The New Dominion

Yesterday I had the luck of stumbling upon what really is a treasure trove of learning material for people of all stripes who are studying the Uyghur language: a compilation of Uyghur cartoons depicting children’s stories. Though a majority of these tales are distinctly Uyghur or Central Asian, a few hint of more cosmopolitan origins, such as the tale Böre Keldi, or “A Wolf has Come,” which turned out to be a Uyghur manifestation of the classic fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” we all heard as kids in one variant or another. The language on one hand is simple, as you’d expect in a kid’s film, but on the other hand the voice actors are speaking at natural speed (fast) and the storytelling language is peppered with all sorts of delightful hearsay and assessment moods I discussed in a previous post.

This tale being basically a global one, this time there’s no need for any translations or narrations, but I do hope in the future to look over some of other cartoons and summarize and share some of the more local tales.

Youtube user TheUyghur has done Uyghur language learners a great service by uploading these valuable cultural and linguistic materials, though unfortunately the cartoon tales seem to be inaccessible from TheUyghur’s user page and only appear in the related videos queue that shows up on the right side of individual video pages. In the future, I’ll try to gather all the cartoons into a single, public playlist.