Мен сулойм Кыргызча!

Pictured on the right: My fellow language class volunteers on a street in our training village.

I have Kyrgyz language class 4-5 hours, 4 times per week. I love it. Language was never my strong suit, but it’s impossible not to pick up having the benefit of very small classes (I’m in the largest at just 6 people), excellent teachers, and fun, game-focused lessons. Now with the weather at a nice sunny 70 degrees most days, we spend a lot of time outside playing charades or language races of some sort or other. Of course, a little homeschooling over chai after class and in every interaction with my host parents (which often resembles the charades we play in class) doesn’t hurt. It is amazing just how much one can communicate through action and some choice words. The morning after the revolution, one volunteer’s parents summed up the national situation to him as: “Bakiyev,” running fingers, “bel-baim” (I don’t know).

But the pace of actual language acquisition has been astounding. In just the first week of classes we learned survival Kyrgyz and the present, past and future tenses (ok, so present and future are conjugated the same) along with a slew of grammar. In week 6, I was able to test at low-mid intermediate level, the target for the end of training. This was no great feat; I was in the middle of my class (our brightest student almost got advanced).

I estimate that we’ve learned more than a year of college-level language in 8 weeks. That is, it’s been taught; I’m not claiming it’s all sunk in. But getting paid (granted, $1 a day, literally) to learn a language is definitely the way to go.

I consider myself very lucky to learning Kyrgyz for a few reasons. One, it is infinitely easier than Russian (words are shorter, grammar is much simpler); two, being the native language here, Kyrgyz speakers are more greatly respected—and get better bargains—in the rural areas of the country; and three, if you know me, you surely know I don’t pursue languages that are spoken in more than one country ;) So without further ado, a snapshot of the language that has intrigued and befuddled me for the past two months.

Kyrygz is a Turkic language closely related to the other Central Asian languages of Kazak, Uzbek, Turkmen, and Turkish itself. I believe it was first writen using the Arabic script in the 20th century, then in a quick Soviet-instituted succession, tried the Latin script for about a decade before adopting the current Cyrillic alphabet (has a few modifications from Russian) in the 1930's. Fortunately for its learners, its words sound almost exactly like they're spelled. Learning the new alphabet was not the trick part. Learning to correctly pronounce vowels we don't have in English certainly was. (To those of you who made fun of me for going to a country without vowels in its name, I challenge you to come learn all the vowels in its alphabet.)

The structure of the sentence is a lot like Latin; the verb is at the end and each verb has a complicated system of endings depending on person and formality. There are no genders however (thank goodness!) and words tend to be very short and made of recognizable roots. In addition, Kyrygz has something called “vowel shifts,” which means that their 8 vowels have distinct parterns (pairs, actually) or arrangement in a given word. Kyrgyz uses suffixes to indicate everything from verb conjugation and possession to location and direction. However, unlike English, these suffixes are not fixed add-ons. The vowels in each change according to the last vowel in the word's stem and whether the suffix rule requires a right or left shift. The actual rules were first writen by a Kyrgyzstan Peace Corp volunteer years ago; if you asked a Kyrygz person about the rules, they'd have no idea what you were talking about. I'd give examples, but without a proper chart and understanding all suffix forms, they wouldn't make sense.

Missing a vowel change is perhaps the easiest way to confuse meaning in Kyrygz. My favorite example being Жокшыраак (“Jock-shuh uh-rock”) and Жокшы араак (“Jock-shuh ah-rock”), which mean “better” and “good vodka” respectively. There are many others: house (“eau-ee”) and cow (“uh-ee”); to think (“oi-lohn”), to learn (“eu-lohn”), and to marry a woman (“eu-rohn”); meat (“et”) and dog (“eat”); husband (“kuuyon”) and rabbit (“koyuhn”)—I’ve pretty much given up on this one, and now call husbands “loves” (“suuyon).

Like in English, there are also words that have many definitions. Тарт, for instance, means “to draw” and “to photograph.” Used with the cigarettes, it means “to smoke” and in another manifestation, “to snore.” Just imagine the possibilities with compound verbs…

Even when I know the right words, they don't always come out right. Once intending to tell my sister Alena I was going to my friend's house to study with her, I accidentally told her I planned to sleep with my friend. (Alena has a fantastic sense of humor, speaks almost fluently in English, and finds most things I say hilarious; this bodes very well for me.)

As you can imagine, even when the correct words are found, meaning can be elusive. While watching Shrek with her family, my friend Deborah used a dictionary to piece together a translation of “If you break a mirror, you'll have 7 years bad luck“, and mysteriously all the mirrors in the house had disappeared the next morning. A week later she managed to work into conversation the virtues of mirrors, and the next day they reappeared.

I think so much of a language can be revealed through its roots and stems, and I can’t help but attempting to derive such lexical-ancestry and meaning from Kyrgyz words. (Yes, I have been known to read the OED for fun. Unfortunately our PC-issued Kyrgyz-English dictionary is so inadequate and often blatantly wrong, it’s thought most useful as future kindling). In Pidgin, my lexical sleuthing was pretty easy as the words were largely derived from English; in Kyrgyz, I imagine my conjectures are less likely to be correct, but some are obvious. First, the word for girl (кыз, pronounced “kuhz”) is at the root of many words, including “jealous,” “red,” “blush,” “beet,” in which I can find some obvious relation. However, “interesting” (“kuhz-uk-too”)-—and it’s antonym?

On a cultural note, a girlfriend is can be translated literally as “the girl you talk to,” which makes a lot of sense when you consider that the appropriate way to date is to in Kyrgyzstan apparently is to take a girl on walks and respectfully converse. I found this out with unintended personal experience; after picking up the habit of taking walks around the village with one of my male volunteer friends, I found myself facing inquiries from other host parents. Of course, denying the accusations was also foiled by language. Жигит, which is the best translation of “boyfriend” also means any male friend that is older than 20—so go figure.

My friend Josh clued me into some other interesting lexical-ancestry last week. He’s had the benefit of studying 6 other languages, so we turn to him as the resident linguist. In this case, his Arabic came in handy. Apparently Kyrgyz has taken quite a few words relating to learning from its Arabic relative, including “school” (“mektep”—from the Arabic for place to learn) and “teacher” (magaleem”—from one who gives knowledge).

There are also some nice distinctions that Kyrygz makes, that English doesn't. For instance, if you buy something, you can «сатып бер» (buy it to give to someone) «сатып ал» (buy it to take for yourself), but you would never just «сатып». Also, when you are a guest at someone else's house you are a «конок», but guests at your own house are «конок кут» (literally guests that “wait“). Both interesting distinctions. On the other hand, I struggle to find the necessity in using карендаш for a boy's younger brother vs. синди for a girl’s younger brother (there is no distinction for younger sisters)—especially when карендаш is so close to карандаш (pencil).

While I practice these words everyday with my family, I must say having excellent English speakers to default to (namely, my sisters) has been a crutch. Technically, we take an LPI proficiency exam at the end of PST to that we need to pass before we’re sent to site (I’m not worried)—but the real test, as I see it, will be my next host family. Fortunately that charades for most human needs are universal…