Language Lessons: Kyrgyz Vowel Harmony

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”