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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 familyThe 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 considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
spoken by more than 12 million people in an area spanning from
LithuaniaLithuania , 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...
to
ChinaChina is a cultural region, 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 is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic family of languages. There were approximately 42,000 speakers of this language as of 2000...
. See above example.)
Unique features
- Extensive labial vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs 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
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 * (e.g. * > "seven")
- Diphthongs from syllable-final * and * (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
The Bashkir language is a Turkic language.-Speakers:Speakers of the Bashkir language mostly live in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. Substantial number of the speakers also live in Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Samara and Kurgan Oblasts, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug—Yugra, Tatarstan...
and TatarThe Tatar language is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars.-Geographic distribution:Tatar is spoken in Russia , Central Asia, Ukraine, Poland, China, Finland and Turkey....
(including Siberian Tatar, Mishar Tatar, Astrakhan Tatar, Baraba TatarBaraba or Baraba Tatar is spoken by at least 8,000 people in Siberia. It is dialect of Tatar.Baraba Tatar falls into a continuum of Tatar dialects spoken through Siberia.-Geographic Distribution:...
, etc.)
- Kypchak-Cuman (Ponto-Caspian), including Karachay-Balkar
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 .- Alphabet :Modern Karachay-Balkar alphabet-Bibliography:*...
, KumykKumyk is a Turkic language, spoken by about 365,000 speakers in the Dagestan republic of Russian Federation....
, KaraimThe Karaim language is a Turkic language with Hebrew influences, in a similar manner to Yiddish or Ladino. It is spoken by Crimean Karaites - ethnic Turkic adherents of Karaite Judaism in Crimea, Lithuania, Poland and western Ukraine. It has six remaining active speakers...
, KrymchakThe Krymchak language Turkic Languages is the language spoken in Crimea by the Krymchak people. It is often considered to be a Crimean Tatar dialect. The language is sometimes referred to as Judeo-Crimean Tatar....
, and the extinct CumanCuman 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 KipchakThe Kipchak language is an extinct Turkic 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.Kazakhs are remnants of...
languages. UrumUrum is a Turkic language spoken by several thousand people who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in diaspora communities world wide. Urum language are often considered variants of Crimean Tatar language....
and Crimean TatarThe 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 languagesThe Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic language family, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkans to China.Oghuz in old Turkic means thirty, in terms of the thirty tribes.-Linguistic Features:...
.
- Kazakh-Nogay, including Kazakh
Kazakh is a Turkic language closely related to Kyrgyz and Karakalpak.Kazakh is an agglutinative language, and it employs vowel harmony.-Geographic distribution:...
, KarakalpakKarakalpak is a Turkic language mainly spoken by Karakalpaks in Karakalpakstan , as well as by Bashkirs and Nogay. Ethnic Karakalpaks who live in the viloyatlar of Uzbekistan tend to speak local Uzbek dialects.-Classification:...
, and Nogay
The
Uzbek languageUzbek is a Turkic language 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
UzbekistanUzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union...
, and there is a
dialect continuumA 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. Dialects separated by great geographical distances may not be...
between Uzbek and Kazakh.
The language of the
MamlukA mamluk was a soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim Arab caliphs from the 9th to the 16th centuries. They were of mixed ancestry but mainly Kipchak Turks...
s in
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
appears to have been a Kypchak language, probably one belonging to the Kypchak-Cuman group.