Pronunciation [qərʁəs] Region Heilongjiang Native speakers (10 cited 1982 census) | Native to China Ethnicity 875 (no date) | |
Language family Turkic
Common Turkic
Siberian
Khakas?
Fuyu Kyrgyz | ||
Fuyu Kyrgyz (Fuyü Gïrgïs, Fu-Yu Kirgiz), also known as Manchurian Kirghiz, is the easternmost Turkic language. Despite its name, it is not a variety of Kyrgyz but is closer to Khakas. The people originated in the Yenisei region of Siberia but were relocated into the Dzungaria by the Dzungars. In 1761, after the Dzungars were defeated by the Qing, some Öelet, a tribe of Oirat-speaking Dzungars, were deported to Nonni basin in Northeastern China (Manchuria), and a group of Yenisei Kirghiz were also deported along with the Öelet. The Kyrgyz in Manchuria became known as the Fuyu Kyrgyz, but many have become merged into the Mongol and Chinese population. Chinese and Oirat replaced Oirat and Kirghiz during Manchukuo as the dual languages of the Nonni-based Kyrgyz. It is now spoken in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, in and around Fuyu County, Qiqihar (300 km northwest of Harbin) by a small number of passive speakers who are classified as Kyrgyz nationality.
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Sounds
Although a complete phonemic analysis of Girgis has not been done, Hu and Imart have made numerous observations about the sound system in their tentative description of the language. They describe Girgis as having the short vowels noted as "a, ï, i, o, ö, u, ü" which correspond roughly to IPA [a, ə, ɪ, ɔ, œ, ʊ, ʉ], with minimal rounding and tendency towards centralization. Vowel length is phonemic and occurs as a result of consonant-deletion (Girgis /pʉːn/ vs. Kyrgyz /bygyn/). Each short vowel has an equivalent long vowel, with the addition of /e /. Girgis displays vowel harmony as well as consonant harmony. The consonant sounds in Girgis, including allophone variants, are [p, b, ɸ, β, t, d, ð, k, q, ɡ, h, ʁ, ɣ, s, ʃ, z, ʒ, dʒ, tʃ, m, n, ŋ, l, r, j]. Girgis does not display a phonemic difference between the stop set /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/; these stops can also be aspirated to [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] in Chinese loanwords.
Speakers
In 1980, Fuyu Girgis was spoken by a majority of adults in a community of around a hundred homes. However, many adults in the area have switched to speaking a local variety of Mongolian, and children have switched to Chinese as taught in the education system.