Turkic languages

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Turkic
Geographic distribution:	Originally from Western China to Siberia and Eastern Europe
Genetic classification:	Altaic[1] (controversial)  Turkic
Subdivisions:	Southwestern (Oghuz Turkic) Northwestern (Kypchak Turkic) Southeastern (Uyghur Turkic) Northeastern (Siberian Turkic) Oghur Turkic Arghu Turkic
Countries and autonomous subdivisions where a Turkic language has official status

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are traditionally considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.^[1][2]

Turkic languages are spoken by some 180 million people as a native language;^[3] and the total number of Turkic speakers is about 200 million, including speakers as a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers.^[2]

[edit] Characteristics

See also: Altaic languages

The characteristic features of the Turkic languages are vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of noun classes or grammatical gender. Subject Object Verb word order is universal within the family. All of these distinguishing characteristics are shared with the Mongolic and Tungusic language families, as well as with the Korean language, which are by some linguists considered to be genetically linked with the Turkic languages in the proposed Altaic language family, a language family rejected by some linguists though plainly accepted in the Voegelin & Voegelin classification (1977:18-19).^[4]

[edit] History

The geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia spreads from Turkey in the West to the North-East of Siberia (see picture in the box on the right above).^[5]

Distribution of the Altaic languages across Eurasia. The inclusion of Japanese and Korean, and to a lesser degree the existence of a single Altaic language family, is controversial.

See also: Proto-Turkic language, Turkic peoples, and Turkic migration

[edit] Early written records

The first established records of the Turkic languages are the 8th century Orkhon inscriptions by the Göktürks, recording the Old Turkic language, which were discovered in 1889 in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia. The Compendium of the Turkic Dialects ( Divânü Lügati't-Türk), written during the 11th century by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and also includes the first known map of the Turkic speakers' geographical distribution. It mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family.^[6]

The Codex Cumanicus (12th - 13th centuries) concerning the Northwestern branch is another early linguistic manual, between Kipchak language and Latin, used by the Catholic missionaries sent to the Western Cumans inhabiting a region corresponding to present-day Hungary and Romania. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to today's Chuvash language, are dated to 13th - 14th centuries.

[edit] Geographical expansion and development

With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th - 11th centuries), Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, stretching from Siberia (the Sakha Republic) to the Mediterranean (Seljuk Turks). Various elements from the Turkic languages have passed into Hungarian, Persian, Urdu, Russian, Chinese and to a lesser extent, Arabic.^[7]

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

[edit] Classification

For centuries, the Turkic speaking peoples have migrated extensively and intermingled continuously, and their languages have been influenced mutually and through contact with the surrounding languages, especially the Iranian, Slavic, and Mongolic languages.^[8] This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, and as a result, there exist several systems to classify the Turkic languages. The modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich (1922)^[9] and are mainly based on the development of *d. However, there are still many elements of questioning for which ongoing research has not yet found an adequate solution.

The Turkic languages may be divided into six branches (Johanson 1998):^[10]

1. Southwestern (Oghuz Turkic)
2. Northwestern (Kypchak Turkic)
3. Southeastern (Uyghur Turkic)^[11]
4. Northeastern (Siberian Turkic)
5. Oghur Turkic
6. Arghu Turkic

In this classification, Oghur Turkic is also referred to as Lir-Turkic and the other branches ar subsumed under the title of Shaz-Turkic or Common Turkic. It is not clear when these two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged.^[12]

With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the Northeastern, Kyrgyz-Kypchak and Arghu (Khalaj) groups as East Turkic.^[13]

Geographically and linguistically, the languages of Northwestern, and Southeastern subgroup belong to the central Turkic languages, while the Northeastern and Khalaj languages are the so-called peripheral languages.

[edit] Classification Schema

The following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages:^[10]

• Rhoticisation, e.g. in the last consonant of the word for "nine" *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, which exhibits /z/. In this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/ in this branch.^[14]
• Intervocalic *d, e.g. in the second consonant in the word for "foot" *hadaq
• Word-final -G, e.g. in the word for "mountain" *tāğ
• Suffix-final -G, e.g. in the suffix *lIG, in e.g. *tāğlığ

Additional isoglosses include:

• Preservation of word initial *h, e.g. in the word for "foot" *hadaq
  • This separates Khalaj as a peripheral language
• Denasalisation of palatal *ń, e.g. in the word for "moon", *ań

*In the standard Istanbul dialect of Turkish, the ğ in dağ and dağlı is not realized as a consonant, but as a slight lengthening of the preceding vowel.

[edit] Members

The following table is based upon the classification scheme presented by Lars Johanson (1998)^[15]

[edit] Vocabulary comparison

The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family (about 60 words). Note that empty cells do not imply that a particular language is lacking a word to describe the concept, but rather that the word for the concept in that language is formed from another stem and is not a cognate with the other words in the row. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, and so the "common meaning" given is only approximate. In some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language. Forms are given in native Latin orthographies unless otherwise noted.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Baskakov, N.A. 1962, 1969. Introduction to the study of the Turkic languages. Moscow. (In Russian)
• Boeschoten, Hendrik & Lars Johanson. 2006. Turkic languages in contact. Turcologica, Bd. 61. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3447052120
• Clausen, Gerard. 1972. An etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Deny, Jean et al. 1959-1964. Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• Johanson, Lars & Éva Agnes Csató (ed.). 1998. The Turkic languages. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08200-5.
• Johanson, Lars. 1998. "The history of Turkic." In: Johanson & Csató, pp. 81-125.[7]
• Johanson, Lars. 1998. "Turkic languages." In: Encyclopaedia Britannica. CD 98. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, 5 sept. 2007.[8]
• Menges, K. H. 1968. The Turkic languages and peoples: An introduction to Turkic studies. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• Öztopçu, Kurtuluş. 1996. Dictionary of the Turkic languages: English, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Uighur, Uzbek. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415141982
• Samoilovich, A. N. 1922. Some additions to the classification of the Turkish languages. Petrograd.[9]
• Schönig, Claus. 1997-1998. "A new attempt to classify the Turkic languages I-III." Turkic Languages 1:1.117–133, 1:2.262–277, 2:1.130–151.
• Voegelin, C.F. & F.M. Voegelin. 1977. Classification and index of the World's languages. New York: Elsevier.

[edit] See also

• Altaic languages
• Proto-Turkic language
• Old Turkic
• Middle Turkic
• Orkhon script

[edit] External links

• Turkic Languages: Resources - University of Michigan
• Map of Turkic languages
• Classification of Turkic Languages
• Online Uyghur-English Dictionary
• Turkic languages at the Open Directory Project
• Turkic language vocabulary comparison tool / dictionary

v • d • e Turkic-speaking regions Federal subjects of Russia shown in italics.     Western Turkic  Azerbaijan1  Bashkortostan  Chuvashia  Northern Cyprus2  Gagauzia (Moldova) Eastern Turkic  Altai Republic  Khakassia  Iran  Kabardino-Balkaria  Karachay-Cherkessia  Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan)  Kyrgyzstan  Sakha Republic  Kazakhstan  Tatarstan  Turkey  Tuva  Turkmenistan  Uzbekistan  Xinjiang (China) 1 Includes the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.    2 Recognized only by Turkey; see Cyprus dispute.