Uyghur Alphabets - Present Situation

Present Situation

Today the Uyghur language is being written using four different alphabets.

• UEY: the newest Arabic-based ئۇيگئۇر ئەرئەب يئېژئىكئى‎ or Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi (now a true alphabet, not an abjad), or
• USY: the older Cyrillic-based Уйғур Сирил Ёзики or Uyƣur Siril Yeziⱪi (written now Uyghur Siril Yëziqi), deprecated, or
• UPNY: the older mixed Uyƣur Pinyin Yeziⱪi (written now Uyghur Pinyin Yëziqi), also called Yengi Yeziⱪi (written now Yëngi Yëziqi) "new script", deprecated, or
• ULY: the newest Latin-based Uyghur Latin Yëziqi.

In the table below, the alphabets are shown side-by-side for comparison, together with a phonetic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is only grouped by phonemic proximity; each alphabet has its own sort order. Some letter forms used for words borrowed (notably proper names) from other languages, or kept occasionally from older orthographic conventions, are shown between parentheses.

As it can be seen, Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi, Uyghur Pinyin Yëziqi, and Uyghur Latin Yëziqi each have a total of 32 letters (including one digraph for NG/ng in the two Latin-based alphabets, plus four digraphs in ULY). There may still exist differences in texts using the newer Latin orthography, where the standard choice of ⟨ë⟩ is sometimes written ⟨é⟩ instead, with the acute accent instead of the standardized diaeresis: this should not make any difference in Uyghur.

Uyghur Siril Yëziqi has three additional letters, the Cyrillic soft letters/ligatures ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ю⟩, and ⟨я⟩, representing /je/, /jo/, and /ja/, respectively, which are written with independent consonant+vowel in the other alphabets. Some words may still use the Cyrillic soft sign. Also, loanwords of Russian origin are often spelled as they are in Russian, and thus not adapted to the Uyghur orthography.

Another notable feature of Uyghur Pinyin Yëziqi was the use of the letter ⟨ƣ⟩ to represent /ɣ/ (sometimes incorrectly rendered as /ʁ/). This letter has erroneously been named LATIN LETTER OI in Unicode, although it is correctly referred to as gha and replaced by the digraph ⟨gh⟩ in the newer Uyghur Latin Yëziqi.

In the Uyghur Latin Yëziqi, only the Basic Latin base alphabet is needed, with the common diaeresis (umlaut) being the only diacritic added above vowels, and supported in many fonts and encoding standards. The letter ⟨c⟩ is only used in the ⟨ch⟩ digraph, and the letter ⟨v⟩ is normally not used, except in loanwords where the difference between /v/ and /w/ is needed for correct pronunciation and distinctions). The /ʒ/ may be interchangeably represented in two ways, either as ⟨zh⟩ or as ⟨j⟩, although the latter is also used for /dʒ/ (which is normally inferred contextually in Uyghur, and only needed as a separate letter for loanwords needing the distinction). In the Arabic and Cyrillic orthographies, the distinction of /dʒ/ is only seen as a graphic variant of /ʒ/, reducing the Latin alphabet to only 31 effective letters. This variation is due to several opposing arguments, and therefore it was accepted that both are acceptable, as long as no semantic distinction is necessary.

One of the major differences among the four alphabets is the rules of when the glottal stop /ʔ/ is written. In Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi it is consistently written, using the hamza on a tooth ⟨ﺋ⟩, also at the beginning of words. However, in that case, that Arabic letter is not considered as a separate letter in Uyghur, but as the holder of the Arabic vowel that follows, without pronouncing the glottal stop itself, but only a hiatus (that separates vowels instead of creating diphthongs, the only diphthongs being those formed with /j/ and /w/, viewed as consonants starting a separate syllable in Uyghur). However, some words of Arabic origins won't always be using this tool (that transforms the Arabic script into a true alphabet with plain vowels in Uyghur, and not an abjad).

In Uyghur Siril Yëziqi and Uyghur Pinyin Yëziqi, the glottal stop was only written word-medially, using an apostrophe ⟨’⟩, but it is not required and thus not very consistent.

And finally, in Uyghur Latin Yëziqi, the glottal stop is written between consonants and vowels, also using an apostrophe but consistently, and also to separate ⟨gh⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨sh⟩, and ⟨zh⟩ when these represent two phonemes and not digraphs for single consonants; for instance, consider the Uyghur word bashlan’ghuch, pronounced /bɑʃlɑnʁutʃ/ and meaning beginning, which would have been pronounced /bɑʃlɑŋhutʃ/ without the apostrophe.