Uyghur (
ئۇيغۇرچە
Uyghurche Уйғурчә, or
ئۇيغۇر تىلى
Uyghur tili Уйғур тили;
IPA [ʔʊjˈʁʊrtʃɛ]),
[4][5] formerly known as
Eastern Turki,
[6] is a
Turkic language spoken in
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by
China, mainly by the
Uyghur ethnic group. It is spoken by 10 million (2007) in
China, mostly in Xinjiang. Uyghur is also spoken by some 300,000 in
Kazakhstan, and there are Uyghur-speaking communities in
Afghanistan,
Albania,
Australia,
Belgium,
Canada,
Germany,
Indonesia,
Kyrgyzstan,
Mongolia,
Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia,
Sweden,
Taiwan,
Tajikistan,
Turkey,
United Kingdom,
USA, and
Uzbekistan.
Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with Subject Object Verb word order.
The Uyghur language belongs to the Uyghuric or Southeastern group of the Turkic language family, which is controversially a branch of the Altaic language family.
The languages most closely related to it include Uzbek, Ili Turki, and Aini. Some linguists consider the Turkic languages to be part of the larger Altaic language family, but others believe there is not enough evidence to support this.[7]
