Uighur

Joining forms

Because the Arabic script is 'cursive' (ie. joined-up) writing, letters tend to have different shapes depending on whether they join with adjacent letters or not (see cursive). In addition, vowels can be represented using different characters, depending on where in a word they appear.

In scripts such as Arabic, several characters have no left-joining form. In what follows we'll use the characters ي and د to illustrate shapes. The former can join on both sides, but the latter can only join on the right.

Left-joining glyphs are commonly called initial; dual-joining are called medial; and right-joining are called final. Glyphs that don't join on either side are called isolated. However, these glyph shapes can be found in various places within a single word.

Word-initial characters usually have initial glyph shapes (eg. 064A ). However, characters that only join to the right will use an isolated glyph shape (eg. 062F ). Furthermore, words beginning with a vowel are always preceded by a vowel carrier, which is normally ا (eg. 0627 06CC or 0627 064E ).

Word-medial characters will typically join on both sides (eg. 064A ) but those that only join to the right will use a final glyph (eg. 062F ). However, if either of those is preceded by another character that only joins to the right, the glyph shapes rendered will be initial (eg. 064A ) and isolated (eg. 062F ), respectively.

Word-final characters will typically use a final glyph shape (eg. 064A and 062F ). However, if the previous character joins only to the right, they will use isolated glyph shapes (eg.064A and 062F ).

In all this contextual glyph shaping the basic shapes used for a character can vary significantly in a script like Arabic. This also includes some characters that only have ijam dots in certain contexts.

Letters

Combining marks

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Natively and phonemically, Uighur has only short vowel sounds, although historical assimilation and loan words have led to some longer sounds phoneticallywup.

Uighur has no diphthongs, although hiatus may occur in some loanwordswup.

Uighur vowels participate in vowel harmony and vowel reduction. For more information see Uighur Phonology.

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
stop	p b	t d				k ɡ	q	ʔ
affricate				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
fricative	f v		s z	ʃ ʒ			χ ʁ	ɦ
nasal	m		n			ŋ
approximant	w		l		j
trill/flap			r

Stops and affricates weaken (lenition) before dissimilar consonants, and r, l and j may be assimilated to the preceding vowel, which becomes lengthened, but none of this is reflected in the orthographywul.

Tone

Uighur is not a tonal language.

Structure

The general syllabic structure of Uighurwup is

CV(C)(C)

Uighur syllables are primarily CV or CVC. Consonant clusters in the syllable coda are often phonetically altered by elision or epenthesiswup.

Any consonant can begin a syllable except for ŋ. Any consonant can appear in the coda except for ʔwup.

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

The right-hand column shows word-initial forms. The glyphs shown in the table are illustrative; alternative shapes may occur (see joining_forms).

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

This is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Uighur language.

Vowel basics

Standalone vowels

When a vowel is alone, initial, or follows another vowel inside a word, it is always preceded by 0626, which in theory represents the glottal stop, but which is not pronounced as such at the start of a word – rather, it is just a support for the vowel.

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Uighur vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Arabic orthography.

The columns run right to left and indicate typical word-initial, word-medial, and word-final usage. The joining forms shown are illustrative; alternative shapes may occur (see joining_forms).

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see consonant_mappings.

Consonant letters

The following consonants are used for the Uighur language, which is largely written as it is spoken. Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).

Transcription note

In transcriptions using the Uyghur Latin alphabet (ULY) system, occasionally there can be ambiguities around the digraphs. In such cases, an apostrophe is used, eg. the transcription bashlan’ghuch for the following disambiguates n-gh from ng-h. باشلئانگۇچ

Consonant clusters & gemination

Consonant clusters have no special annotation or shaping. The Arabic sukkun is not used to indicate missing vowels.

Geminated consonants are written by simply repeating the consonant twice, there is no use of the Arabic shadda, eg. تاللاش ئاپتاپپەرەس ئۇسسۇل

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Uighur consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Arabic orthography.

The right-hand column shows the various joining forms for each character.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Digits

See type samples.

Uighur uses ASCII digits.

Dates

Observation: fig_date_connector shows day-month format using a tatweel-like connector, however the text doesn't connect to the horizontal line.

Cursive script

Arabic script joins letters together. This results in four different shapes for most letters (including an isolated shape).

A few Arabic script letters only join on the right-hand side.

Context-based shaping & positioning

As in Arabic, lam followed by alef ligate, eg. ئىسلام

Letterform slopes, weights, & italics

See type samples.

Observation: The image in fig_italic_forward show italicisation where the glyphs lean in the direction of text (ie. to the left).

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Word-level segmentation is used for line-breaking and basic justification.

Uighur has hyphenated words, eg.

ئىززەت-ھۆرمەت

Graphemes

Uighur principally uses word boundaries for line-breaking and basic justification, but uses grapheme boundaries for other operations that work at the sub-word level.

Phrase, sentence, and section delimiters are described in phrase.

Grapheme clusters

Base (Combining_mark)*

In Uighur, segmentation can be realised using Unicode grapheme clusters. A typographic unit is almost always equivalent to a letter, since precomposed code points are available for all letter and diacritic combinations. Only one letter, ئ, decomposes; in that case, the typographic unit includes both the base letter and the combining mark.

Examples:

	ئاچقۇچ
	ئۆيمۇئۆي

This kind of typographic unit can be used for forwards deletion, cursor movement & selection, character counts, text spacing, and text insertion.

Phrase & section boundaries

See type samples.

Uighur uses a mixture of ASCII and Arabic punctuation.

Observation: The comma can be found immediately after the previous word, but as shown in fig_comma_gap, it may also be surrounded by space.

Quotations & citations

See type samples.

Uighur text uses guillemets around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks. Note, however, that the order of use is different from that in LTR text, because they are not automatically mirrored.

Observation: fig_quotation appears to show double angle brackets being used as a quotation mark.

Observation: fig_bracketed_text shows double angle brackets being used to cite lists of characters.

Line breaking & hyphenation

See type samples.

Common practice is to break the sentence at any point when it reaches the end of a line.

In-word line-breaking

Uighur text can be hyphenated at the end of a line (see fig_hyphenation).

The glyphs before the hyphen and at the start of the next line are joined forms.

The hyphen sits on the baseline and looks like a tatweel. A very small gap appears between the hyphen and the last letter of the word at the end of the line.

Observation: The actual 'hyphen' looks like ـ [U+0640 ARABIC TATWEEL]. That would produce the expected joining form at the end of the line, although some additional mechanism would be needed to produce the form at the start of the next line. However, scans of various documents show a very small gap between the horizontal line and the last joining form at the end of the line, as can be seen in fig_hyphenation, which would negate the joining produced by a tatweel.

Text alignment & justification

See type samples.

Baseline lengthening is used to justify lines of text.

fig_kashida shows that baseline lengthening and hyphenation can both be used, and sometimes within the same word.

Baselines, line height, etc.

Uighur uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

Font baselines should match the alphabetic baseline of Latin script text, and Arabic Uighur fonts should have relative sizes that match. However, Uighur also needs to look right alongside Chinese text, which has a slightly lower baseline and generally larger characters than Latin.

Uighur places vowel and tone glyphs above and below base characters. Several glyphs (especially in independent or final forms) also have long descenders or ascenders.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Uighur glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic part of most Uighur letters is generally less than Latin x-height, however extenders and combining marks reach up to and sometimes beyond the Latin ascenders and descenders. That said, Noto fonts are relatively conservative in terms of glyph heights.

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Scheherazade New and Microsoft Uighur fonts.