Turkic languages

Turkic languages are a group of closely related languages that are used by a variety of people distributed in a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China.

Turkic languages are agglutinative and also have special phonetic feature called synharmonism.

Though various different Turkic tribes and their languages have mixed with each other throughout centuries, making a classification extremely difficult, a very simplified classification could be as follows:

• Southwestern languages:
  • Oghuz group: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Gagauz, Crimean Turkish
  • Khorasan group: Iran
• Northwestern languages: Kypchak group
  • Aralo-Caspian: Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, Nogai)
  • Ponto-Caspian: Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Karaim, Judeo-Crimean Tatar)
  • Uralian: Tatar, Bashkir, Chulym
• Northern languages:
  • Siberian group Altai, Khakas, Shor, Tuvin, Yakut
• Eastern languages:
  • Uighur-Chagatai group: Uzbek, Uighur

Various elements have passed to Turkic languages especially from Chinese, Persian and Arabic languages and various elements from Turkic languages have been carried as far as Southeastern Asia, Northernmost territories of Russia and even Northern America.

See also: Turkic peoples