Tumshuqese is one of those languages that lived quietly on the edge of history.
Tucked away in the western deserts of China, it was spoken, written, and eventually forgotten—until a few fragments resurfaced and left scholars scratching their heads.
Let’s unpack this tiny linguistic time capsule!
1. A Lost Iranian Language… Found in China?
That’s right—Tumshuqese is a Middle Iranian language that once thrived in what is now Xinjiang, China, specifically near the town of Tumshuq.
Though Iran is thousands of miles away, its linguistic influence reached deep into Central Asia through ancient migration and trade.
2. The Language with a Built-In Best Friend
Tumshuqese and Khotanese are so closely related that they’re often studied together. They both descended from a shared East Iranian parent language, likely spoken by a nomadic tribe that settled around the Tarim Basin during the first millennium BCE.
3. Just 14 Texts? Now That’s Rare
Only 14 Tumshuqese texts have been published, and they include legal contracts, sales documents, and fragments of Buddhist literature. The scarcity of materials makes Tumshuqese one of the most elusive Iranian languages to reconstruct.
4. Brahmi Script with a Twist
The Tumshuqese script is a modified version of North Turkestan Brahmi, similar to what was used for Tocharian. It added nine unique characters not found in Tocharian, and some of their exact phonetic values still aren’t fully understood.
5. Meet the Karmavacana: A Linguist’s Lifeline
The Karmavacana text is the most important Tumshuqese document—it’s bilingual, with a Tocharian original and a Tumshuqese translation. It provides essential comparative material and is the only text that helps cross-check meanings with confidence.
6. Retroflex? Not in This Phonetic Party
While Khotanese embraced retroflex consonants as part of its core sound system, Tumshuqese did not—at least not natively. The absence of retroflex sounds suggests a slightly more conservative or regionally distinct phonology.
7. Grammar? Work in Progress
Many grammatical features in Tumshuqese, such as case endings, declension patterns, and verb forms, are still not fully understood. The limited number of texts and the variation in spelling make things even more complicated.
8. Let’s Talk Numbers (Backwards)
Tumshuqese formed numbers like “twenty-five” using the format “five-and-twenty” (patsyo bistyo). This stands in contrast to Khotanese, which used a more Sanskrit-influenced structure with the decade first, showing a rare case of sibling languages doing things differently.
9. Minimal Vowels, Maximum Mystery
Only ii and a were consistently marked as long vowels in Tumshuqese texts. Linguists believe other vowel lengths existed but weren’t noted, which makes pronunciation and phonology something of a guessing game.
10. A Grammar Time Capsule
Tumshuqese pronouns such as asu (I), ta (you), and mva (we) preserve forms that are more archaic than those in Khotanese. Some even resemble Old Iranian reconstructions more closely, giving the language a time-travel quality.
11. The Verb “To Be” Wasn’t Boring
Tumshuqese used vat- as the past stem of “to be/become,” a form it inherited from Old Iranian būta. While many languages simplify auxiliary verbs over time, Tumshuqese preserved complex forms that express tense, aspect, and voice.
12. Feminine, Masculine… and Maybe Neuter?
Masculine and feminine genders are attested in Tumshuqese noun forms. There’s some suggestion that neuter might have existed too, but the evidence is inconclusive due to the small number of examples.
13. More Than Just One Script
Some Tumshuqese documents, like parts of the Karmavacana, are written in formal Brahmi, while others use a cursive variant. This stylistic range may reflect different scribal traditions or periods.
14. Adverbs? Rare, But Not Impossible
Words like mara (“here”) and kari (“at all”) show that Tumshuqese could express direction and emphasis, even if it didn’t have a wide range of adverbs. Most of the adverbial system seems to mirror what we see in Khotanese.
15. This Language Is a Linguist’s Treasure Hunt
Each Tumshuqese document is like a puzzle piece from a 2,000-year-old jigsaw. With so little material, every fragment gets scrutinized, retranslated, and debated—and discoveries could still rewrite the story.
Hey fellow Linguaholics! It’s me, Marcel. I am the proud owner of linguaholic.com. Languages have always been my passion and I have studied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and Sinology at the University of Zurich. It is my utmost pleasure to share with all of you guys what I know about languages and linguistics in general.