Notes on Iradi grammar and spelling

A short guide for readers of the dictionary, after the department's Descriptive Grammar of the Iradi Language (TSU Press, 2023).

The alphabet

Iradi has been written in the Latin alphabet since 1992. The 1995 Latin Orthography Revision gave it its present form of 32 letters, confirmed by the Language and Education Reform Act of 1997:

A Ä B C Ç D E F G H I İ J K L M N Ñ O Ö P Q R S Ş T U Ü V X Y Z

• Dotless ı (capital I) is the back vowel of kız “girl”; dotted i (capital İ) is the vowel of til “language”.
• ç, ş and ñ are the sounds the press writes ch, sh and ng; j is the sound of English j, pronounced as in French jour on the northern steppe.
• c (/ts/), f, h, v, x and ä occur mainly in borrowed words; q only in a few established names.
• Long vowels are written double: too “mountain”, jayloo “summer pasture”.

Vowel harmony

The vowels of endings follow the last vowel of the word in backness and rounding, and many endings change their first consonant after the word's last sound. The plural ending has eight forms: at “horse” → attar, kol “hand” → koldor, üy “house” → üylör, kız “girl” → kızdar, eneler “mothers”.

Nouns

Case	Ending	at “horse”
Nominative	—	at
Genitive	-nın	attın “of the horse”
Dative	-ga	atka “to the horse”
Accusative	-nı	attı “the horse” (object)
Locative	-da	atta “on the horse”
Ablative	-dan	attan “from the horse”

Possession is shown on the thing possessed: atım “my horse”, atı “his or her horse”, attarıbız “our horses”. Two nouns form a name with the possessive ending on the second: Irad tili “the Iradi language”, çek ara ötkölü “border crossing”.

Verbs

Verbs are listed as stems. Endings follow in a fixed order: negation -ba-, tense, person. Men atka mindim “I mounted the horse”; Atam Talasta jaşayt “My father lives in Talas”; Irad satılbayt “Irad is not for sale”. The past in -dı reports what the speaker saw or knows; the past in -gan what was heard or inferred; the highland and epic past in -ptır what is told.

Making words

New words are formed with suffixes: -çı for a person's trade (eerçi “saddler”), -lık for qualities and fields (azatlık “freedom”, eerçilik “saddlery”), -kana for places (dariykana “pharmacy”, oorukana “hospital”), -ça for a manner or language (Iradça).

Dialects

The standard follows the speech of the middle Talas valley. Dialect labels in the dictionary: Nurzhan (urban speech with Russian words, Russoça), highland (Talas Alatau and Chatkal), steppe and Karatau, Fergana Rim, church (the liturgical register) and Keñsuu (an extinct dialect of the Keñ-Suu valley).