While sitting in a bookstore reading a travel guide to Kyrgyzstan, I was struck by the following sentence from the list of useful Kyrgyz phrases: Please write it down: Жазып берсеңчи /dʒʲazɨp berseŋči/. Here we have a construction where the request is expressed as a converb followed by the imperative of the verb ‘to give’. [...]
In the introduction to their Italian translation of the Manas epic (Manas: L’epopea del poplo della steppa, Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1997), Arnaldo Alberti and Begaim Nasserdinova contrast the Kyrgyz recitation of epic with that of other Turks by noting that the Tatars accompany recitation with a chatigan, a sort of zither. Their source here is [...]
Last October I wrote a post on some odd words attributed to the Kalmaks in the Kyrgyz poem Kökötöydün ašı. The manuscript of the Manas epic prepared by Wilhelm Radloff features these and more in a passage where the Kyrgyz lord Kökčö, hearing that Manas has moved his camp towards him, tries to gather intelligence [...]
Arthur T. Hatto is an interesting character. Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of London, his interest in epic led him to study, of all things, Turkic linguistics. He edited two important collections of Kirghiz poetry. The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-khan (Oxford University Press, 1979) is an edition of a manuscript prepared [...]
If you are even in the least bit interested in Central Asian languages and cultures, I cannot recommend enough the ‘Music of Central Asia’ recordings out on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, a joint effort of the Smithsonian Institution and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Each installment features authentic folk traditions played by enthuasiastic and still [...]