I am planning on visiting Kyrgyzstan, and I was wondering what I should do to prepare myself to communicate with the locals. I don't know of any of the major language learning software groups that have a specific kirgiz program, so I'm not sure where to go.

http://www.travelphrases.info/languages/kyrgyz.htm
http://www.sras.org/english_kyrgyz_phrasebook

Why on earth are you going there?

russian

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/Kyrgyzstan/TravelGuide-Kyrgyzstan.html

I'm from Pakistan, but I am familiar with customs of Kyrgyzstan people. Please ask me about anything you have questions about?

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/Kyrgyzstan/TravelGuide-Kyrgyzstan.html


like somebody would ask for a guide

I've always found that by reading about a place before I travel there makes it easier to get along with the people who live there. In that link it has many details about customs and habits of the peoples living there and would be of great help to those visiting there for the first time. If you don't want to read about it that's fine, perhaps others do.

Some general guidelines:

-Use your right hand to eat, drink, shake people's hands, accept items/money, give items/money. Your left hand is considered unclean.

-Do not stare into people's eyes, It is considered rude. Do not look too long at women if you are man.

-You may notice that that men and women are segregated when guests are around, this is normal.

-Do not walk into a person's house with your shoes on. If you see a pile of shoes, take your shoes off there. Be careful your shoes do not get stolen.

-If you offer someone something, you might have to insist several times. To refuse a gift for a few times is considered very polite.

-#1 rule: Do not argue with locals, if they tell you something you disagree with, just ignore it, do not argue. It's considered very rude.

"shocked" he asked about the language, People !

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1905974&postcount=8

Most of that sounds like most asian cultures that I know of, though I cannot eat with my right hand, but the rest of that stuff I can do with the right hand.

Kirgiz isn't Russian though, but it does have the same letter system, thanks to Stalin. I do plan on spending at least some time on learning basic Russian before I go, but I'd like to speak to the turkic people and not just the slavic ones.

One of my reasons for wanting to go there is research, as I am wanting to do graduate work on central asia and there isn't much of shit published in English on the region. Maybe by going there I can find some useful literature, and it just seems wrong to want to study/write about a place that I've never bothered visiting. Also, the school that I wish to be accepted into says that the more time that I spend outside of the USA, and the more languages that I learn other than English, the further up the admissions list that I'll be bumped.

"shocked" he asked about the language, People !

At the very top of the page I linked there's a search box that you can enter the word"language" and it will tell you about the language there.

At the very top of the page I linked there's a search box that you can enter the word"language" and it will tell you about the language there.

:eek: i have entered the "language"- it says: destination not found !!!

:eek: i have entered the "language"- it says: destination not found !!!

We have found the problem and it is YOU! :p

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1905974&postcount=8

Most of that sounds like most asian cultures that I know of, though I cannot eat with my right hand, but the rest of that stuff I can do with the right hand.

Kirgiz isn't Russian though, but it does have the same letter system, thanks to Stalin. I do plan on spending at least some time on learning basic Russian before I go, but I'd like to speak to the turkic people and not just the slavic ones.

One of my reasons for wanting to go there is research, as I am wanting to do graduate work on central asia and there isn't much of shit published in English on the region. Maybe by going there I can find some useful literature, and it just seems wrong to want to study/write about a place that I've never bothered visiting. Also, the school that I wish to be accepted into says that the more time that I spend outside of the USA, and the more languages that I learn other than English, the further up the admissions list that I'll be bumped.

Kirgiz are Muslim and Turkish. The cultural traits mentioned are Turkish and Muslim.

You are not able to eat with right hand because you are left handed?

Kirgiz isn't Russian though, but it does have the same letter system, thanks to Stalin.Kyrgyz is a Turkic language. The paradigm proposed by Johanson puts it in the Kipchak group of that family. That makes its closest relatives (among languages we're likely to have heard of, anyway): Kazakh, Tatar and Kipchak-Uzbek.

The table in the Wikipedia article on Turkic languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages) suggests that similarities in vocabulary are much tighter than in other well-studied language families such as Indo-European and Semitic. If you know Turkish, Azeri or Uighur, I suspect you'll pick up Kyrgyz a lot faster than a Norwegian learning Bengali or an Arab learning Hebrew.

If you don't know one of those languages, well... consider the analogy of a Norwegian learning Hebrew. :)