The Bashkir language (Bashqort tele) belongs to the Kypchak-Bolgar group of the Turkic languages of the Uralic family.

The Bashkir language is the language of the native population of Republic of Bashkortostan. The number of Bashkir speaking people including the CIS countries according to the census totals 2.500.000. Outside the Republic the Bashkirs inhabit the Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Perm, Kurgan, Samara, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen regions. Republics of Tatarstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other, the city of Moscow...

Bashkort (Bashqord) is the original name of the Bahkir people dating back to the 7-th century. Since that time the ethnonym Bashkort has become unanimously accepted. The Bashkorts occur from Kypchaks (Qypsaktar), former Sarmatians (Scythians), which lived in southern Ural, arlier than 5000 BC. They have inhabited and constructed the union of tribes on the Southern Uralse in 2-3 AD. There exist a great many hypotheses on the origin of the ethnonym Bashkort , the most accepted being the following versions: a) Bas+kor+t "principal tribe, people;  b)"Bash+ qOrd "Head Order".

The ferst written language based upon the Runic. The Arabic script started spreading after introducing Islam in the 10th century. The Traditional written language based on old Ural (old Turki) script came into use in 15-16th centuries. The Bashkir written language performed the functions on the basis of the Arabic script till 1928 when it was substituted by the Latin letters. In 1940 under Stalin's order, the new alphabet based on Cyril was generally adopted. The Modern Bashkir language has been formed in the end 19 - the beginning of 20 centuries. The main role in the development of the Modern Bashkir language belongs to prominent scholars, such as M.Umetbayev, M.Akmulla, M.Gafuri, Sh.Babich and others.

The government of the precedent Putin has forbidden in 2002  to all native peoples of the Russian Federation to use the Roman alphabet type for theirs national languages, but last years, some enthusiasts conduct informal searches of creation of the New Roman Bashkir alphabet see the Bashkir alphabet "BashLa".

The main role in the development of the Modern Bashkir language belongs to prominent scholars, such as M.Umetbayev, M.Akmulla, M.Gafuri, Sh.Babich and others.

The Bashkir national language consists of 3 dialects:

southern, eastern and northern-western. A number of RAD institutes and institutions of higher education carry out research work on the Bashkir language - The Institute of History, language and literature of the Ufa Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences, the Bashkir Institution of Education Development, the Bashkir branch of RAD Institute of national schools of RF being among them. The chairs of the Bashkir and general linguistics of the BSU, the chair of the Bashkir philology in Sterlitamak Teachers Training Institute, the chair of Turcology of Chelyabinsk university, the chair of Bashkir philology of Orenburd State Institute are also involved in study of the Bashkir language.

The Bashkir language alonside with other Turkic and Uralic languages is investigated abroad, namely at Turk Dili Kurumu Scientific Society (Ankara, Turkey), the chair of Tur-kology (Berlin University), the chair of Uralic languages (Seged University, Hungary).

THE PRINCIPAL LEXICAL AND GRAMMATIC FEATURES OF BASHKIR LANGUAGE

The Bashkir language belongs to the synharmonic type of languages as it is subjected to the strict law of synharmonism depending on the first syllable of the word, for ex. keshe (êåøå) "a man", ataj (àòàé) 'Father', esej (ýñýé) 'Mother', tezelesh (òýçýëýø) 'construction', korolosh (êîðîëîø) 'building', êûëûñ 'a sword', etc. The synharmonic type of language determines the phonomopphological structure of the form of the word: àuyl ' village', àuyl-dan 'from a village', ken 'a day', KEN-DAR 'days' and so on.

In accordance with the typology classification The Bashkir language is thought to belong to the agglutinative languages: wordbuilding and wordchanging affixes succesively join the root (stem) of the word. Each has the only grammar meaning. For instance, ÀUYL-DÀ—GhY-LAR-ZAN 'from villade dwellers.'

All nous connect the plural suffixes: kitap-tar, baqsa-lar, tau-zar, ishek-tär, kejem-där.

The predicate affixes are the same either for verbs or nouns: bez studentbýz "We are students"; bez ukýjbýz (áåç óêûéáûç)."We study".

The conversion (transition of one part of speech into another) is highly developed in the Bashkir language: jylmajyu (éûëìàéûó) - 'to smile', - jylmajyu  éûëìàéûó 'smile', jazyusy (ÿçûóñû) 'writing' - jazyusy (ÿçûóñû) 'writer', kart (kapò) 'old' - kart (kapò) 'old man'.

THE LEXICAL COMPOSITION OF THE BASHKIR LANGUAGE

More than two-thirds of the Bashkir lexicon belongs to the common Turkic lexical layer. The considerable part of the Bashkir lexicon is composed of the loan-words. For instance, about 20 % of the Bashkir lexicon is borrowed from the West European countries (kosmos, foto, autobus). About 12 % of the borrowed lexical units are taken from the Arabic and Persian languages (kitab, admiral, azat).

In 1999 the law "On languages of the peoples of the Republic of Bashkortostan" was adopted. The Bashkir language together with the Russian language received the status of the state languages. The Law will provide the development of the social functions of the Bashkir language as one of the state languages of the Republic of Bashkortostan.

The Contemporary Bashkir language represents the highly developed literary language. The Modern Bashkir Linguistics has achieved much success in investigation ' the urgent problems of the Bashkir language.