Kipchak Languages
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Kipchak Languages
The Kipchak languages (also known as the Kypchak, Qypchaq, Qypshaq or the Northwestern Turkic languages) are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family spoken by approximately 30 million people in much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, spanning from Romania to China. Some of the most widely spoken languages in this group are Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tatar. Linguistic features The Kipchak languages share a number of features that have led linguists to classify them together. Some of these features are shared with other Common Turkic languages; others are unique to the Kipchak family. Shared features *Change of Proto-Turkic *d to (e.g. *''hadaq'' > ''ajaq'' "foot") *Loss of initial *h, see above example Unique features Family-specific *Extensive labial vowel harmony (e.g. ''olor'' vs. ''olar'' "them") *Frequent fortition (in the form of assibilation) of initial (e.g. ''*etti'' > ''etti'' "seven") *Diphthongs from syllable-final and (e.g. *''taɡ'' > ''taw'' "mountain", ...
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Kipchaks
The Kipchaks, also spelled Qipchaqs, known as Polovtsians (''Polovtsy'') in Russian annals, were Turkic nomads and then a confederation that existed in the Middle Ages inhabiting parts of the Eurasian Steppe. First mentioned in the eighth century as part of the Second Turkic Khaganate, they most likely inhabited the Altai region from where they expanded over the following centuries, first as part of the Kimek–Kipchak confederation and later as part of a confederation with the Cumans. There were groups of Kipchaks in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, China, Syr Darya, and Siberia. Cumania was conquered by the Mongol Empire in the early 13th century. Terminology The Kipchaks interpreted their name as meaning "hollow tree" (cf. Middle Turkic: ''kuv ağaç''); according to them, inside a hollow tree, their original human ancestress gave birth to her son. Németh points to the Siberian ''qıpčaq'' "angry, quick-tempered" attested only in the Siberian Sağay dialect (a dialect o ...
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Vowel Harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning that the affected vowels do not need to be immediately adjacent, and there can be intervening segments between the affected vowels. Generally one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels, either progressively or regressively, within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of the trigger vowel. Common phonological features that define the natural classes of vowels involved in vowel harmony include vowel backness, vowel height, nasalization, roundedness, and advanced and retracted tongue root. Vowel harmony is found in many agglutinative languages. The given domain of vowel harmony taking effect often spans across morpheme boundaries, and suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules. Termi ...
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Karaim Language
The Karaim language ( Crimean dialect: , ; Trakai dialect: ), also known by its Hebrew name Lashon Kedar (, “language of the nomads"), is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak group, with Hebrew influences, similarly to Yiddish or Judaeo-Spanish. It is presently spoken by only a few dozen Crimean Karaites () in Lithuania, Poland, Crimea, and Galicia in Ukraine. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai-Vilnius and Lutsk- Halych, all of which are critically endangered. The Lithuanian dialect of Karaim is spoken mainly in the town of Trakai by a small community living there since the 14th century. There is a chance the language will survive in Trakai as a result of official support and because of its appeal to tourists coming to the Trakai Island Castle, where Crimean Karaites are presented as the castle's ancient defenders. History Karaims in Crimea and Lithuania The origin of the Karaims living in Crimea is subject to much dispute and inconsistency. Di ...
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Kumyk Language
Kumyk (,L. S. Levitskaya, "Kumyk language", in ''Languages of the world. Turkic languages'' (1997). , ) is a Turkic language spoken by about 520,000 people, mainly by the Kumyks, in the Dagestan, North Ossetia and Chechen republics of the Russian Federation. Until the 20th century Kumyk was the lingua franca of the Northern Caucasus. Classification Kumyk language belongs to the Kipchak-Cuman subfamily of the Kipchak family of the Turkic languages. It's a descendant of the Cuman language, with likely influence from the Khazar language, and in addition contains words from the Bulghar and Oghuz substratum. The closest languages to Kumyk are Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, and Karaim languages. Nikolay Baskakov, based on a 12th-century scripture named Codex Cumanicus, included modern Kumyk, Karachai-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, Karaim, and the language of Mamluk Kipchaks in the linguistic family of the Cuman-Kipchak language. Samoylovich also considered Cuman-Kipcha ...
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Karachay-Balkar
Karachay–Balkar (, ), often referred to as the "mountaineer language" (, ) by its speakers, is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia, European Russia, as well as by an immigrant population in Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay- Baksan- Chegem, which pronounces two phonemes as and and Malkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as and . The modern Karachay–Balkar written language is based on the Karachay–Baksan–Chegem dialect. The language is closely related to Kumyk. Phonology Parentheses indicate allophones, brackets indicate phonemes from loanwords. Orthography Historically, the Arabic alphabet had been used by first writers until 1924. Handwritten manuscripts of the Balkar poet Kazim Mechiev and other examples of literature have been preserved to this day. The first printed books in Karachay–Balkar were published in the beginning of the 20th ce ...
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Mishar Tatar Dialect
Mishar Tatar or Western Tatar (Мишәр, ''Mişär / Mişər'', Мишәр Татар, ''Mişär / Mişər Tatar'', көнбатыш татар, ''könbatış tatar'') is a dialect of Tatar spoken by Mishar Tatars, mainly in Penza, Ulyanovsk, Orenburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Volgograd, and Saratov oblasts of Russia, in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia and Mordovia, and also in Finland and Estonia. Some linguists ( Radlov, Samoylovich) think that Mishar belongs to the Kipchak-Cuman group of languages rather than to the Kipchak-Bulgar group. Especially the regional dialect of Sergachsky district (Nizhny Novgorod) is said to be faithfully close to the ancient Kipchak language. Increased contacts with Kazan Tatars have lessened these differences. Mishar is the dialect spoken by the Tatar minority of Finland. The origins of the Tatar community living in Finland rest upon the merchants coming from the villages of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (then-Governorate). Dialects Mi ...
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Oghuz Languages
The Oghuz languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 108 million people. The three languages with the largest number of speakers are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen, which, combined, account for more than 95% of speakers of this sub-branch. Kara-Khanid scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, who lived in the 11th century, stated that the Oghuz language was the simplest among all Turkic languages. Swedish turcologist and linguist Lars Johanson notes that Oghuz languages form a clearly discernible and closely related bloc within the Turkic language family as the cultural and political history of the speakers of Oghuz languages has linked them more closely up to the modern age. Western Oghuz languages are highly mutually intelligible with each other and the Crimean Tatar language, which, though genetically Kipchak Turkic rather than Oghuz, has been heavily influenced by Turkish over several centuries. History and terminology The ancestor of O ...
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Crimean Tatar Dialects
The Crimean Tatar language consists of three dialects. The standard language is written in the middle dialect ( bağçasaray, orta yolaq), which is part of the Kipchak-Cuman sub-branch. There is also the southern dialect, also known as the coastal dialect (yalıboyu, cenübiy), which is in the Oghuz sub-branch, and the northern dialect, also known as nogai dialect (noğay, çöl, şimaliy), which is in the Kipchak-Nogai sub-branch. Crimean Tatar has a unique position among the Turkic languages, because its three "dialects" belong to three different (sub)groups of Turkic. This makes the classification of Crimean Tatar as a whole difficult. Middle dialect The middle dialect is spoken in the Crimean Mountains by the sedentary ''Tat'' Tatars (should not be confused with the Tat people which speak an Iranic language). Because its speakers comprise a relative majority of Crimean Tatar speakers, the written language is based on the middle dialect. Standard Crimean Tatar and its mid ...
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Crimean Tatar Language
Crimean Tatar (), also called Crimean (), is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken in Crimea and the Crimean Tatar diasporas of Uzbekistan, Turkey and Bulgaria, as well as small communities in the United States and Canada. It should not be confused with Tatar language, Tatar, spoken in Tatarstan and adjacent regions in Russia; Crimean Tatar has been extensively influenced by nearby Oghuz languages and is mutually intelligible with them to varying degrees. A long-term ban on the study of the Crimean Tatar language following the deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet government has led to the fact that at the moment UNESCO ranks the Crimean Tatar language among the languages under serious threat of extinction (''severely endangered''). However, according to the A. Yu. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, due to negative situations, the real degree of the threat has elevated to critically endangered in recent years, which are highl ...
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Old Tatar
The Old Tatar language was a literary language used by some ethnic groups of the Idel-Ural region (Tatars and Bashkirs) from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century. Old Tatar is a member of the Kipchak (or Northwestern) group of Turkic languages, although it was derived from the ancient Bulgar language. The first poem, considered to be written by Qul Ghali in Volga Turki dates back to the period of Volga Bulgaria. It included many Persian and Arabic loans. In its written form, the language was spelled uniformly among different ethnic groups, speaking different Turkic languages of the Kipchak sub-group. The pronunciation differed from one people to another, approximating to the spoken language, making the written form universal for different languages. The language formerly used the Arabic script and its later updated alphabets of İske imlâ and Yaña imlâ. Old Tatar language was a language of Idel-Ural poetry and literature. With the Ottoman Turkish, Azeri, Cum ...
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Proto-Turkic
Proto-Turkic is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Turkic languages that was spoken by the Proto-Turks before their divergence into the various Turkic peoples. Proto-Turkic separated into Oghur (western) and Common Turkic (eastern) branches. Candidates for the proto-Turkic homeland range from Transcaspian Steppe to Manchuria, with most scholars agreeing that their migrations started from the eastern part of the Central Asian steppe, "It is generally agreed among historians and linguists that the starting point of the Turkic migrations was located in the eastern part of the Central Asian steppe (see, e.g., Golden 1992, Kljastornyj & Suktanov 2009; Menges 1995:55). Turkologists use various definitions for describing the Proto-Turkic homeland, but most indicate more or less the same region. While Janhunen (1996:26, 2015:293) locates the Proto-Turkic homeland fairly precisely in Eastern Mongolia, Rona-Tas (1998:88), in a rather general manner, places the la ...
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Bashkir Language
Bashkir ( , ) or Bashkort (, ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak languages, Kipchak branch. It is official language#Political alternatives, co-official with Russian language, Russian in Bashkortostan. Bashkir has approximately 750,000 native speakers. It has two dialect groups: Southern and Eastern. Bashkir has native speakers in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia and other neighboring post-Soviet states, and among the Bashkirs, Bashkir diaspora. Speakers Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the republic of Bashkortostan (a republic within the Russian Federation). Many speakers also live in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg Oblast, Orenburg, Tyumen Oblast, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts and other regions of Russia. Minor Bashkir groups also live in Kazakhstan and the United States. In a recent local media report in Bashkortostan, it was reported that some officials of t ...
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