The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with an estimated 140 million native speakers and tens of millions of second-language speakers. The Turkic languages are traditionally considered to be part of the Altaic language family.

The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Anatolian Turkish, or Turkish proper.

The Turkic language family exhibits vowel harmony, and is typologically characterised by agglutination by means of suffixes, and a Subject Object Verb sentence order.

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. 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 genetic classification of the Turkic languages commonly followed today is the one by Samoilovich (mainly based on the development of *d). However, there are many details for which debate is still ongoing.

Classification

• West Turkic
  • Bolgar group
    • Chuvash
    • Khazar (extinct)
    • Bolgar (extinct)
  • Oghuz (Southwestern) group
    • Turkish
    • Afshar
    • Azeri
    • Turkmen
    • Crimean Tatar ¹
    • Urum ¹
    • Qashqai
    • Khorasani
    • Salar
    • Gagauz
    • Pecheneg (extinct)
    • Ottoman Turkish (extinct)
  • Kypchak (Northwestern) group
    • Kypchak-Bolgar languages
      • Tatar
      • Bashkir
      • Baraba
    • Kypchak-Cuman (Kypchak-Oghuz, Ponto-Caspian) languages
      • Crimean Tatar ¹
      • Urum ¹
      • Karachay-Balkar
      • Kumyk
      • Karaim
      • Krymchak
      • Cuman (extinct)
      • Kipchak (extinct)
    • Kypchak-Nogay languages
      • Kazakh
      • Karakalpak
      • Nogay
  • Chagatay (Southeastern, Karluk) group
    • Uzbek
    • Uyghur
      • Aini ³
    • Lop
    • Chagatay (extinct)
• East Turkic
  • Kyrgyz-Kypchak group
    • Kyrgyz
    • Altay
  • Uyghur (Northeastern) group
    • Yakut
    • Tuvan
    • Khakas
    • Shor
    • Fuyü Gïrgïs
    • Chulym
    • Tofa
    • Dolgan
    • Western Yugur (Yellow Uyghur)
    • Northern Altay
  • Khalaj
    • Khalaj ²

(1) - Crimean Tatar and Urum languages are related to both Kypchak and Oghuz Turkic.

(2) - Khalaj is surrounded by Oghuz languages, but exhibits a number of features that classify it as non-Oghuz.

(3) - Aini is a mixed language with Uyghur grammar and Persian vocabulary.

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

Various elements from the Turkic languages have passed into Hungarian, Persian, Russian, and to a lesser extent, Arabic.

See also

• Orkhon script
• Turkic peoples
• Historical linguistics
• Language families and languages

External links

• Map of Turkic languages
• Classification of Turkic Languages
• Online Uyghur-English Dictionary
• Dmoz.org/../Languages/Altaic/Turkic/
• Türk Dili

Further reading

• Johanson, L. & Csató, E. Á. (eds.) 1998. The Turkic Languages. Routledge: London. ISBN 0415082005.

• Deny J. et al. 1959. Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta. Wiesbaden.

• Schönig, C. 1997/1998. A new attempt to classify the Turkic languages (1-3). Turkic Languages 1/2.

• Clauson, G. 1972. An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-thirteenth-century Turkish. Oxford.

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