Fuyu Kyrgyz (Fuyü Gïrgïs, Fu-Yu Kirgiz), also known as Manchurian Kirghiz, is the easternmost Turkic language. Despite its name, it is not a variety of Kyrgyz but is closer to Khakas; the people migrated from Russia in 1761, and the name may be due to the survival of a common tribal name. It is now spoken in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, in and around Fuyu County, Qiqihar (300 km northwest of Harbin) by a small number of passive speakers who are classified as Kyrgyz nationality.[1]
Although a complete phonemic analysis of Girgis has not been done,[2] Hu and Imart have made numerous observations about the sound system in their tentative description of the language. They describe Girgis as having the short vowels noted as "a, ï, i, o, ö, u, ü" which correspond roughly to IPA [a, ə, ɪ, ɔ, œ, ʊ, ʉ], with minimal rounding and tendency towards centralization.[3] Vowel length is phonemic and occurs as a result of consonant-deletion (Girgis /pʉːn/ vs. Kyrgyz /bygyn/). Each short vowel has an equivalent long vowel, with the addition of /e /. Girgis displays vowel harmony as well as consonant harmony.[4] The consonant sounds in Girgis, including allophone variants, are [p, b, ɸ, β, t, d, ð, k, q, ɡ, h, ʁ, ɣ, s, ʃ, z, ʒ, dʒ, tʃ, m, n, ŋ, l, r, y]. Girgis does not display a phonemic difference between the stop set /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/; these stops can also be aspirated to [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] in Chinese loanwords.[5]
Speakers[edit]
In 1980, Fuyu Girgis was spoken by a majority of adults in a community of around a hundred homes. However, many adults in the area have switched to speaking a local variety of Mongolian, and children have switched to Chinese as taught in the education system.[6]
References[edit]
- Hu, Zhen-hua; Imart, Guy (1987), Fu-Yü Gïrgïs: A tentative description of the easternmost Turkic language, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies
- Li, Yongsŏng; Ölmez, Mehmet; Kim, Juwon (2007), "Some Newly Identified Words in Fuyu Kirghiz (Part 1)", Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher (Neue Folge) 21: 141–169
