The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.
The Oghuz Turks were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in Central Asia. Today, much of the populations of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are descendants of Oghuz Turks. The term Oghuz was gradually supplanted by the terms Turkmen and Turcoman by 13th century.
Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Khaganate, and later the Uyghur Khaganate, making it the earliest attested Common Turkic language. In terms of the datability of extant written sources, the period of Old Turkic can be dated from slightly before 720 AD to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.
Khalaj is a Turkic language spoken in Iran. Although it contains many old Turkic elements, it has become widely Persianized. Khalaj has about 150 words of uncertain origin.
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 Ili, Xinjiang. It is a primary branch and an eastern outlier of the Oghuz branch of Turkic, the other Oghuz languages being spoken mostly in West and Central Asia. The Salar number about 105,000 people, about 70,000 (2002) speak the Salar language; under 20,000 are monolinguals.
The Iraqi Turkmen, also referred to as Iraqi Turks, Turkish-Iraqis, the Turkish minority in Iraq, and the Iraqi-Turkish minority are Iraq's third largest ethnic group. They make up to 10%–13% of the Iraqi population and are native to northern Iraq. Iraqi Turkmen share ties with Turkish people, and do not identify with the Turkmen of Turkmenistan and Central Asia.
Khorasani Turkic or Khorasani Turkish is an Oghuz Turkic language spoken in the North Khorasan Province and the Razavi Khorasan Province in Iran. Nearly all Khorasani Turkic speakers are also bilingual in Persian.
The Kipchak 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 Ukraine to China. Some of the most widely spoken languages in this group are Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tatar.
The Bayandur or Bayundur, is an Oghuz Turkic tribe. Originally one of the 7 original tribes that made up the Kimek–Kipchak confederation, they later joined the Oghuz Turks. The Bayandur originated from Central Asia.
Middle Turkic refers to a phase in the development of the Turkic language family, covering much of the Middle Ages. In particular the term is used by linguists to refer to a group of Karluk and Oghuz and related languages spoken during this period in Central Asia, Iran, and other parts of the Middle East controlled by the Seljuk Turks.
The Khalaj are a Turkic ethnic group who mainly reside in Iran. In Iran they still speak the Khalaj language, although most of them are Persianized.
Common Turkic, or Shaz Turkic, is a taxon in some classifications of the Turkic languages that includes all of them except the Oghuric languages.
Old Anatolian Turkish, also referred to as Old Anatolian Turkic, was the form of the Turkish language spoken in Anatolia from the 11th to 15th centuries. It developed into Early Ottoman Turkish. It was written in the Arabic script. Unlike in later Ottoman Turkish, short-vowel diacritics were used.
There is considerable dialectal variation in Turkish.
Lars Johanson is a Swedish Turcologist and linguist, an emeritus professor at the University of Mainz, and docent at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Uzes were a group of medieval Turkic people in East Europe. They were known as Tork in Russian chronicles. Like most medieval Turkic people, they were Tengrists.
Turkoman, also known as Turcoman, was a term for the people of Oghuz Turkic origin, widely used during the Middle Ages. Oghuz Turks were a western Turkic people that, in the 8th century A.D, formed a tribal confederation in an area between the Aral and Caspian seas in Central Asia, and spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.
Turkic history is the systematic documentation and study of events involving the Turkic peoples.
Argu, or the Arghu languages, are a branch of Common Turkic languages along with Oghuz, Kipchak, Karluk and Siberian Turkic. Unlike other branches, this group is not multilingual, and the historical Argu language and its descendant Khalaj are the only languages of this group.
