Bashkir language
Bashkir language
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Bashkir language

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Bashkir language

Bashkir (UK: /bæʃˈkɪər/ bash-KEER, US: /bɑːʃˈkɪər/ bahsh-KEER) or Bashkort (Bashkir: башҡорт теле, romanized: başqort tele, [bɑʂˈqʊ̞rt tɪ̞ˈlɪ̞] ) 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 native speakers in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia, and other neighboring post-Soviet states, and among the Bashkir diaspora. It has three dialect groups: Southern, Eastern, and Northwestern.

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.

Bashkir and Tatar belong to the Kipchak-Bulgar (Russian: кыпчакско-булгарская) 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 orthography is more explicit. /q/ and /ʁ/ are written with their own letters, Ҡ ҡ and Ғ ғ, whereas in Tatar they are treated as positional allophones of /k/ and /ɡ/, written К к and Г г.

Labial vowel harmony in Bashkir is written explicitly, e.g., Tatar тормышым (tormışım) and Bashkir тормошом (tormoşom, both pronounced [tʊɾ.mʊˈʂʊm], meaning "my life".

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 /æ/, Ө ө /ø/, Ү ү /ʏ/, Ғ ғ /ʁ/, Ҡ ҡ /q/, Ң ң /ŋ/, Ҙ ҙ /ð/, Ҫ ҫ /θ/, Һ һ /h/.

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