Uzbek, Kirghiz, and Turkmen SSR’s by more than 150,000 people (1970 census). Uighur belongs to the southeastern (Middle Asian, or Karluk) group of Turkic languages.

Uighur comprises three dialects: the northwestern or central dialect, the eastern, or Lop Nor dialect, and the southern, or Hat’-ang dialect. The northwestern dialect includes ten subdialects, of which the Hi subdialect forms the basis for the modern Uighur literary language. The characteristic phonetic features of Uighur include ten vowels and 26 consonants, including ж[d3], K [q], H [B], and h. Synharmony is inconsistent. The language shares morphological features with the other Turkic languages.

The literary language of the Uighurs in the USSR is a unified national language. In the USSR, the writing system was based on Arabic script until 1930; in Sinkiang this script is still in use. The Latin alphabet was used in the USSR from 1930 to 1946, when the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced, with additional symbols for special phonemes.

The term “Uighur” was adopted for this language in 1921 at the suggestion of S. E. Malov, although Uighur is not a linguistic continuation of the Old Uighur language.

REFERENCES

Kaidarov, A. T. “Uigurskii (novouigurskii) iazyk.” In lazyki narodov SSSR, vol. 2. Moscow, 1966. (Contains bibliography.)
Uigursko-russkiislovar’. Alma-Ata, 1961.

Uighur

noun

Synonyms for Uighur

noun a member of a people who speak Uighur and live in Xinjiang and adjacent areas

Synonyms

Uigur
Uygur

Related Words

Sinkiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
Turki

noun the Turkic language spoken by approximately 7,000,000 Uighur in extreme northwestern China

Synonyms

Uigur
Uygur

Related Words

Turkic
Turkic language
Turko-Tatar
Turki

noun the script (derived from Aramaic) used to write the Uighur language

Synonyms

Uigur
Uygur

Related Words

script