Uyghur Arabic alphabet
The Uyghur Perso-Arabic alphabet (, ) is an Arabic alphabet used for writing the Uyghur language, primarily by Uyghurs living in China. It is one of several Uyghur alphabets and has been the official alphabet of the Uyghur language since 1982.

The first Perso-Arabic derived alphabet for Uyghur was developed in the 10th century, when Islam was introduced there. The version used for writing the Chagatai language. It became the regional literary language, now known as the Chagatay alphabet. It was used nearly exclusively up to the early 1920s. Alternative Uyghur scripts then began emerging and collectively largely displaced Chagatai; "Kona Yëziq", meaning "old script", now distinguishes it and UEY from the alternatives that are "not" derived from Arabic. Between 1937 and 1954, the Perso-Arabic alphabet used to write Uyghur was modified by removing redundant letters and adding markings for vowels. A Cyrillic alphabet was adopted in the 1950s and a Latin alphabet in 1958. The modern Uyghur Perso-Arabic alphabet was made official in 1978 and reinstituted by the Chinese government in 1983, with modifications for representing Uyghur vowels.

The Arabic alphabet used before the modifications (Kona Yëziq) did not represent Uyghur vowels and according to Robert Barkley Shaw, spelling was irregular and long vowel letters were frequently written for short vowels since most Turki speakers were unsure of the difference between long and short vowels. The pre-modification alphabet used Arabic diacritics (zabar, zer and pesh) to mark short vowels.

Robert Shaw wrote that Turki writers either "inserted or omitted" the letters for the long vowels ا ,و and ي at their own fancy so multiple spellings of the same word could occur and the ة was used to represent a short a by some Turki writers.

The reformed modern Uyghur Arabic alphabet eliminated letters whose sounds were found only in Arabic and spelled Arabic and Persian loanwords such as Islamic religious words, as they were pronounced in Uyghur and not as they were originally spelled in Arabic or Persian.



Several of these alternatives were influenced by security-policy considerations of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. (Soviet Uyghur areas experienced several non-Arabic alphabets and the former CIS countries, especially Kazakhstan, now use primarily a Cyrillic-based alphabet, called "Uyghur Siril Yëziqi".)

A Pinyin-derived Latin-based alphabet (with additional letters borrowed from Cyrillic), then called “New script” or "Uyghur Yëngi Yëziq" or "UYY", was for a time the only officially approved alphabet used for Uyghur in Xinjiang. It had technical shortcomings and met social resistance; Uyghur Ereb Yëziqi (UEY), an expansion of the old Chagatai alphabet based on the Arabic script, is now recognized, along with a newer Latin-based alphabet called "Uyghur Latin Yëziqi" or "ULY", replacing the former Pinyin-derived alphabet; UEY is sometimes intended when the term "Kona Yëziq" is used.
Q744068
Perso-Arabic alphabet
Concept
Q1828555
Arabic alphabet
Concept
Q13263
Uyghur language
Concept
Q46118
Uyghurs
Concept
Q148
China
LOC
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Uyghur alphabets
Concept
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Islam
Concept
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Chagatai language
ORG
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literary language
Concept
None
Chagatay alphabet
UNK
Q8209
Cyrillic alphabet
Concept
Q41670
Latin alphabet
Concept
Q6174359
Robert Barkley Shaw
PER
Q775724
Arabic diacritics
Concept
Q2167404
security-policy
Concept
Q15180
Soviet Union
LOC
Q148
People's Republic of China
LOC
Q7779
CIS
Concept
Q232
Kazakhstan
LOC
Q8209
Cyrillic
Concept
Q6672247
Uyghur Siril Yëziqi
ORG
Q42222
Pinyin
Concept
Q11084133
Uyghur Yëngi Yëziq
MISC
Q34800
Xinjiang
LOC
Q1828555
Arabic script
Concept
Q986283
Uyghur Latin Yëziqi
Concept
Q2374532
Uyghur Arabic alphabet
Concept
1982-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1982
DATE
1920-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1920
DATE
1937-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1937
DATE
1954-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1954
DATE
1950-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1950
DATE
1958-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1958
DATE
1978-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1978
DATE
1983-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1983
DATE
+10^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
10
NUMBER
subclass of
different from
writing system
country
native language
country
language used
ethnic group
part of