Bashkir ( , ) or Bashkort (, ) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan. It is spoken by approximately 1.6 million
Speakers
Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the republic of Bashkortostan (a republic within the Russian Federation). Many speakers also live in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts, and other regions of Russia. Minor Bashkir groups also live in Kazakhstan and the United States.
Classification
Bashkir and Tatar belong to the Kipchak-Bulgar () subgroup of the Kipchak languages. These languages have a similar vocabulary by 94.9%, and have not only a common origin but also a common ancestor in written language—Volga Turki. But Bashkir differs from Tatar in several important ways:
- Bashkir has dental fricatives and in the place of Turkic , , and . For example, Turkish and Bashkir (), Turkish and Bashkir (), Turkish and Bashkir (), or Turkish and Bashkir (). Bashkir and cannot begin a word (with exceptions: () , and the particle/conjunction () or () ). The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is Turkmen. But in Bashkir, and are two independent phonemes, distinct from and , whereas in Turkmen [θ] and [ð] are the two main realizations of the common Turkic and . In other words, there are no and phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir, which has both and and and .
- The word-initial and morpheme-initial turns into . An example of both features is Tatar () and Bashkir (), both meaning "word".
- Common Turkic (Tatar ) turns into Bashkir , e.g., Turkish , Tatar () , and Bashkir () , all meaning "tree".
- The word-initial in Tatar always corresponds to in Standard Bashkir, e.g., Tatar () and Bashkir () , both meaning "warm". But the eastern and northern dialects of Bashkir have the > /~/ shift.
Bashkir orthography is more explicit. and are written with their own letters, Ҡ ҡ and Ғ ғ, whereas in Tatar they are treated as positional allophones of and , written К к and Г г.
Labial vowel harmony in Bashkir is written explicitly, e.g., Tatar () and Bashkir (, both pronounced , meaning "my life".
Sample text
{|class="wikitable"
!Cyrillic script!!Latin script (1930–1940)!!Latin script!!Arabic script (Yaña imlä) !! Arabic script (Iśke imlä)!!IPA transcription
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|Barlьq keşelər irekle, dərəƶələre həm xoquqtarь tigeđ bulьp tьualar. Ular aqьl həm vьƶdan ejəhe həm ber-berehenə qarata qərđəşlek ruxьnda xərəkət itergə tejeştər.
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Orthography
thumb|Trilingual sign in [[Ufa International Airport|Ufa Airport in Bashkir, Russian and English]]
thumb|Bashkir keyboard layout
After the adoption of Islam, which began in the 10th century and lasted for several centuries, the Bashkirs began to use Turki as a written language. Turki was 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, the Bashkir literary language was created, moving away from the older written Turkic influences. At first, it used a modified Arabic alphabet. In 1930 it was replaced with the Unified Turkic Latin Alphabet, which was in turn replaced with an adapted Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.
The modern alphabet used by Bashkir is based on the Russian alphabet, with the addition of the following letters: Ә ә , Ө ө , Ү ү , Ғ ғ , Ҡ ҡ , Ң ң , Ҙ ҙ , Ҫ ҫ , Һ һ .
Phonetically, the native vowels are approximately thus (with the Cyrillic letter followed by the usual Latin romanization in angle brackets):
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
!
! colspan="2" |Front
! colspan="2" |Back
|-
!
!Unrounded
!Rounded
!Unrounded
!Rounded
|-
!Close
|и⟨i⟩<br />
|ү⟨ü⟩<br />[~]
|
|у⟨u⟩<br />
|-
!Mid
|э,е⟨e⟩<br />[~]
|ө⟨ö⟩<br />[~]
|ы⟨ı⟩<br />[~]
|о⟨o⟩<br />[]
|-
!Open
|ә⟨ä⟩<br />[]
|
|а⟨a⟩<br />
|
|}
In Russian loans there are also , , and , written the same as the native vowels: ы, е/э, о, а respectively. A large part of the Bashkir vocabulary has Turkic roots; and there are many loan words in Bashkir from Russian, Arabic and Persian sources.