The Altaic languages consist of the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic and Japonic families. These languages share agglutinative morphology, head-final word order and some vocabulary. The once-popular theory attributing these similarities to a common ancestry has long been rejected by most comparative linguists in favor of language contact, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority. Like the Uralic language family, which is named after the Ural Mountains, the group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia. The core grouping of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic is sometimes called "Micro-Altaic", with the expanded group including Koreanic and Japonic labelled as "Macro-Altaic" or "Transeurasian".
The Old Turkic script was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.
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.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
The Chuvash people are a Turkic ethnic group, a branch of the Ogurs, inhabiting an area stretching from the Idel-Ural (Volga-Ural) region to Siberia.
Bulgar is an extinct Oghur Turkic language spoken by the Bulgars.
The Karluks were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains in Central Asia. Karluks gave their name to the distinct Karluk group of the Turkic languages, which also includes the Uzbek, Uyghur and Ili Turki languages.
According to ibn Fadlan, the Jāwashīghar was an official in the Khazar government under the command of the Kündür Khagan, in turn under Khagan Bek's command. Ibn Fadlan did not describe the duties of this officer.
An elteber was a client king of an autonomous but tributary tribe or polity in the hierarchy of the Turkic khaganates including Khazar Khaganate.
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.
Western Yugur, also known as Neo-Uygur, is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, both languages are indicated by the term "Yellow Uygur", from the endonym of the Yugur.
Proto-Turkic is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Turkic languages that was spoken by the Proto-Turks before their divergence into the various Turkic peoples. Proto-Turkic separated into Oghur (western) and Common Turkic (eastern) branches. Candidates for the proto-Turkic homeland range from western Central Asia to Manchuria, with most scholars agreeing that it lay in the eastern part of the Central Asian steppe, while one author has postulated that Proto-Turkic originated 2,500 years ago in East Asia.
Old Uyghur is a Turkic language which was spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu.
The Yenisei Kyrgyz were an ancient Turkic-speaking people who dwelled along the upper Yenisei River in the southern portion of the Minusinsk Depression from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The heart of their homeland was the forested Tannu-Ola mountain range, in modern-day Tuva, just north of Mongolia. The Sayan Mountains were also included in their territory at different times. The Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate existed from 538 to 1219 CE; in 840, it took over the leadership of the Turkic Khaganate from the Uyghurs, expanding the state from the Yenisei territories into Central Asia and the Tarim Basin.
The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language. The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading because Qocho, the Uyghur (Yugur) kingdom created in 843, originally used the Old Turkic alphabet. The Uyghur adopted this "Old Uyghur" script from local inhabitants when they migrated into Turfan after 840. It was an adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in Turpan. The last known manuscripts are dated to the 18th century. This was the prototype for the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets. The Old Uyghur alphabet was brought to Mongolia by Tata-tonga.
Irk Bitig or Irq Bitig, known as the Book of Omens or Book of Divination in English, is a 9th-century manuscript book on divination that was discovered in the "Library Cave" of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, by Aurel Stein in 1907, and is now in the collection of the British Library in London, England. The book is written in Old Turkic using the Old Turkic script ; it is the only known complete manuscript text written in the Old Turkic script. It is also an important source for early Turkic mythology.
Karakhanid, also known as Khaqani Turkic, was a Turkic language developed in the 11th century during the Middle Turkic period under the Kara-Khanid Khanate. It has been described as the first literary Islamic Turkic language. It is sometimes classified under the Old Turkic category, rather than Middle Turkic, as it is contemporary to the East Old Turkic languages of Orkhon Turkic and Old Uyghur. Eastern Middle Turkic languages, namely Khorezmian Turkic and later Chagatai are descendants of the Karakhanid language.
The Oghuz languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 108 million people. The three languages with the largest number of speakers are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen, which, combined, account for more than 95% of speakers of this sub-branch.
Orkhon Turkic, is the earliest version of Old Turkic, known as the oldest Turkic literary language, preceding Old Uyghur. It is the language in which the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions are written.
