Turkic Branch of the Altaic Language Family

Introduction

Turkmen

Azerbaijani

Kyrgyz Man

Kyrgyz

Kazakh

Tatar

Turkic languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by people spread across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China. All Turkic languages show close similarities to each other in phonology, morphology, and syntax, though Chuvash, and Yakut differ considerably from the rest. The Turkic branch of the Altaic family is the largest of the three branches in terms of the number of languages and the number of speakers. It is commonly divided into the five groups based on their geographical location. Languages with over 50,000 speakers are listed below.

Southwestern (Oghuz)
Turkish (Ottoman Turkish)	61 million	Turkey
Khorasani Turkish	400,000	Iran
Balkan Gagauz Turkish	331,000	Turkey
Gagauz	173,000	Moldova
Azerbaijani South	24.4 million	Iran
Azerbaijani North	6 million	Azerbaijan
Turkmen	6.4 million	Turkmenistan
Qashka'i (Qashqai)	1.5 million	Iran
Northwestern (Kipchak)
Kazakh	8.2 million	Kazakhstan
Kyrgyz	3.1 million	Kyrgyzstan
Karakalpak	409,000	Uzbekistan
Nogai	68,000	Russia
Karachay-Balkar	241,000	Russia
Kumyk	282,000	Russia
Crimean Turkish	190,000	Uzbekistan
Tatar	1.6 million	Russia
Bashkir	1.9 million	Russia
Northeastern (Siberian)
Khakas	65,000	Russia
Tuvin	209,000	Russia
Yakut	363,000	Russia
Southeastern (Uyghur-Chagatai)
Uzbek Norhern	18.8 million	Uzbekistan
Uzbek Southern	1.5 million	Afghanistan
Uyghur	7.6 million	China
Salar	60,000	China
Strongly divergent
Chuvash	1.8 million	Russia (Volga region)

Yakut

Six Turkic languages have official status in their countries.

Country	Official language
Azerbaijan	Azerbaijani North
Kazakhstan	Kazakh (along with Russian)
Turkmenistan	Turkmen
Uzbekistan	Uzbek Norhern
Turkey	Turkish
Kyrgyzstan	Kyrgyz (along with Russian)

Dialects

Uzbek

Turkish languages are quite similar to each other linguistically. They form chains of dialects, with adjacent varieties being mutually intelligible. Only Chuvash, spoken in the mid Volga region, is quite different from the rest.

Structure

Sound System

Uyghur

The sound systems of Turkic languages share one common feature, namely, vowel harmony, a type of phonological process that involves constraints on what vowels may be found near each other. There are two kinds of vowels -- front vowels, which are produced at the front of the mouth, e.g., /i/, /e/, and back vowels, produced at the back of the mouth, e.g., /a/, /u/, /o/. Native Turkic words can contain only all front or all back vowels, and all suffixes and affixes must conform to the vowel of the syllable preceding them in the word. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation of the rest of the vowels in that word, e.g., in Turkish, ev- 'house + -ler 'plural' is evler 'houses', çocuk- 'child' + -ler 'plural' is çocuklar 'children'. In the first example, all vowels in evler are front vowels. In the second example, all vowels in çocuklar are back vowels.

Grammar

Chuvash
Chuvash

Tuvin Woman
Tuvin

All Turkic languages share certain common characteristics.

They are are agglutinative. An agglutinative language is one in which each affix typically represents one unit of meaning, e.g.,'past tense', 'plural', or 'masculine'. These affixes do not become fused with each other and do not change their form. They are simply added to each other in a string. For instance, in Turkish evlerimde 'in my houses' is composed of ev 'house,' ler ' plural suffix,' im ''my,' and de 'in.'
The word order in Turkic languages is typically Subject-Object-Verb.
Turkic language have a grammatical category of evidentiality that is required at all times. It indicates whether evidence exists for a given statement. These languages contrast direct information (reported directly) and indirect information (reported indirectly).

Vocabulary

Turkish Man
Turk

Turkic languages share a core of basic vocabulary. They have also borrowed extensively from Arabic and Persian, and more recently from European languages. Languages spoken on the territory of the former Soviet Union have a large number of Russian loanwords.

Below are numbers 1-10 in a sample of Turkic languages.

Turkic Numerals

Click here to hear the pronunciation of these numerals in Turkish, Turkmen, and Uzbek.

Writing

Turkish Newspaper

Orkhon Script

The Arabic script was generally used by all Turkic peoples until the early 1920s, when the Latin script began to be introduced to the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union. After 1939, the Latin script was almost completely replaced in the Soviet Union by modified forms of the Cyrillic alphabet. Turkey officially adopted a Latin script in 1928. Currently, the Arabic alphabet is used only by Turkic peoples living in China, Iran, and the Arab countries.

Latin-based	Turkish, Tatar
Cyrillic-based	Uzbek Northern, Chuvash, Tuvin, Yakut, Crimean Turkish, Karakalpak, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Bashkir
Arabic-based	Uzbek Southern
Arabic-, Cyrillic- and Latin-based	Uyghur, Azerbaijani South, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz
Latin- and Cyrillic-based	Azerbaijani North

The Orkhon script
The Orkhon inscriptions on 8th-century monuments are the earliest known samples of a Turkic alphabet. They were discovered in the valley of the Orhon River, in northern Mongolia, in 1889 and deciphered in 1893. The monuments were erected in honor of the Turkish prince Kul and his brother the emperor Bilge Khan. The text of the inscriptions describes the origin of the Turks, their subjugation by the Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge Khan. The Orkhon script is externally similar to the runic alphabet because both were chiselled on stone with a sharp instrument.

Resources

Click here to find out where Turkic languages are taught in the United States.
Click here to find materials for studying Turkic languages.

Online resources for the study of Turkic languages
Wikipedia article on Turkic languages
Classification of Turkic languages
SEELRC Webliographies for Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Turkish, , Turkmen
Orientaal's links to Turkic languages
Computing support for Turkic languages from U. of Pennsylvania

How difficult is it to learn Turkic languages?
All Turkic languages are considered to belong to Category II in terms of difficulty for speakers of English.

Click on the name of the language to learn more about it on this website

National Virtual Translation Center