Bashkir :

The Bashkir language (self-designation: Bashkort, башҡорт теле [bɑʃqort tɘlɘ]) is a Turkic language, and is the language of the Bashkirs. It is co-official with Russian in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Speakers

Speakers of the Bashkir language mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Many 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 Kipchak language became more common because it was the language spoken by the majority of the Golden Horde tribes. The modern Bashkir language is part of the Kipchak group of Turkic languages. Today the language has many dialects, some of which are similar to Tatar. Bashkirs formerly used the Chagatay language as a written language. In the late 19th century it was replaced with a regional variety of Turki, a literary Turkic language, which was in use until 1923. Both Chagatay and Turki 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 older written Turkic 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].

 

Note: This section is reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License