# Western Yugur language

Western Yugur (Western Yugur: yoɣïr lar (Yugur speech) or yoɣïr śoz (Yugur word)), also known as Neo-Uygur, is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the endonym of the Yugur.
There are approximately 2,000 speakers of Western Yugur.

## Classification

Besides similarities with Uyghuric languages, Western Yugur also shares a number of features, mainly archaisms, with several of the Northeastern Turkic languages, but it is not closer to any one of them in particular. Neither Western nor Eastern Yugur are mutually intelligible with the modern Uyghur language spoken amongst the Uyghurs of China's Xinjiang autonomous region.
Western Yugur also contains archaisms which are attested in neither modern Uyghuric nor Siberian, such as its anticipating counting system coinciding with Old Uyghur, and its copula dro, which also originated from Old Uyghur but substitutes the Uyghur copulative personal suffixes.

## Geographic distribution

Speakers of Western Yugur reside primarily in the western part of Gansu province's Sunan Yugur Autonomous County. They are concentrated in the Dahe and Minghua townships and the northern portion of the Huangcheng township.

## Phonology

A special feature in Western Yugur is the occurrence of preaspiration, corresponding to the so-called pharyngealised or low vowels in Tuva and Tofa, and short vowels in Yakut and Turkmen. Examples of this phenomenon include /oʰtɯs/ "thirty", /jɑʰʂ/ "good", and /iʰt/ "meat".
The vowel harmony system, typical of Turkic languages, has largely collapsed. However, it still exists for a-suffixes (back a : front i), however for stems containing last close vowels are chosen unpredictably (/pɯlɣi/ "knowing" vs. /ɯstqɑ/ "pushing"). Voicing as a distinguishing feature in plosives and affricates was replaced by aspiration, as in Chinese.

### Consonants

West Yugur has 28 native consonants and two more (indicated in parentheses) found only in loan words.
Consonant phonemes :
| | | Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal |
| Nasal | Nasal | m | n | | | ŋ | | |
| Plosive | unaspirated | p | t | | | k | q | |
| Plosive | aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | | | kʰ | qʰ | |
| Affricate | unaspirated | | t͡s | ʈ͡ʂ | t͡ɕ | | | |
| Affricate | aspirated | | (t͡sʰ) | ʈ͡ʂʰ | t͡ɕʰ | | | |
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) | s | ʂ | ɕ | x | | h |
| Fricative | voiced | | z | ʐ | | ɣ | | |
| Trill | Trill | | r | | | | | |
| Approximant | Approximant | | l | | j | w | | |

### Vowels

Western Yugur has eight vowel phonemes typical of many Turkic languages, which are /i, y, ɯ, u, e, ø, o, ɑ/. The phoneme /e/ is currently merging with /i/, especially for speakers in the younger generation. In the table below, the IPA symbol for each vowel is given and alongside it the standard Turcological orthographic form is provided in angular brackets.
Western Yugur vowel phonemes :
| | Front | Front | Back | Back |
| | unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded |
| High | i ⟨i⟩ | y ⟨ü⟩ | ɯ ⟨ï⟩ | u ⟨u⟩ |
| Low | e ⟨e⟩ | ø ⟨ö⟩ | ɑ$^1$ ⟨a⟩ | o ⟨o⟩ |
$^1$ Zhong, 2019 uses the symbol /a/, used by the IPA for the front low unrounded vowel, but describes it as "low back unrounded" (p. 93). The IPA symbol matching that description, low back unrounded /ɑ/, is used in this article for descriptions of the phoneme, while ⟨a⟩ is used in most practical orthographies of the language.

#### Allophony

The following allophonic realizations may occur.
* /i/ is generally [i] when morpheme-medial and [ɪ] when morpheme-final, especially after an obstruent.
* /ɯ/ is generally [ɯ] when in a word-initial syllable and [ɯ̞̈] in a word-final syllable, except when word-final and preceding [ɾ].
* /u/ is realized as [ʊ] when preceding by a velar or uvular stop, and as [u] otherwise.
* /ɑ/ is realized as [ɑ] after uvular stops or the fricatives /x, ɣ, h/, as well as when preceding /ŋ/. When preceding /j/ or when after /j, tɕ/ and before /n/, [ɛ] occurs as an allophone. Otherwise, [ä] typically occurs.
* /e/ is realized as [ɛ] when preceding coda /m, n, r/, in particular when following an aspirated stop. Word-initial /e/ is variably realized as [ɪ] and [e] for certain speakers. Otherwise, [e] generally occurs.
* /o, ø, y/ do not tend to vary in pronunciation and are simply realized as [o, ø, y] respectively.

### Diachronic processes

Several sound changes affected Western Yugur phonology while evolving from its original Common Turkic form, the most prolific being:

#### Vowels

* High vowels were delabialized in non-initial syllables: CT *tütün > *tütin > WYu tuʰtïn "to smoke", CT *altun > *altïn > WYu aʰltïm "gold"
* CT *u was lowered to WYu o in some words, most commonly around velars and r: CT *burun > WYu pʰorn "before, front"
* All high vowels were merged – as front vowels in palatal contexts, and as back otherwise: CT *üčün > WYu utɕin "with, using", CT *yïlan > WYu yilan "snake"
** This had several consequences:
*** It made the Common Turkic allophonic difference between *k and *q phonemic.
*** Vowel harmonic class of resulting words was thus determined lexically in Western Yugur.
*** Former vowel harmonic suffixes with high vowels became invariable: CT: *-Ki/*-Kï > WYu -Kï "attributive noun suffix"
* Front vowels *ä, *e, *ö were raised to *i, *ü except before *r, *l, *ŋ and (excluding *ö) *g: CT *ärän > WYu erin "man", CT *kȫk > WYu kük, CT *-lar/*-lär > WYu -lar/-lir "plural suffix"
* CT *ay is reflected as WYu ey~e in the initial syllable and as i otherwise.
* In the initial syllable exclusively, short vowels acquire pre-aspiration of the following consonant, length distinction is otherwise lost.

#### Consonants

* As in most Turkic language, initial *b was assimilated to *m in words containing nasals.
* Initial plosives and affricates, CT *b, *t, *k, *g, *č, are all reflected as voiceless with unpredictable aspiration: CT *temir > WYu temïr, CT *bog- > WYu pʰoɣ- "to tie with a rope"
* Labials are merged into *w intervocally and after liquids which later in some cases forms diphthongs or get elided: CT *yubaš > WYu yüwaʂ "calm", CT *harpa > WYu harwa "barley"
* Finally and in most consonant clusters *p is preserved and *b elided.
* Dental and velar voiceless plosives are preserved in most positions, with aspiration occurring almost exclusively in the initial position.
* CT *g is spirantized into ɣ and CT *d into z.
* With some exceptions, CT *š develops into s: CT *tāš > WYu tas "stone"
* CT *z is preserved, except for devoicing when final in polysyllabic words: CT *otuz > WYu oʰtïs "thirty"
* CT *č generally becomes WYu š in syllable codas.
* CT *ñ develops into WYu y; initial CT *y- is mostly preserved; CT *h- is seemingly preserved in some words but the extent to which WYu h- corresponds to it is unclear.

## Vocabulary

Western Yugur has retained many words from East Old Turkic language and is the only Turkic language that preserved the anticipating counting system, known from Old Turkic. In this system, upper decimals are used, i.e. per otus (per: one, otus: thirty) means "one (on the way to) thirty", is 21.
For centuries, the Western Yugur language has been in contact with Mongolic languages, Tibetan, and Chinese, and as a result has adopted a large number of loanwords from these languages, as well as grammatical features. Chinese dialects neighboring the areas where Yugur is spoken have influenced the Yugur language, giving it loanwords.

## Grammar

Personal markers in nouns as well as in verbs were largely lost. In the verbal system, the notion of evidentiality has been grammaticalised, seemingly under the influence of Tibetan.

### Grammatical cases

| | | After obstruents | After nasals | After -z |
| Nominative | Nominative | -∅ | -∅ | -∅ |
| Accusative | Accusative | -ti | -ni | -ni |
| Genitive | Genitive | -tiŋ | -niŋ | -niŋ |
| Dative | Back | -qa | -qa | -ɣa |
| Dative | Front | -ki | -ki | -ki |
| Locative | Back | -ta | -ta | -ta |
| Locative | Front | -ti | -ti | -ti |
| Ablative | Back | -tan | -tan | -tan |
| Ablative | Front | -tin | -tin | -tin |
Four kinship terms have distinct vocative forms, and used when calling out loudly: aqu (← aqa "elder brother"), qïzaqu (← qïzaqa "elder sister"), açu (← aça "father"), and anu (← ana "mother"). There are two possessive suffixes, first and second person -(ï)ŋ and third person -(s)ï, but these suffixes are largely not used outside of kinship terms (anaŋ, anasï "mother"), similar to the concept of inalienable possessions. Four kinship nouns have irregular 1st and 2nd person forms by eliding the final vowel and using the consonantic variant: aqa → aqïŋ "elder brother".

### Verbs

Western Yugur verbal system, like Salar, is characterized by contact-induced (namely, under the influence of Chinese) loss of person-number copular markers in finite verb forms, e.g. contrast the sentence “I have eaten enough” Men toz-dï in Western Yugur with the Uzbek equivalent Men to’y-dïm; the latter has a first-person marker suffix -(I)m attached to the verb while the equivalent Western Yugur sentence does not.

## History

Modern Uyghur and Western Yugur belong to entirely different branches of the Turkic language family, respectively the Karluk languages spoken in the Kara-Khanid Khanate (such as the Xākānī language described in Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwān al-Luġat al-Turk) and the Siberian Turkic languages, which include Old Uyghur.
The Yugur are descended from the Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom, Qocho and the Uyghur Khaganate.
Grigory Potanin recorded a glossary of Salar language, Western Yugur language, and Eastern Yugur language in his 1893 Russian language book The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia.