The Representation of the Project for Explicit Orthographic Spelling of the Sounds /u/ and /i/ in the Context of Integration with World Languages (A Comparative Analysis of the Syllable Systems of the Kazakh and Chinese Languages)

The article examines the phonological and graphographic features of the sounds /u/ and /i/, which have remained a subject of debate in Kazakh linguistics for a century, with a comparative reference to data from the Chinese language. The aim of the article is to identify the risk that representing these sounds through six paired hieroglyphic combinations – /uu/, /üu/, /uyu/, /iu/, /y/, /iy/ – may alter the phonetic structure of the Kazakh language, making it resemble the syllabic Chinese language. To achieve this goal, four interrelated and complementary tasks were formulated, and the study was conducted in four stages. At the first stage, all 420 syllable types of the Chinese language were collected based on modern academic Chinese dictionaries. Among them, the types and number of syllables containing the sounds /u/ (u, w) and /i/ (i, y) were identified, after which a corresponding list was compiled. At this stage, quantitative, systematization, and compilation methods were used. At the second stage, the number of syllables that can be formed by the 28 native sounds of the Kazakh language according to six syllable models (V, VC, CV, CVC, VCC, CVCC) was determined mathematically. In addition, the number and types of syllables related to the sounds /u/ and /i/ were calculated, followed by the compilation of a detailed list. During these two stages, only the results were included in the article; information on the procedure, methods, and period of data collection was intentionally omitted. At the third stage, the graphic and phonetic characteristics of syllables associated with the sounds /u/ (u, w) and /i/ (i, y) in Kazakh and Chinese were compared in a table, and their features and similarities were identified. The historical-comparative method was applied at this stage. As a result, 27 syllables of the Kazakh language were found whose graphic structure fully corresponds to those of the Chinese language, which implies a potential risk of their pronunciation becoming similar to Chinese. At the final stage of the study, the risks and possibilities of the graphic representation of the sounds /u/ and /i/ in Kazakh were identified, conclusions were drawn, and the results were presented to the academic community. This study is the first to examine the historical connection between the Kazakh and Chinese languages, as well as the classification of syllables from the perspective of writing theory.

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