The New Dominion

Survival Uyghur

From The New Dominion

Lesson Two (B): Basic Greetings: At Peace?

Introduction

Salam! Welcome to Survival Uyghur, Lesson Two. Last time, we learned how to order polo in a typical Uyghur restaurant. We’ll look at that again later, but, for now, it’s time to learn to say hello. The idea is not to start a conversation – at least not yet – but to signal your willingness to learn and your interest in and respect for someone else’s language and culture.

We’re going to begin with the two most common greetings, the associated body movements, and the right way to respond. This lesson is divided into two parts: male readers will find Lesson Two (A) more helpful, while both male and female learners will get use out of Lesson Two (B).[1] This part of the lesson introduces the most common greeting and some important grammar.

Dialogue Two: At peace?

You: Tinchliqmu?

Uyghur: Tinchliq! Siz-chu?

You: Tinchliq!

This is literally asking: “At peace?” “At peace! And you?” “At peace!”

Usage note: This is much more common for women to use. Most of my Uyghur female friends greet me this way, whereas few of my male friends ever do.

Vocabulary

tinchliq “peaceful, at peace” siz “you, formal”

Pronunciation

q: We have a new sound! q is a hard, clicky k sound at the back of the mouth. Try lifting the back of your tongue to block off your throat. Right there, right under the squishy bit of the roof of your mouth, just in front of the uvula (dangly thing)… q!

i: Remember that the i you see here is short, like in “bit”. This applies for tinchliq and for siz-chu.

tinchliq: Besides that, the word spelled “tinchliq” above is actually pronounced “tishliq”. Don’t forget your “Olé!”: tishlíq! However, tinchliqmu is tishlíqmu, with the stress right where it was before. Why? See below.

Also, for emphasis, draw out the last syllable of tinchliq: tishlíííq!

Grammar

siz: In Lesson One, we briefly encountered the pronoun män “I, me”. Here, we have siz “you”.

-mu: For those of us who have learned Chinese, the grammar is easy: -mu is like ma 吗, or, indeed, like a question mark (?) in English! Tack it into the end of a sentence and it makes a question. “At peace?”

- Note: -mu doesn’t change the stress on the word it’s attached to. It hangs on like a light little tail.

-chu: Where you see siz-chu?, this is asking “And you?” (Literally, “You-and?”) Consider -chu to be like Chinese ne 呢.

Dialog Review

Dialog Two: At peace?

You: Tinchliqmu? (Pron: Tishlíqmu?) At peace?

Uyghur: Tinchliq! Siz-chu? (Pron: Tishlíííq! Siz-chú?) At peace! And you?

You: Tinchliq! (Pron: Tishlíq!) At peace!

Summary and review

So, what do you know so far?

You have learned “I” and “you”: män and siz

… your new favorite food: polo

… a verb: yä- “to eat”

… a number: bir “one”

… how to turn a statement into a question: -mu?

And you have learned to greet people!

For advanced learners

Okay, hotshot. Try this on for size:

“Bir polo yäysiz.”

“Polomu?”

[1] Please forgive the apparent gender bias.