Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

mankurt

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables
mankurt
IPA
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A person with a lost or degraded cultural and ethnic identity or awareness about his or her ancestry, especially due to being affected by a dominant culture.

Derogatory

Example Sentences

Etymology

Borrowed from Russian манкурт (mankurt). Coined by the Kyrgyz author Chinghiz Aitmatov in his novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980), in which people are turned into docile servants (mankurts) by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun; the skins tighten as they dry, causing brain damage, such that the mankurts no longer recognize their name, family, or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being". However, this term quickly became popular in the sense of "rootless person who forgot their cultural and ethnic identity," in the languages of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

Usage

Inflected Forms

mankurts (plural)

Frequently Paired Words

banana Macaulay's children West Briton

Questions

What does mankurt mean?
A person with a lost or degraded cultural and ethnic identity or awareness about his or her ancestry, especially due to being affected by a dominant culture.
Where does mankurt come from?
Borrowed from Russian манкурт (mankurt). Coined by the Kyrgyz author Chinghiz Aitmatov in his novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (1980), in which people are turned into docile servants (mankurts) by exposing camel skin wrapped around their heads to the heat of the sun; the skins tighten as they dry, causing brain damage, such that the mankurts no longer recognize their name, family, or tribe—"a mankurt did not recognise himself as a human being". However, this term quickly became popular in the sense of "rootless person who forgot their cultural and ethnic identity," in the languages of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

How to pronounce mankurt

  1. Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “mankurt”.
  2. Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
  3. Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “mankurt”.
  4. Repeat and practice — Say “mankurt” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.