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The Oghuz languages, 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....
, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkans 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....
.

Oghuz in old Turkic means thirty, in terms of the thirty tribes.








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The Oghuz languages, 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....
, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkans 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....
.

Oghuz in old Turkic means thirty, in terms of the thirty tribes.

Linguistic Features

The Oghuz 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 Oghuz family.

Shared features

  • 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....
    )
  • Loss of the instrumental case
    Instrumental case

    The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action....
     (preserved only in Sakha
    Sakha language

    Sakha, or Yakut, is a Turkic languages with around 460,000 speakers spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation by the Yakuts or Yakuts....
     and Khalaj)


Unique features

  • Voicing of stops before front vowels (e.g. gör- < kör- "to see")
  • Loss of q/ after /u (e.g. quru < quruq "dry", sar < sar "yellow")
  • Change in form of participial -gan- to -an-


Classification

The Oghuz languages may be broken down into three main groups, based on geography and shared features:
  • a Western group, including
    • Turkish, including Turkish
      Turkish language

      Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
      , Ottoman Turkish
      Ottoman Turkish language

      Ottoman Turkish is the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic language and Persian language languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script....
      , Gagauz
      Gagauz language

      The Gagauz language is a Turkic language, spoken by the Gagauz people, and the official language of Gagauzia, Republic of Moldova. It is spoken by approximately 150,000 people....
      , Balkan Gagauz Turkish
      Balkan Gagauz Turkish language

      Balkan Gagauz Turkish is a Turkic languages language spoken in European Turkey, Greece, and in the Kumanovo and Bitola areas of the Republic of Macedonia....
      , and the language of the Meskhetian Turks
      Meskhetians

      Meskhetian Turks, also known as Muslim Meskhetians, or simply Meskhetians are the former Turkish people inhabitants of Meskheti , along the border with Turkey....
    • Azerbaijani, including the northern and southern varieties of Azerbaijani
      Azerbaijani language

      Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
      , the languages of the Iraqi Turkmen
      Iraqi Turkmen

      The Iraqi Turkmens or Iraqi Turks are a distinct Turkic peoples ethnic group living mostly in northern Iraq, notably in the cities of Kirkuk, Arbil, Tal Afar, and Mosul....
       of Iran and Iraq, Qashqa'i
      Qashqai language

      Qashqai is a Turkic languages spoken by the Qashqai, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary, Ethnologue gives a figure of one and a half million....
      , and Afshar
      Afshar language

      Afshar or Afshari, is a Turkic languages spoken in parts of Afghanistan and Iran. There are some speakers in Syria and Turkey. It is considered by many to be a dialect of Azerbaijani language....
  • an Eastern or Turkmen group, including Turkmen
    Turkmen language

    Turkmen is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 6,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran , Iraq , Syria , Afghanistan , and Turkey ....
    , Khorasani Turkish
    Khorasani Turkish language

    Khorasani Turkic , or Qizilbash Turkic , is a language Variety in the Turkic languages. It is spoken in northern Khorasan in Iran. Khorasani Turkic speakers also speak Persian language....
     in Iran, and the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek
    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....
  • a southern group, including dialects of Iran (Kashkay
    Qashqai language

    Qashqai is a Turkic languages spoken by the Qashqai, an ethnic group living mainly in the Fars region of Iran. Estimates of the number of Qashqai speakers vary, Ethnologue gives a figure of one and a half million....
    , Sonqori, Aynallu etc.) and Afghanistan (Afshar).


An outlying language, Salar
Salar language

Salar is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China; some also live in Ghulja, Xinjiang....
, is spoken by about 70,000 people in China.

Two languages, 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....
 and 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....
 are historically Kypchak languages
Kypchak languages

The Kypchak languages , are a major branch of the Turkic languages spoken by more than 12 million people in an area spanning from Lithuania to China....
, but have been so heavily influenced by Oghuz languages that it is difficult to classify them definitively as either Oghuz or Kypchak.

The extinct Pecheneg language
Pecheneg language

Pecheneg language is the extinct Turkic languages spoken by the Pechenegs in Eastern Europe.It is most likely a member of the Oghuz languages branch of the Turkic family, but the poor documentation to it and the absence of any descendant languages of Pecheneg has prevented linguists from making a definite classification; most experts would...
 is probably Oghuz, but as it is poorly documented, it is difficult to further classify it within the Oghuz family.

See also


  • Oghuz Turks
    Oghuz Turks

    The Oghuz were a group of loosely linked nomadic Turkic peoples. In the ninth century the Oghuz Turks from the Aral steppes drove the Pechenegs of the Emba region and the Ural River toward the west....
  • Turkic languages
    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....
  • Turkic peoples
    Turkic peoples

    The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia, and who mostly speak languages belonging to the Turkic languages....


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