Uyghur Language - Orthography

Orthography

Since the beginning of the literary tradition of Uyghur in the 5th century, it has been written in numerous different writing systems and continues to be. Unlike many other modern Turkic languages, Uyghur is primarily written using an Arabic alphabet, although a Cyrillic alphabet and two Latin alphabets also are in use to a much lesser extent. Unusually for an alphabet based on the Persian, full transcription of vowels is indicated. (Among the Arabic family of alphabets, only Kashmiri and Kurdish similarly indicate all vowels.)

The four alphabets in use today can be seen below.

• Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi or UEY
• Uyghur Latin Yëziqi or ULY
• Uyghur Siril Yëziqi or USY
• Uyghur Pinyin Yëziqi or UPNY

In the table below the alphabets are shown side-by-side for comparison, together with a phonetic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet.