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The Kypchak languages (also known as the Kipchak, Qypchaq, or Northwestern Turkic languages), are a major branch of the Turkic language family
Turkic languages

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 Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 spoken by more than 12 million people in an area spanning from Lithuania
Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....
 to China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.








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The Kypchak languages (also known as the Kipchak, Qypchaq, or Northwestern Turkic languages), are a major branch of the Turkic language family
Turkic languages

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 Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 spoken by more than 12 million people in an area spanning from Lithuania
Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....
 to China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.

Linguistic Features

The Kypchak languages share a number of features that have led linguists to classify them together. Some of these features are shared with other Turkic languages; others are unique to the Kypchak language family.

Shared Features


  • Change of Proto-Turkic *d to /j/ (e.g. *hadaq > ajaq "foot")
  • Loss of initial *h sound (preserved only in Khalaj
    Khalaj language

    Khalaj is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic languages. There were approximately 42,000 speakers of this language as of 2000....
    . See above example.)


Unique Features


  • Extensive labial vowel harmony
    Vowel harmony

    Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
     (e.g. olor vs. olar "them")
  • Frequent assibilation
    Assibilation

    In linguistics, assibilation is the term for a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is commonly the final phase of palatalization....
     of initial */j/ (e.g. * > "seven")
  • Diphthongs from syllable-final */g/ and */b/ (e.g. * > "mountain", * > )


Classification


The Kypchak languages may be broken down into three groups, based on geography and shared features:

  • Kypchak-Bolgar (Uralo-Caspian), including Bashkir
    Bashkir language

    The Bashkir language is a Turkic languages....
     and Tatar
    Tatar language

    The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
     (including Siberian Tatar, Mishar Tatar, Astrakhan Tatar, Baraba Tatar
    Baraba language

    Baraba or Baraba Tatar is spoken by at least 8,000 people in Siberia. It is dialect of Tatar.Baraba Tatar falls into a dialect continuum of Tatar dialects spoken through Siberia....
    , etc.)


  • Kypchak-Cuman (Ponto-Caspian), including Karachay-Balkar
    Karachay-Balkar language

    The Karachay-Balkar language is a Turkic language spoken by the Karachays and Balkars. It is divided into two dialects: Karachay which pronounces two phonemes as and , and Balkar, which pronounces the corresponding phonemes as and ....
    , Kumyk
    Kumyk language

    Kumyk is a Turkic languages, spoken by about 365,000 speakers in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation.Yir?i Qazaq is usually considered to be a founder of Kumyk literature....
    , Karaim
    Karaim language

    The Karaim language is a Turkic languages with Hebrew language influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish language or Ladino language. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites - ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in Crimea, Lithuania, Poland and western Ukraine....
    , Krymchak
    Krymchak language

    The Krymchak language Turkic Languages is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchaks. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar language dialect....
    , and the extinct Cuman
    Cuman language

    Cuman was a Turkic language spoken by the Cumans and was similar to today's Crimean Tatar language. It is documented in several medieval works, including the Codex Cumanicus....
     and Kipchak
    Kipchak language

    The Kipchak language is an extinct Turkic languages language of the Kipchak group.The descendants of the Kipchak language include the majority of Turkic languages spoken in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus today, as Kipchak was used as a lingua franca in Golden Horde-ruled lands....
     languages. Urum
    Urum language

    Urum is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand people who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in diaspora communities world wide....
     and Crimean Tatar
    Crimean Tatar language

    The Crimean Tatar language , also known as Crimean and Crimean Turkish is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria....
     appear to have a Kypchak-Cuman base, but have been heavily influenced by Oghuz languages
    Oghuz languages

    The Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic languages, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkan peninsula to China....
    .


  • Kazakh-Nogay, including Kazakh
    Kazakh language

    Kazakh is a Turkic languages language closely related to Nogai language and Karakalpak language.Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony....
    , Karakalpak
    Karakalpak language

    Karakalpak is a Turkic language mainly spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan , as well as by Bashkirs and Nogay. Ethnic Karakalpaks who live in the Provinces of Uzbekistan tend to speak local Uzbek dialects....
    , and Nogay


The Uzbek language
Uzbek language

Uzbek is a Turkic languages and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 23.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia....
's Kypchak dialect contains the remainder of Kypchak languages that were once spoken in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a Landlocked_country#Doubly_landlocked_country country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union....
, and there is a dialect continuum
Dialect continuum

A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater....
 between Uzbek and Kazakh.

The language of the Mamluk
Mamluk

A mamluk was a slavery soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ayyubid sultans from the 9th to the 13th centuries....
s in Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
 appears to have been a Kypchak language, probably one belonging to the Kypchak-Cuman group.

See also

  • Kipchaks
    Kipchaks

    Kipchaks were an ancient Turkic people who originally formed part of the group of Kimek in Siberia along the middle reaches of Irtysh or along the Ob....