Didn't You Know? Yoda was Kyrgyz!

George Lucas doesn't have me fooled. I know Yoda wasn't from some distant planet, but actually from Kyrgyzstan. I know some of you may think Kyrgyzstan is a distant planet, but I assure you it does actually sit on our own planet Earth.

Okay, so maybe Yoda could have been Uzbek or Kazakh or from any other Turkic language-speaking ethnic group, too. But if you were to translate Kyrgyz directly into English, it would sound exactly like Yoda, I'm telling you.

You see, in Kyrgyz, the verb always comes at the end of the sentence. So, for example, "I go to school" in Kyrgyz would be, "Men mektepke baram," which literally translated is, "I to school go." Sound like Yoda to you? For simple sentences like this, it's easy enough; and it's true that after a while, you get used to the sound of things to the point that "Men baram mektepke" would never come out of your mouth because it just sounds and feels so horribly wrong. But with complex sentences, this construction can be a real problem for English speakers (namely, me). You can't just let words come out of your mouth as you are thinking in Engliish, but have to finish the whole thought in your head, twist it around, and then translate it into Kyrgyz. For example, one time I told my host sister, "When I was in Bishkek, one man asked me if I was Turkish." And it took me about 3 minutes to get the sentence out in Kyrgyz, which most literally translated to English becomes, "I in Bishkek at being, one man from me you Turkish asked." Whew! That about killed my mental energy for the day.

Most days, I really enjoy learning and studying Kyrgyz. I think it's a fascinating language, and I like analyzing grammar and meaning, and the sense of accomplishment when I read or hear something I can understand. In some ways, Kyrgyz is an incredibly easy language. For instance, using the Cyrillic alphabet, it is completely phonetic. Every letter has one sound and one sound alone. While some of those letters may be difficult to pronounce, at least you know it's not gonna change up on you in the next word. Kyrgyz grammar is also very simple. There are zero--count them, zero--irregular verbs. Praise Jesus! Learn a new verb and you can conjugate it any which way you like. Kyrgyz also has no gender, no articles, no "to be" verb in the present tense, no silly helping verbs for questions or negative sentences. So from this perspective, no, Kyrgyz is not difficult at all.

But in some ways, Kyrgyz is incredibly difficult because it is just so different from English. Practically nothing can be literally translated, but you have to change the way you think and the way you listen. They call Kyrgyz "The Language of Endings" because what could be 5 words in English is only 1 word in Kyrgyz with a series of endings. For instance, Kyrgyz doesn't really use prepositions. To say "at, on, in" you add one ending to the nouns; to say "to, for," another ending; "from," yet another. There isn't really a word for "please" in Kyrgyz; instead, you add an ending to the verb indicating a polite request, which changes depending on whether you are talking to a person who's older than you or younger than you, or to a group of people. To change the tense of a verb, it's an ending; to make a question, it's an ending; to negate a verb, it's an ending; to put something in the passive voice, it's an ending. Just one word tells you so much, which makes Kyrgyz a very efficient language, but is not like English at all. We like to add words to our sentences, not endings to our words.

Another interesting thing about Kyrgyz is that there aren't very many verb tenses (unlike English, which my host sister tells me has 16), but this can decieve you into thinking the language is easier than it really is. Instead of our complex tense system, Kyrgyz has what are called "complex verbs." Basically, you put 2 verbs together at the end of a sentence and the second verb adds a different shade of meaning to the first. For instance, I could say, "Men kutem," which means, "I will wait," or I could say "Men kutup turam" (I/wait/stand), which means, "I will wait while standing." Kyrgyz people hardly ever use just one verb. Another example is with the word "forget." I could say, "Unutum," which means, "I forgot," but no one ever says this. Instead, they'll more likely say, "Unutup kaldim." "Kal" literally translates "stay," but adding this verb means I forgot in the past and I still don't remember now. There are several of these verbs that can be added to other verbs, and it's my conclusion that this is the Kyrgyz substitute for not having a more complex tense system!

I know I have been going on and on, but I hope you will bear with me a little longer (or you don't have to read this at all!). Another thing I've noticed about Kyrgyz is that many things we say in the present tense in English are said in the past tense in Kyrgyz. For instance, they say, "I didn't understand" instead of "I don't understand." "I was cold," instead of "I am cold." "Did you remember?" instead of "Do you remember?" My theory on why this is so is that it's related to the fact that there is no difference between the simple present and simple future tenses in Kyrgyz. "Baram" could mean "I go or "I wil go," depending on the context. So I'm guessing some things are put in the past tense so the listener isn't confused, thinking the action will happen in the future.

The final thing (at least, that I'm going to write about today :-)) that makes Kyrgyz challenging is that, as with all languages (I assume), different words are used to express the same ideas. I could translate something into Kyrgyz the way I say it in English, and the Kyrgyz person may understand it (or may not!), but it's just not the way they'd say it. And these are the things you have to learn by observation, not by memorizing grammar and vocabulary. For instance, in Kyrgyz, you don't arrive at a place, you arrive to a place; you don't believe in something, you believe to something; you aren't afraid of something, you're afraid from something; students don't take tests, they give them; teachers don't give tests, they take them; if I'm leaving school, I'm not going home, I'm leaving to home; if I'm at home talking about someone leaving school, he isn't leaving school, but going out from school; you don't go to the toilet, but you go out to the outside; you don't take a shower, you get into the shower, and even then, we all know that no one is getting into very many showers anyway!

So that is installment #1 of Lisa's Thoughts on Kyrgyz. Analyzing language is a fascinating thing, but it's a whole other thing to have that knowledge kick in when you're in an actual conversation. That's the struggle! For now, I know I probably sound like Yoda to Kyrgyz people 3/4 of the time...