!LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish
| Message 9 of 88 05 December 2007 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
Hi folks!
Sorry for seeing this so late. I've been in the US for a year and couldn't watch this forum as much as I wanted to. I hope my answer doesn't come too late.
Ok, as a native speaker of Turkish I think you might wanna know what I think about this issue a little bit.
What's been said further above is correct. There are great similarities between Turkish and the other Turkic languages, concerning the "basis" and general logic of the languages. But there are great differences in vocabulary and phonology.
It's very easy to understand Azerbaijani, and it's not too difficult to understand Turkmen. Turkoman, which is also spoken in northern Iraq by the Turkish minority is fairly easy to understand. The further you go to the east, the harder it gets though.
One of the problems concerning this is the alphabet. Some of the Turkic languages are written in different alphabets. A great problem though is the fact that certain Turkic languages are written in a "weird way" (from the point of view of a native Turkish speaker) when they are written in the Latin alphabet.
I'll give you an example. There's this Kazakh group called Ulytau, and they have this song called Jugmyr & Kylysh. Of course, it's a transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet. But it could have been written like this too: Ulıtağ and Yuğmır & Kılış/Kılıç
which would make it a lot easier to read for a Turkish native (Ulıtağ or Uludağ means something like high mountain, and Yuğmır or Yağmur & Kılış or Kılıç means Rain and Sword).
My recommendation (without trying to be biased) would be, learn Turkish first. First of all, it's the economically etc. highest ranking country in the Turkic world, without being dependent (to a great degree) from anyone, and has political importance too. After that, all the other Turkic languages will come natural to you! Even though I don't speak Uzbek or Uyghur, I can see what is trying to be said by looking at the text and because of the grammatical similarities between Turkish and those languages.
See ya,
Ilhan
PS: If you need any help in Turkish, I'd be more than happy to help you!
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Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil
| Message 10 of 88 05 December 2007 at 4:49am | IP Logged |
A Turkish friend of mine essentially told me the same thing as Ilhan and daristani:
Azerbaijani is pretty much intelligble with Turkish, Turkmen a little less so, and the others are more distant. She's studied Kazakh for a while, but didn't get far due to lack of motivation. She thinks it's pretty easy though (I guess in about the same way as Dutch would be easy for a German).
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!LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish
| Message 11 of 88 05 December 2007 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
I've been looking at http://www.uighurlanguage.com/logs/artcle/IntroToUighurGramm ar1.html for a little grammar and I was yelling "holy crap" just after a few minutes looking at it. Grammatically it's so much like Turkish that it's not even funny anymore :D
Regards,
Il
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Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6857 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin
| Message 12 of 88 05 December 2007 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
!LH@N wrote:
I was yelling "holy crap" just after a few minutes looking at it. |
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Now yell it in Uyghur. :)
Seriously, the Turkic languages really haven't diverged much in grammar or basic vocab. I'm tempted to study all of the major ones once my Turkish reaches an acceptable level.
Edited by Frisco on 05 December 2007 at 7:41pm
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zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6442 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin
| Message 13 of 88 06 December 2007 at 8:34am | IP Logged |
!LH@N wrote:
Yuğmır or Yağmur & Kılış or Kılıç means Rain and Sword) |
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Are you sure about this? I looked up these words - for rain the dictionary gives "жаңбыр" (jañbır) and for жұмыр (jumır) "round, oval, cylindrical, stomach, vessel for food" etc. but not "rain"
One thing about the languages being so similar is that there's also no shortage of false friends (including some very off-colour ones), even between ones as close as Azeri and Turkish:
Baba - Tr. father Az. grandfather
Ata - Tr. father (archaic) or distant male ancestor Az. father
Yaz - Tr. summer Az. spring
Yay - Tr. bow (for shooting arrows) Az. summer
Şekil - Tr. shape manner Az. picture
Pul - Tr. stamp Az. money
Sümük Tr. snot Az bone
Subay Tr. officer Az. bachelor
Pezevenk - Tr. pimp Az. strong man
Uçak düştü - Tr. the plane has fallen Az. the plane has landed (this one is the subject of a well-known joke)
Yarak - Tr. penis Az. weapon (another joke - "Azərbaycan yaraqlı qüvvətləri" = in Turkish "Azerbaijan dick-ed forces")
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!LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish
| Message 14 of 88 06 December 2007 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
@Frisco: You should :D
I don't think there is an expression for holy crap in Turkish lol
@zhiguli:
HOLY CRAP!
I've never heard of those false friends, but that's like the funniest thing I've ever heard like...in all of my life! Azerbeycan Yarakli Kuvvetleri...oh my gosh!
Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure it's rain and sword cuz food-cup and sword wouldn't make much sense (look at the video of it at youtube, you'll see what I mean).
Regards,
Ilhan
...
Azerbeycan Yarakli Kuvvetleri...oh my :D
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William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 15 of 88 06 December 2007 at 2:47pm | IP Logged |
zhiguli wrote:
!LH@N wrote:
Yuğmır or Yağmur & Kılış or Kılıç means Rain and Sword) |
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Are you sure about this? I looked up these words - for rain the dictionary gives "жаңбыр" (jañbır) and for жұмыр (jumır) "round, oval, cylindrical, stomach, vessel for food" etc. but not "rain"
One thing about the languages being so similar is that there's also no shortage of false friends (including some very off-colour ones), even between ones as close as Azeri and Turkish:
Baba - Tr. father Az. grandfather
Ata - Tr. father (archaic) or distant male ancestor Az. father
Yaz - Tr. summer Az. spring
Yay - Tr. bow (for shooting arrows) Az. summer
Şekil - Tr. shape manner Az. picture
Pul - Tr. stamp Az. money
Sümük Tr. snot Az bone
Subay Tr. officer Az. bachelor
Pezevenk - Tr. pimp Az. strong man
Uçak düştü - Tr. the plane has fallen Az. the plane has landed (this one is the subject of a well-known joke)
Yarak - Tr. penis Az. weapon (another joke - "Azərbaycan yaraqlı qüvvətləri" = in Turkish "Azerbaijan dick-ed forces") |
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I can largely follow Azerbaijani satellite TV through Turkish (that is, when the language is Azerbaijani and not Russian, though I understand the latter as well). I have the impression Azerbaijani has more Persian loanwords than modern Turkish has.
I don't know about Turkmen, but other major Turkic languages seem more remote from Turkish.
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!LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6822 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish
| Message 16 of 88 06 December 2007 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, it's usually funny to hear Azeri if you speak Turkish because it sounds like a cute, little-girls version of Turkish :D
Whenever I read Turkmen, or Uzbek or something I get really mad. That's because it looks so familiar, I know the grammar, I want to know it but a lot of words just look kind of weird.
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