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Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested Turkic language, found in inscriptions by the Göktürks
Göktürks

The G?kt?rks were a powerful nomadic confederation of medieval Inner Asia. Known in China sources as T'u k?e , the G?kt?rks under the leadership of Bumin Khan and his sons succeeded the Rouran as the main power in the region and took hold of the lucrative Silk Road trade....
 and the Uyghurs
Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native ....
 in ca. the 7th to 13th centuries AD. It cannot be considered a direct predecessor of the Uyghur
Uyghur language

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....
 language, but elements of Old Turkic can be traced in Middle Turkic such as Chagatai
Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century....
. Old Turkic is now considered as belonging to the Southeastern Common Turkic branch of Turkic languages.








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Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested Turkic language, found in inscriptions by the Göktürks
Göktürks

The G?kt?rks were a powerful nomadic confederation of medieval Inner Asia. Known in China sources as T'u k?e , the G?kt?rks under the leadership of Bumin Khan and his sons succeeded the Rouran as the main power in the region and took hold of the lucrative Silk Road trade....
 and the Uyghurs
Uyghur people

The Uyghur are a Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Many English speakers pronounce it as "wEEger" but the pronunciation "ooygOOr" is closer to native ....
 in ca. the 7th to 13th centuries AD. It cannot be considered a direct predecessor of the Uyghur
Uyghur language

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....
 language, but elements of Old Turkic can be traced in Middle Turkic such as Chagatai
Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century....
. Old Turkic is now considered as belonging to the Southeastern Common Turkic branch of Turkic languages.

Differences between Old Turkic and Modern Turkish, Kazakh, Qashqai



Sources


Sources of Old Turkic are divided into three corpora:
  • the 7th to 10th century Orkhon inscriptions in Mongolia and the Yenisey basin (Orkhon Turkic, or Old Turkic proper)
  • 9th to 13th century Uyghur manuscripts from Xinjiang
    Xinjiang

    Xinjiang is an autonomous region of China of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million sq....
     (Old Uyghur), in various scripts including Brahmi
    Brahmi

    Brahmi is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best known inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE....
    , the Manichaean, Syriac
    Syriac alphabet

    The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from around the 2nd century BC. It is one of the Semitic languages abjads directly descending from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and shares similarities with the Phoenician alphabet, Aramaic alphabet, and Hebrew alphabet alphabets....
     and Uyghur
    Sogdian alphabet

    The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdiana. The alphabet is derived from Syriac alphabet, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet....
     alphabets, treating religious (Buddhist
    Buddhism

    Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices considered by most to be a religionand is based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as "The Buddha" , who was born in what is today Nepal....
    , Manichaean
    Manichaeism

    Manichaeism was one of the major Iranian Gnosticism religions, originating in Sassanid Persia. Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived....
     and Nestorian), legal, literary, folkloric and astrologic material as well as personal correspondence.
  • 11th century Qarakhanid manuscripts, mostly written in Arabic script (Qarakhanid Turkic). The Qarakhanid corpus includes a 6,500 couplet poem, Qutad?u bilig
    Kutadgu Bilig

    The Kutadgu Bilig, or Qutadgu Bilig , is a Karakhanids work from the 11th century written by an Uyghur author Yusuf Has Hajib for the prince of Kashgar....
     "Wisdom that brings good fortune", an Arabic-Turkic dictionary and Mahmud al-Kashgari's "Compendium of the Turkic dialects".


Phonology

Old Turkic has nine vowel qualities—a, e, e, i, ï, o, ö, u, ü—distinct only in the first syllable of a word, collapsed into four classes elsewhere—a, e, ï, i.

The consonantal system distinguishes between unvoiced, voiced (with fricative variants) and nasal:
labial: p, v (ß), m;
dental: t, d (d), n;
palatal: c, y, n;
velar: k (q, ?), g, ?;
sibilant: s, š, z;
liquid: r, l.


See also


  • Old Turkic script
  • Middle Turkic
    Middle Turkic

    Middle Turkic refers to a phase in the development of the Turkic languages, covering much of the Middle Ages . In particular the term is used by linguists to refer to a group of Oghuz and related languages spoken during this period in Central Asia, Iran, and parts of the Middle East occupied by the Seljuk Turks....
  • Proto-Turkic
  • 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...
  • Bulgar language
  • Hunnic language
    Hunnic language

    The Hunnic language is the language spoken by the historic Huns. The literary records for this language are sparse, consisting of a few names and three words....
  • Cuman language
    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....
  • Turkic Avar language
  • Kipchak language
    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....
  • Khazar language
    Khazar language

    Khazar was the language spoken by the medieval Khazar tribe, a semi-nomadic Turkic peoples people from Central Asia. It is also referred to as Khazarian, Khazaric, or Khazari....


External links

  • (W. Schulze)
  • , pre-Islamic Old Turkic electronic corpus at uni-frankfurt.de.