Uyghur Alphabet

Uyghur is a Turkic language written right to left in an Arabic-based alphabet, in Uyghur Uyghur Ereb Yéziqi (ئۇيغۇر ئەرەب يېزىقى, the Uyghur Arabic script). It has 32 letters, 8 vowels and 24 consonants, in this order: ا a, ە e, ب b, پ p, ت t, ج j, چ ch, خ x, د d, ر r, ز z, ژ zh, س s, ش sh, غ gh, ف f, ق q, ك k, گ g, ڭ ng, ل l, م m, ن n, ھ h, و o, ۇ u, ۆ ö, ۈ ü, ۋ w, ې é, ى i, ي y. The Latin letters after each one are the Uyghur Latin spelling.

Uyghur writes each vowel with a full letter, rather than relying on Arabic-style short-vowel marks that are usually omitted in ordinary writing. بىر is bir (one), كۆز is köz (eye), يېزىق is yéziq (script, writing). Uyghur shares this habit with the Arabic-script Kazakh and Kyrgyz of China.

The letters join up as in all Arabic writing and change shape at the start, middle and end of a word; ا ە د ر ز ژ و ۇ ۆ ۈ ۋ join only to the letter before them. Fonts draw the shapes, so you copy the plain letters on this page. Arabic letters that write sounds Uyghur does not have, such as ث ح ذ ص ض ط ظ ع, are not used: words borrowed from Arabic are respelled the Uyghur way, so Arabic مكتب becomes مەكتەپ, mektep (school).

The hemze ئ: how Uyghur starts a word with a vowel

An Arabic-script syllable cannot begin with a bare vowel letter, so Uyghur writes the hemze ئ (Unicode ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE, U+0626) in front of every vowel that starts a word: ئانا ana (mother), ئەل el (people), ئۆي öy (house), ئۈزۈم üzüm (grapes), ئىش ish (work). It is silent there; it only carries the vowel. That is why the vowels are named and listed as ئا ئە ئو ئۇ ئۆ ئۈ ئې ئى, and why the name of the language itself, ئۇيغۇر, begins with it.

Inside a word the hemze separates two vowels that meet, where it is heard as a small break: سائەت saet (hour, clock), مائارىپ maarip (education). The Uyghur Latin script writes that break with an apostrophe, sa'et.

The hemze is not counted among the 32 letters, and CLDR lists it as an auxiliary character, but no Uyghur text can do without it, so it heads the grid. Unicode also has ready-made ligatures of the hemze with each vowel, such as ﯪ for ئا, kept for old systems; in normal text type ئ and then the vowel.

Uyghur vowels and special letters: ە ې ۆ ۈ ۇ ى ڭ ق غ ھ

Uyghur has vowel harmony: a word keeps either back vowels a o u or front vowels e ö ü, and its endings follow, while i and é go with both. ە e is an open front vowel, close to the a in English cat: كەل kel (come). ې é is a closed e: بېلىق béliq (fish). Many é come from an a or e in the root that rises before a suffix: باش bash (head) but بېشى béshi (its head). ۆ ö and ۈ ü sound like German ö and ü: كۆل köl (lake), كۈن kün (day), ئۈچ üch (three). ۇ is u and و is o: قۇش qush (bird), قول qol (hand).

ى is the vowel i and is written without dots in every position, at the start and in the middle of a word too, while ي with its two dots is always the consonant y: ياخشى yaxshi (good). ۋ is w, said as w or v: ۋاقىت waqit (time).

Among the consonants Uyghur keeps two pairs apart that English merges. ق q is a k made far back in the throat and ك k the ordinary one: قول qol (hand) but كۆل köl (lake). غ gh is a throaty g and گ the plain one: تاغ tagh (mountain) but گۈل gül (flower). ڭ, a kaf with three dots, is the ng of sing: مىڭ ming (thousand). خ x is the ch of Scottish loch: خەت xet (letter, writing). ھ is h, always the two-eyed form and never Arabic ه: ھاۋا hawa (air, weather). ژ zh, the s of measure, appears mostly in borrowed words: ژۇرنال zhurnal (magazine). چ ch and پ p come from Persian.

Uyghur Latin and Cyrillic letters: é ö ü and ә ғ җ қ ң ө ү һ

Uyghur also has a Latin spelling, the Uyghur Latin script or ULY (Uyghur Latin Yéziqi), worked out at Xinjiang University in the early 2000s for computers, phones and names. It uses the English letters plus é ö ü (É Ö Ü), and the pairs ch, gh, ng, sh and zh for چ غ ڭ ش ژ; x stands for خ and q for ق. An apostrophe marks the break between two vowels, as in sa'et, and splits n and g where they do not make ng. Place names are spelled Ürümchi, Qeshqer (Kashgar), Turpan, Xoten (Hotan).

Uyghurs in Central Asia, mainly in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, write Uyghur Cyrillic, which has its own letters for Uyghur sounds: Ә ә for ە, Ғ ғ for غ, Җ җ for ج, Қ қ for ق, Ң ң for ڭ, Ө ө for ۆ, Ү ү for ۈ and Һ һ for ھ. There е is ې, и is ى and ж is ژ. All of them except Җ җ are shared with Kazakh Cyrillic.

Uyghur changed scripts several times in the 20th century. Before it, the literary language, Chagatai, was written in Perso-Arabic letters that left most vowels out. Soviet Uyghurs moved to Latin and then to Cyrillic, which they still use. In China a Latin alphabet, the New Script (Yéngi Yéziq), was promoted from the 1960s until 1982, when the reformed Arabic alphabet with all its vowels became the official script again. None of these is the Old Uyghur script of the medieval Uyghur kingdoms, an older vertical alphabet from Sogdian that the Mongols adopted for their own language.

Uyghur punctuation and how to type Uyghur letters

Uyghur turns three marks to face its right-to-left direction: the comma ،, the semicolon ؛ and the question mark ؟. Quotations go in guillemets « ». The full stop and exclamation mark are the ordinary . and !, and numbers are written with the digits 0–9, which run left to right inside the text. Prices in China are in yuan, written with ¥; Uyghurs in Kazakhstan pay in tenge, ₸.

Windows and Linux include a Uyghur keyboard layout, and Uyghur layouts exist for phone keyboards; a plain Arabic or Persian layout lacks ە ې ۆ ۈ ۇ ۋ ڭ and the dotless ى, so add the Uyghur one or copy the letters from this page. In Microsoft Word type the code and press Alt+X: 0626 gives ئ, 06D5 ە, 06D0 ې, 06C6 ۆ, 06C8 ۈ, 06C7 ۇ, 06CB ۋ, 06AD ڭ, 06BE ھ, 0649 ى. In HTML use references such as ئ and put dir="rtl" on the text so it runs right to left.

For Uyghur Latin, é ö ü are the same letters French and German use. On Windows hold Alt and type 0233 for é, 0246 for ö, 0252 for ü (0201, 0214, 0220 for É Ö Ü), or use the US-International layout; on a Mac press Option+E then e for é, and Option+U then o or u for ö and ü; on a phone, long-press e, o or u.

Where Uyghur is spoken

CLDR estimates about 7.8 million Uyghur speakers, almost all of them in China 🇨🇳, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: the oasis cities of Kashgar (Qeshqer), Hotan, Aksu and Turpan around the Taklamakan desert, and the regional capital Ürümqi. China's 2020 census counted about 11.8 million Uyghurs, and CLDR also lists a community of around 3,000 speakers in Afghanistan. The largest Uyghur community outside China lives in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿, with others in Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬, Uzbekistan and Turkey.

Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic languages, and its closest relative is Uzbek, which has its own collection, as does Uzbek in Arabic script. Kazakh (Arabic) and Kyrgyz (Arabic) are written with nearly the same letters in the same region; Turkish, Persian and Arabic have collections too, and so do China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.