Language

This will probably be one of the more boring topics to discuss, but language is currently at the absolute heart of my daily struggles, triumphs, and anecdotes. If I spoke Kyrgyz fluently, half of my stories would be less funny and the other half simply would not be stories. Needless to say, I think the language needs a little clarification.

Kyrgyzstan, like most other former Soviet Union countries, is bilingual. By and large, everyone in the country speaks both Kyrgyz and Russian. Since entering the country, I have been learning Kyrgyz, a language spoken by fewer than 5 million people. Kyrgyz is a Turkic based language that because of the Russian influence is written using Cyrillic letters. In my personal opinion, the language does not necessarily lend itself easily to these letters and actually has two letters that are not present in the normal Russian alphabet: Y (which sounds like the German ö) and θ (which sounds like the German ü).

Like most other Turkic languages, Kyrgyz is an algluative language, which means suffixes are added to the end of words to give information such as time, manner, and place. For example, instead of the preposition “to,” Kyrgyz has a suffix that is added to what would be the object of that preposition. To say, “To Kochkor,” I say “Kochkordo.” The suffixes are difficult to conjugate at first, but with practice it makes more and more sense.

Another interesting characteristic is a property called “vowel harmony.” At the risk of being too simplistic (since I don’t totally grasp the whole thing yet), essentially Kyrgyz vowels come in pairs that always go together. For example, E (which sounds like “eh”) is always matched up with the vowel И (which sounds like “ee”). The word MEHИH (the “H” sounds like “N” in English) means “my” or “mine.” The vowels always stay together in their pairs.

This also makes it obvious when a Russian word that does not follow vowel harmony works its way into the vernacular. MAЧИНА (machine-a, which means car) obviously is a borrowed word, not only because it does not follow vowel harmony, but also because it obviously sounds like the English word. I have been amazed at all of the cognates that exist between this language and English.

Also, like many other languages, Kyrgyz has a formal and informal word for “you.” CEH (informal) and CИЗ (pronounced like “seas”). People are very strict about making sure that people are called by the proper title here and will gladly correct you if you are mistaken. Even boys who are born weeks apart refer to each other in different terms due to age. It feels odd, but I call my younger brother (whose birthday is only about two months after mine) CEH or ЭНИ (pronounced “ee-nee”), which means little brother. Really, I don’t mind the whole idea except it is yet another conjugation that I must learn and practice. One day I will have the whole thing down. Until then, I can just make my readers suffer by listening to my incessant rambling about this crazy language! ЖАКШЫ (jak-shay, meaning good) КАЛ-(the verb “to stay”)ЫН (command suffix) ЫЗ (polite suffix). Stay well everybody!