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The Bashkir language (Bashkir: Башҡорт теле Başqort tele) is a Turkic language, and is the language of the Bashkirs.

Speakers

Speakers of the Bashkir language mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Substantial number of the speakers also live in Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Samara and Kurgan Oblasts, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug—Yugra, Tatarstan and Udmurtia. Large Bashkir minority groups also live in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Alphabet and dialects

After the Mongol invasion, the Kypchak language became more common due to the fact that it was the language spoken by the majority of the Golden Horde tribes.

The modern Bashkir language is part of the Kypchak group of Turkic languages. Today the language has many dialects, some of them are similar to Tatar. In the past, Bashkirs used the Chagatay language as a written language. In the late 19th century it was replaced with literary Tatar, which was in use until 1923.

Both Chagatay and Tatar were written in a variant of the Arabic script.

In 1923, a writing system based on the Arabic script was specifically created for the Bashkir language. At the same time, a Bashkir literary language was created, moving away from the Tatar influences. At first, it used a modified Arabic alphabet. In 1930 it was replaced with a Latin-based alphabet, which was in turn replaced with an adapted Cyrillic alphabet in the winter of 1938.

The alphabet used by Bashkir is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, with the addition of the following letters: Ә ә [æ], Ө ө [œ], Ү ү [y], Ғ ғ [ɣ], Ҡ ҡ [q], Ң ң [ŋ], Ҙ ҙ [ð], Ҫ ҫ [θ], Һ һ [h].

Bibliography

• Poppe, Nicholas (1997), Bashkir Manual, Routledge, pp. 186, ISBN 978-0700708369  

References

1. ^ http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bak

External links (in Bashkir)