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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
The ethnic identity of the Kyrgyz has been strongly linked to their
language and to ethnic traditions, both of which have been guarded with
particular zeal once independence provided an opportunity to make national
policy on these matters. Less formally, the Kyrgyz people have maintained
with unusual single-mindedness many elements of social structure and a
sense of their common past. The name Kyrgyz derives from the Turkic kyrk
plus yz , a combination meaning "forty clans."
Language
In the period after A.D. 840, the Kyrgyz joined other Turkic groups in
an overall Turkification pattern extending across the Tian Shan into the
Tarim River basin, east of present-day Kyrgyzstan's border with China. In
this process, which lasted for more than two centuries, the Kyrgyz tribes
became mixed with other tribes, thoroughly absorbing Turkic cultural and
linguistic characteristics.
The forebears of the present-day Kyrgyz are believed to have been either
southern Samoyed or Yeniseyan tribes. Those tribes came into contact with
Turkic culture after they conquered the Uygurs and settled the Orkhon
area, site of the oldest recorded Turkic language, in the ninth century
(see Early History, this ch.). If descended from the Samoyed tribes of
Siberia, the Kyrgyz would have spoken a language in the Uralic linguistic
subfamily when they arrived in Orkhon; if descended from Yeniseyan tribes,
they would have descended from a people of the same name who began to move
into the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan from the Yenisey River region of
central Siberia in the tenth century, after the Kyrgyz conquest of the
Uygurs to the east in the preceding century. Ethnographers dispute the
Yeniseyan origin, however, because of the very close cultural and
linguistic connections between the Kyrgyz and the Kazaks (see Early Tribal
Movement; Ethnic Groups, ch. 1).
In the period of tsarist administration (1876-1917), the Kazaks and the
Kyrgyz both were called Kyrgyz, with what are now the Kyrgyz
subdenominated when necessary as Kara-Kyrgyz (black Kyrgyz). Although the
Kyrgyz language has more Mongolian and Altaic elements than does Kazak,
the modern forms of the two languages are very similar. As they exist
today, both are part of the Nogai group of the Kipchak division of the
Turkic languages, which belong to the Uralic-Altaic language family. The
modern Kyrgyz language did not have a written form until 1923, at which
time an Arabic-based alphabet was used. That was changed to a Latin-based
alphabet in 1928 and to a Cyrillic-based one in 1940. In the years
immediately following independence, another change of alphabet was
discussed, but the issue does not seem to generate the same passions in
Kyrgyzstan that it does in other former Soviet republics (see National
Identity, ch. 1; Culture and the Arts, ch. 3; The Spoken Language, ch. 4;
The Written Language, ch. 4; Language and Literature, ch. 5).
One important difference between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan is that the
Kyrgyz people's mastery of their own language is almost universal, whereas
the linguistic phase of national identity is not as clear in the much
larger area and population of Kazakstan (see Language, ch. 1). As in
Kazakstan, mastery of the "titular" language among the resident
Europeans of Kyrgyzstan is very rare. In the early 1990s, the Akayev
government pursued an aggressive policy of introducing Kyrgyz as the
official language, forcing the remaining European population to use Kyrgyz
in most public situations. Public pressure to enforce this change was
sufficiently strong that a Russian member of President Akayev's staff
created a public scandal in 1992 by threatening to resign to dramatize the
pressure for "Kyrgyzification" of the non-native population. A
1992 law called for the conduct of all public business to be converted
fully to Kyrgyz by 1997. But in March 1996, Kyrgyzstan's parliament
adopted a resolution making Russian an official state language alongside
Kyrgyz and marking a reversal of earlier sentiment. Substantial pressure
from Russia was a strong factor in this change, which was part of a
general rapprochement with Russia urged by Akayev.
Data as of March 1996
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