Western Yugur language
| Western Yugur | |
|---|---|
| yoɣïr lar | |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Gansu |
| Ethnicity | 7,000 Yugur (2007) |
|
Native speakers
|
4,600 (2007) |
|
Turkic
|
|
|
Early form
|
|
| Old Uyghur alphabet (until 19th century) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | west2402 |
Western Yugur (Western Yugur: yoɣïr lar (Yugur speech) or yoɣïr śoz (Yugur word)) is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, the Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the endonym of the Yugur.
There are approximately 4,600 Turkic-speaking Yugurs.
Besides similarities with Uyghuric languages, Western Yugur also shares a number of features, mainly archaisms, with several of the Northeastern Turkic languages, but it is not closer to any one of them in particular. Neither Western nor Eastern Yugur are mutually intelligible with Uyghur.
Western Yugur also contains archaisms which are attested in neither modern Uyghuric nor Siberian, such as its anticipating counting system coinciding with Old Uyghur, and its copula dro, which originated from Old Uyghur but substitute the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.
Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part of Gansu province's Sunan Yugur Autonomous County.
A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of preaspiration, corresponding to the so-called pharyngealised or low vowels in Tuva and Tofa, and short vowels in Yakut and Turkmen. Examples of this phenomenon include /oʰtɯs/ "thirty", /jɑʰʂ/ "good", and /iʰt/ "meat".
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