Bashkir Alphabet

Bashkir (башҡорт теле, башҡортса) has been written in Cyrillic since 1940. Before that it was written in Arabic script, and in the 1930s in a Latin alphabet; its Cyrillic alphabet has 42 letters, nine of which, Ә Ғ Ҙ Ҡ Ң Ө Ҫ Ү Һ, write Bashkir's own sounds.

In Bashkir alphabetical order the letters are: А Б В Г Ғ Д Ҙ Е Ё Ж З И Й К Ҡ Л М Н Ң О Ө П Р С Ҫ Т У Ү Ф Х Һ Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ә Ю Я. Most of the nine Bashkir letters follow the letter they are built on (Ғ after Г, Ҡ after К, Ң after Н, Ө after О, Ҫ after С, Ү after У, Һ after Х), but Ҙ comes after Д rather than after З, and Ә comes near the end, after Э. Some software sorts ә straight after а, the Tatar and Kazakh position; the grid here follows the Bashkir order.

Ё, Ц, Щ, Ъ and Ь appear mainly in words borrowed from Russian, such as цирк, while native Bashkir words lean on the nine special letters. Bashkir punctuation uses guillemets « » for quotations, „ “ for quotes inside quotes, a long dash — for dialogue, and № before numbers.

The nine Bashkir letters and their sounds

Ә ә is the open front vowel of English "cat", as in рәхмәт (thank you). Ө ө and Ү ү are the rounded front vowels of German ö and ü: Өфө is Ufa, the capital, and күл is a lake. These front vowels matter because Bashkir, like other Turkic languages, has vowel harmony: the vowels of suffixes change to match the word.

Ғ ғ is a soft, throaty g, made further back in the mouth than г, and Ҡ ҡ is a k pronounced at the back of the throat, as in ҡыҙ (girl) and Башҡортостан. In native words ғ and ҡ go with back vowels and г and к with front vowels. Ң ң is the ng of English "sing", as in таң (dawn) and Яңы йыл (New Year).

Two letters give Bashkir the two English "th" sounds, rare among Turkic languages: Ҙ ҙ is the th of "this", as in беҙ (we) and ҙур (big), and Ҫ ҫ is the th of "thin", as in the greeting Иҫәнмеһегеҙ. Һ һ is a plain h and one of the most frequent letters: many words that start with s in Tatar or Kazakh start with h in Bashkir, so water is һыу.

How to type Bashkir letters on a keyboard

Windows includes a Bashkir keyboard layout: add it under Settings › Time & language › Language & region by adding the Bashkir language. It keeps the Russian layout and puts the nine extra letters on the top row and other keys. On Linux, the XKB layout "Bashkirian" does the same. On a phone, choose Bashkir in a keyboard app such as Gboard, or copy the letters from this page.

Without a Bashkir layout, Microsoft Word types any letter from its code followed by Alt+X: 04D9 ә, 0493 ғ, 0499 ҙ, 04A1 ҡ, 04A3 ң, 04E9 ө, 04AB ҫ, 04AF ү, 04BB һ (for capitals: 04D8 Ә, 0492 Ғ, 0498 Ҙ, 04A0 Ҡ, 04A2 Ң, 04E8 Ө, 04AA Ҫ, 04AE Ү, 04BA Һ). On a Mac, the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) finds them by name, such as "Bashkir ka" or "schwa". In HTML, write ә for ә, ғ for ғ, ҙ for ҙ, ҡ for ҡ, ң for ң, ө for ө, ҫ for ҫ, ү for ү, һ for һ.

Watch the look-alikes, because search, spell-checking and sorting see them as different characters: Bashkir uses Ҡ (Bashkir ka), not Kazakh Қ; Cyrillic Ҫ, not Latin Ç; Cyrillic Ә, not Latin Ə; Cyrillic Ө, not Latin Ɵ or Greek Θ; and Cyrillic Һ and Ү, not Latin h and Y. Text typed on a keyboard without these letters can end up with such stand-ins, so it is worth checking for them and replacing them.

Where Bashkir is spoken

Bashkir is spoken mainly in the Republic of Bashkortostan, in the southern Urals, where it is an official language alongside Russian, and in the neighbouring regions of Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Perm, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan and in Tatarstan. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 1.8 million speakers, nearly all in Russia. Most speakers also speak Russian, and amounts are written in rubles, with the sign ₽.

Bashkir is a Kipchak Turkic language, very close to Tatar, whose speakers largely understand it, and related to Kazakh and Kyrgyz. Chuvash, its western neighbour, is also Turkic but from a separate branch; it shares the letter Ҫ, though there it stands for a different sound. For their alphabets see the Tatar, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Chuvash and Russian collections; for 🇷🇺 and the country's emoji see Russia.