Karakalpak language

Karakalpak language
Karakalpak is a Turkic language spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan. It is divided into two dialects, Northeastern Karakalpak and Southwestern Karakalpak. It developed alongside Noghai and neighbouring Kazakh languages, being markedly influenced by both. Typologically, Karakalpak belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, thus being closely related to and highly mutually intelligible with Kazakh and Noghai.
Classification
Karakalpak is a member of the Kipchak branch of Turkic languages, which includes Kazakh, Bashkir, Tatar, Kumyk, Karachay, Nogai and Kyrgyz. Due to its proximity to Turkmen and Uzbek, some of Karakalpak's vocabulary and grammar has been influenced by Uzbek and Turkmen. Like the vast majority of Turkic languages, Karakalpak has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually subject–object–verb.
Geographic distribution
Karakalpak is spoken mainly in the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic of Uzbekistan. Approximately 2,000 people in Afghanistan and smaller diaspora in parts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other parts of the world speak Karakalpak.
Official status
Karakalpak has official status in the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic.
Dialects
Ethnologue identifies two dialects of Karakalpak: Northeastern and Southwestern. Menges mentions a third possible dialect spoken in the Fergana Valley. The Southwestern dialect has /tʃ/ for the Northeastern /ʃ/.
Phonology
Karakalpak has 25 native consonant phonemes and regularly uses four non-native phonemes in loan words. Non-native sounds are shown in parentheses.
Consonants
Vowels
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony functions in Karakalpak much as it does in other Turkic languages. Words borrowed from Russian or other languages may not observe rules of vowel harmony, but the following rules usually apply:
Vocabulary
Personal pronouns
Numbers
бир – bir – 1
еки – eki – 2
үш – úsh – 3
төрт – tórt – 4
бес – bes – 5
алты – altı – 6
жети – jeti – 7
сегиз – segiz – 8
тоғыз – toǵız – 9
он – on – 10
жүз – júz – 100
мың – mıń – 1000
миллион – million – 1000000
Writing system
Karakalpak was written in the Arabic and Persian script until 1932, in the Latin script from 1928 to 1940, after which Cyrillic was introduced. Following Uzbekistan's independence in 1991, the decision was made to drop Cyrillic and revert to the Latin alphabet. Whilst the use of Latin script is now widespread in Tashkent, its introduction into Karakalpakstan remains gradual.
The Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic alphabets are shown below with their equivalent representations in the IPA. Cyrillic letters with no representation in the Latin alphabet are marked with asterisks. The last changes to the new Karakalpak alphabet were made in 2016: instead of letters with apostrophes, letters with acutes were introduced.
Before 2009, C was written as TS; I and Í were written as dotted and dotless I.
Sample Text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Poets
Ájiniyaz
Berdaq Ǵarǵabay Ulí
Kúnxoja
Ibrayim Yusupov
See also
References
Bibliography
Agglutinative languages
Languages of Kazakhstan
Languages of Russia
Languages of Uzbekistan
Turkic languages of Afghanistan
Turkic languages
Kipchak languages