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Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken mostly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, is at present undergoing changes in usage. The spread of Standard Chinese promoted by the national government and the growing Han population are contributing to the Sinicization of Uyghur and shaping new language practices. Language-related issues are therefore a common topic in the Uyghur community, in intellectual discourse as well as in daily conversation. This article analyses a Uyghur comedy sketch entitled Chüshenmidim, ‘I don’t understand’, whose main theme is the Sinicization of the Uyghur language. In this analysis, I focus on parts of the sketch that reveal Uyghurs’ attitudes towards the emergent code switching, the use of Chinese loanwords, and the value of the mother tongue for identity formation.
