My day was made recently when I was addressed in a group as “ejeler.” But, I’m pretty sure most of you aren’t sure why that is so funny to me. So, I decided that now would be a good time to explain the Kyrgyz system of honorifics so that you know what on earth I’m talking about when I refer to an “eje” or a “baike.” Continue reading “Language Lessons: Kyrgyz Honorifics”
Every language and culture has its own way of describing tastes and flavors, some simpler or more complex than others, and some structured quite differently than others. In Kyrgyz, rather than describing food in terms based on the parts of the tongue that taste the different flavors, or with individual words for specific attributes, taste is broadly described in three main groups. Continue reading “Language Lessons: Taste”
In this week’s language lesson, I’ll introduce you to the personal pronouns of Kyrgyz, how to introduce yourself to someone, and how to express “to be” (Kyrgyz does this without a verb!). It may sound like a lot, but it’s actually not too difficult. With a little practice, you can land in Kyrgyzstan being able to get acquainted with your hosts. Continue reading “Language Lessons: Introducing Yourself and “To Be””
It’s been a while since I did anything about Kyrgyz grammar, but this week, I wanted to explain something that’s both simple and complicated at the same time: Plurals. Let’s take a look! Continue reading “Language Lessons: Plurals in Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Turkish”
I’ve lived in Kyrgyzstan for over five months at this point, which means that I’ve managed to gather enough language fails to put two into a full-length blog. Luckily, rather than being embarrassing, these are all moments that led to raucous laughter, and some of which my host family recounts lovingly to every guest who comes to visit us at our house. Let’s take a look. Continue reading “Language Lessons: A Few Foibles”
Osh is unique in many ways, but perhaps one of its most unique aspects is the sheer number of languages that are spoken in its streets. Perhaps only in New York City, New Delhi, Kabul, or Paris are so many languages spoken by so many, but Osh is unique in that so many residents understand every single one of these languages.
Part of this seems to come from Osh’s 3000 year history at the crossroads of trade and empire. Osh’s current demographics reflect some of this history; 48% of its population is Uzbek, 43% Kyrgyz, 3% Russian, 1% Tatar, 1% Tajik, and 4% comes from other linguistic groups, such as Dungans, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Uighurs, etc.
There are historically two major linguistic groups interacting in Central Asia: the Persian langauges (Farsi, Dari, and Tajik), and the Turkic languages (Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Uiyghur, Turkmen, Azeri, Turkish, Tatar, Karakalpak, and a whole bunch of others). Continue reading “On The Mixing Of Languages In Osh”
Kyrgyz is an extraordinarily poetic language at times, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its vowel harmony, which is one of the language’s most famous and defining features. But what is it, and how does it work?
Vowel harmony, in essence, is a set of rules that mean that in any truly Kyrgyz word (i.e. isn’t Russian, Persian, Tajik, Uzbek, Arabic, etc.), there will only be two vowels, and they will be of a related sound (i.e. left shift vowels are open-jawed and right-shift vowels are the same sound, with your jaw closed further. Try it with “oh” and “oo” and you can see that your mouth stays mostly in the same position, just closes slightly). It also dictates which vowels will be used in the formation of a suffix. If that sounds confusing, don’t worry. It doesn’t make sense to describe it in text, so I’ll walk us through a few examples. Continue reading “Language Lessons: Kyrgyz Vowel Harmony”
