Hanzi transcription of Uyghur
Thanks to a song performed a this year’s New Years Gala (as well as earlier performances), the term 亚克西 yàkèxī has once again popped into the vocabularies of the netizens. It’s a very rough transliteration… translogisation?… erm, well it’s the closest you’d get to the Uyghur word for “good”. The actual word is of course not quite “yàkèxī”.
First some background on writing Uyghur. At least in China, there are two systems for writing the language. The one you’re more likely to find online is called ULY, Uyghur Latin Yéziqi, or Uyghur Latin alphabet. The other, modelled on the Arabic script as used in Persian, is called UEY, Uyghur Ereb Yéziqi, or Uyghur Arab script. I’ve written before on xiaoerjing on transliteration with uyghur (here and here), and the information is readily available on Wikipedia, so I’ll skip the details here. The third option, though far less common in China, is the use of the Cyrillic alphabet. This is more often found in the former Soviet states where a large number of Uyghurs reside.
Back to yàkèxī. The original word in Uyghur is ياخشى / yaxshi / йахши, pronounced /jɑxʃɪ/. That x, for the less IPA friendly of readers, is that raspy awful throat-clearing sound heard right before someone’s phlegm hits the sidewalk. It’s common in Semitic languages (though Uyghur isn’t one) and is one of those sounds I deeply love. I bring that up because [x] is obviously nowhere to be found in Mandarin (see comments). Coming up with a character to represent /ʃ/ isn’t usually too difficult, as /ʂ/ or /ɕ/ are close enough. /x/ on the other hand is less clear.
Toponyms are always a good place to look for comparisons between Uyghur and Mandarin sounds. Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang province, could be Urumqi, Ürümqi, Urumchi, Ürümchi (ULY), ئۈرۈمچی (UEY, [yrymˈtʃi]), or 乌鲁木齐 wūlǔmùqí ([wulumutɕʰi]) as written and pronounced in Mandarin.
To quote a source who shall remain nameless:
Of course, Chinese sucks at transcribing everything. And even when the characters might half work, the users fuck it up by making phoneme-deaf choices.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Why the fascination with yaxshi to begin with? I chalk it up to being the Chinese equivalent of “yo queiro Taco Bell” or the endless products emblazoned with “caliente“. It’s another aspect the west-facing Orientalism that’s as prevalent here as it is in the West. For another example, see the case of the güli.
A year an a half ago I guest-posted on Beijing Sounds on the subject of transliteration. It was about English being transliterated into Chinese, but it might be worth looking at, as I contrasted good and bad transliteration methods.
“[x] is obviously nowhere to be found in Mandarin”
Mandarin doesn’t have a velar fricative?
Alright you got me. Yes there is a velar fricative, but not in all dialects and often the dialects it is in are limited to men. 河, for example, could be [xɤ], but in my experience it’s more like [ħɤ] with a pharyngeal fricative, unless I’m with a rural male cab driver blazing through Nanjing.
At any rate it’s fairly minor, though maybe the Dongbeiren among us can contest that.
[x] always struck me as a colouring of [ħ] that comes up in in some situations, but was not by any means the primary sound.
I think the fascination with yakexi doesn’t have much to do with Orientalism. In the instances I’ve encountered it, it’s being used sarcastically to mock the boot-licking lyrical content of the song you’re talking about — see, for example, Han Han’s “Big Yakexi Art Contest:, Ai Weiwei’s tweets with yakexi, etc.
Not that that kind of orientalism doesn’t exist, but I think this particular instance is much more tongue-in-cheek political than it is cultural…
I agree, at least as far as the current popular yakexi use goes when it comes to people like Han Han or Ai Wei Wei. The orientalism is more in terms of why it was appropriated in the first place.
In explaining [x], many Americans will be familiar with the sound from Spanish. If they aren’t, I’ve heard a lot of people cite German.
Your description makes me think of a uvular consonant.
Yeah, I agree the original skit/song is pretty terrifyingly orientalist, although it has lots of other problems, too…
GAC: Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew etc.) should also provide a familiar example. I have no experience with either Spanish or German, so it’s probably best that I refer to neither. I agree that uvular fits my description better, but then if you knew that, the description i gave isn’t for you.
Does anyone know of a site where I can find information on Arabic/Uyghur phonetic transcriptions? Or information on the script as well? Maybe some sort of site that teaches how to write it?
[…] or maybe it’s the recent promotion of the Uyghur word ياخشى / йахши (pronounced /jɑxʃɪ/, or 亚克西 in Chinese). Regardless, it’s another language that I’m looking at right […]
Aaron: The easiest thing, depending on where you are, is to learn the Arabic script or the version used for Persian/Farsi. Then from there learn the few extra letters they use in Uyghur. Otherwise Wikpedia is a good place to start.
I have some transcription stuff at my xiaoerjing site including a script to convert between the Latin alphabet and Arabic script there as well. Shoot me an email with what you’re looking for and maybe I can send you in the right direction. kellenparker at gmail dot com.