🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bx6uFs.3tn@hpwin052.uksr.hp.com>, dan@hpwin051.uksr.hp.com (Dan Bennett) writes:
> Hyvaa Paivaa, Antti  (you ARE Finnish, aren't you?),
> 
> Here are some answers to your questions.
> 
>...
>
> The "Uighur" script is confusingly named, on account of the fact that it
> was used by the Uighur people of the 12th century. The present Uighurs
> in Xinjiang province are not descendants of the earlier Uighurs, as far as
> I know.

I think most of them are descendants of the "Old" Uighurs.  It was just
that by early 1900's, very few descendants of the Old Uighurs still called
themselves Uighurs.  Then suddenly around 1920, both the Chinese and the
Soviet government decided to use term Uighur to denote the people living in
that general area, thus creating the "New" Uighurs.  Of course, a lot of
racial mixing has occurred during the centuries.

Note that Uighur is a turkic language, while the Uighur script is really
of Semitic origin.  At the height of the Uighur civilization, the Uighur
script was adopted by many different tribes, Mongolians among them.
(Their languages are not closely related.)  However, the Uighur script
gradually fell out of favor as the Uighur people began to use the
Arabic script with the advance of Islam.

> Anyway, the script known as "Uighur" script is a vertical, cursive
> script, which looks a bit like Arabic on its side. 

Historically, the Uighur script could be written either horizontally or
vertically.  When written horizontally, it was from right to left
(since the script is of Semitic origin),  The vertical orientation was due to
the influence of the Chinese.

>It is currently used,
> as you say, in Inner Mongolia (China). It was used in (outer) Mongolia
> until about 1940 (I think), when the Soviet-style government imposed the
> Cyrillic alphabet on the Mongols (just as Stalin imposed it on the Uzbeks,
> Tadzhiks, Chechen, Kazakhs, Turkmen, etc, etc, etc, etc....).
> Now that there is a strong sense of National identity in Mongolia, there
> is a strong movement to get the Uighur script reinstated as the official
> one...

A bit of trivia: the stamps issued by the Mongolian government have always had
Uighur script on them.

--
Tak.
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Tak To                                                    (617) 577-0310 x377
Box 45, MIT Branch PO, Cambridge, Ma 02139.                  tto@aspentec.com
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