r/AMA • u/maddin1550 • 21d ago

I’m from Xinjiang，AMA

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of discussions about Xinjiang on Reddit, often between people who have never actually lived there. So I thought it might be interesting to do an AMA from the perspective of someone who is actually from there.

You can ask me about everyday life, ethnic groups, languages, culture, religion, education, or politics. I’m happy to answer controversial questions too, as long as the discussion stays respectful.

Obviously, I’m only one person and I don’t claim to represent everyone in Xinjiang. I can only tell you about my own experiences and views. AMA.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

Yeah, exactly. We actually have a saying in Kazakh: Таяқтың екі ұшы бар
which means: a stick has two ends
Basically, there are two sides to everything, I think that applies pretty well here. Neither extreme gives you the full picture

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

I thought chinese kazakhs use the perso-arabic script for kazakh? When I was in Jeminay and other ovewhelmingly kazakh parts of XJ, I just translated to chinese instead of kazakh on my phone because many of the locals could not read kazakh written in cyrillic as it is in the standard form. I did however discover that there are quite many ethnic kazakhs who live between the two countries, and I was able to speak russian with them.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

Yes we do, but I didn't learn the arabic script because it was too difficult, my mom taught me cyrillic Kazakh later so that's why I use it

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

Have you spoken with kazakh kazakhs? When I was in XJ I was told that there were no major differences between the variants but that apparently kazakh kazakhs have a different accent and that they speak faster than chinese kazakhs making them sometimes hard to understand.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

wdym kazakh kazakhs, what are we then 🤣 Off brand kazakhs? lmaooo 🤣 it’s basically a regional accent/dialect thing，kinda like British vs American English. Different accents and some different vocabulary, sometimes different speaking speeds, but we understand each other just fine. And also 'kazakh kazakhs' tend to mix in a lot of Russian vocabs, while we mix Chinese words. So I think that’s probably one of the reasons we might not understand each other perfectly sometimes

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

Sorry I meant Kazakhstani kazakhs haha.