Bashkir language

The Bashkir language (Башҡорт теле başqort tele, pronounced [ˈbaʂqʊrt teˈle]) is part of the Kipchak group of the Turkic languages. It is co-official with Russian in the Republic of Bashkortostan and has approximately 1.2 million speakers in Russia. Bashkir has three dialects: Eastern, Southern, and Northwestern.

Speakers

Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Many speakers also live in Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Samara and Kurgan Oblasts, Khanty–Mansia, Tatarstan, and Udmurtia. Minor Bashkir minority groups also live in Kazakhstan.

Orthography

Bashkirs formerly used Chagatai as a written language. In the late 19th century it was replaced with a regional variety of Turki, a literary Turkic language, which was in use until 1923. Both Chagatai and Turki were written in a variant of the Arabic script.

In 1923, a writing system based on the Arabic script was specifically created for the Bashkir language. At the same time, a Bashkir literary language was created, moving away from the older written Turkic influences. At first, it used a modified Arabic alphabet. In 1930 it was replaced with a Latin-based alphabet, which was in turn replaced with an adapted Cyrillic alphabet in the winter of 1938.