The length of combinations of Mongolian -aγu-/-egü- in the Kirghiz language

Nuraiym Satylkanova

The length of combinations of Mongolian -aγu-/-egü- in the Kirghiz language

(63rd Annual Meeting Ulaanbaatar, 2021)

All Turkic languages, regardless of the modern settlement of their speakers, have Mongolian loanwords. At the same time, the layer of their saturation in these languages is completely different. The largest number of Mongolian loanwords came into the Siberian Turkic languages quite a lot. And other Turkic languages, then even fewer Mongolian loanwords are represented in them. But, interestingly, the Kirghiz language is the most saturated with Mongolian borrowings after the Siberian Turkic languages. According to preliminary compiled materials, their number is more than 300 words of indisputably Mongolian origin.

B.M.Yunusaliev wrote about many ancient Mongolian borrowings, which the Kirghiz language could have brought back from the Yenisei period. As in the Siberian Turkic languages, especially in the Altai and Yakut languages, so in the Kirghiz language, it is possible to distribute all Mongolian loanwords into modern and earlier periods. Moreover, the earlier ones have the same characteristic features (the longitude of combinations -aγu-/-egü- in Kirghiz language), which allow us to attribute them to the Middle Ages. A regularity is revealed that in those languages whose speakers have maintained continuous contacts with the Mongols for a long time with oral communication, apparently the Kirghiz language, the phonetic appearance of words, especially about the quality of the secondary longitudes of vowels, is somewhat close to modern Mongolian languages. In the Kirghiz language, the strong labial vowel harmony is clearly and consistently implemented. A similar harmony is observed in other Turkic languages of southern Siberia. Probably, it also influences to some extent the character of longitude in Mongolian borrowed words. The influence of this type of harmony affected the formation of longitudes in Mongolian loanwords due to the loss of intervocalic -γ- and -g-. It can be assumed that these Mongolian loanwords penetrated the Kirghiz language at a time when the intervocalic -γ- and -g- was still pronounced in the Mongolian spoken language. The discrepancy in the character of longitudes in Mongolian loanwords in the Kirghiz language is observed only in those cases when longitude arose at the places of combinations -aγu-/-egü-, i.e. the first component is a shallow wide vowel, and the second is a narrowly rounded vowel, for example, Kirghiz sȫm < Mongolian sögem ; Kirghiz kālga < Mongolian qaγalγ- a (n); Kirghiz salā < Mongolian salaγa; Kirghiz barān < Mongolian baraγan.