|
 |
Turkic Languages | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Mr. E Newbie United States Joined 5694 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 56 10 February 2010 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
|
Hello,
I'm somewhat interested in learning Turkish, and I've heard that many Turkic languages are supposed to be mutually intelligible. My question is, just how mutually intelligible are they? Also, is Turkish the best choice to be most widely understood? Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5451 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 2 of 56 10 February 2010 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
|
If you're interested in the Turkic languages, Turkish is probably the place to start simply because there are so few resources for the other Turkic languages.
Turkish and Azeri are supposed to be pretty close together. And Uzbek and Uyghur are definitely close together. But there's a fair bit of distance between Uzbek and Turkish. If you're curious about the mutual intelligibility, a good place to start is to get the Lonely Planet Central Asia Phrasebook and a Turkish phrasebook. This will introduce basic phrases from all the major Turkic languages except Azeri. Here's one example for you: English: Do you understand? No, I don't understand. Uzbek: Tushunyapsizmi? Yoq, tushunmayapman. Uyghur: Chüshendingizmi? Yaq, chüshemayman. Kazakh: Tüshindingizbe? Joq, tüsinbeymin. Kyrgyz: Tüshündüngüzbü? Joq, tüshünbödüm. Turkmen: Düshünyasinizmi? Yok, düshünemok. (from LP Central Asia) Turkish: Anliyor musunuz? Hayir, anlamiyorum. You'll note that for most of the languages, the root for "understand" is something like "tushun-". Turkish uses "-yor-" and Uzbek uses "-yap-" for present continuous (the examples here are literally "Are you understanding?" - "No, I'm not understanding." Uzbek, Uyghur, Turkmen and Turkish use "-mi" or a variation to mark questions, while Kazakh and Kyrgyz use "b" instead of "m". Note that Turkish puts the "sunuz" after the "mu" while most of the other languages put the "you" verb marker before. "M"+vowel is also used as a negative marker, but before the endings. Again, Kazakh and Kyrgyz have a "b". I already mentioned the present continuous. I'd also note that some of these - the one where the answer is like "man" are present. On the other hand, the Kyrgyz -düm ending is past (I didn't understand). You could also say, for example, "tushunmidim," (I didn't understand) in Uzbek. This is hardly a treatise on Turkic grammar. If it were, it would be a very confusing one. Still, this should be enough to show that on the one hand, the Turkic languages are hardly mutually intelligible from Instanbul to Kashgar, but on the other hand, there are common elements among the languages if you know what to look for. If your goal is to learn one language, then pick up another, Turkish then Azeri or Uzbek, then Uyghur, is the easiest way to go from what I know. But I'm a dabbler in the family; my specialization is French. Still, as I said before, if you just want to learn a Turkic language, Turkish is the place to start simply because so little material is available for the others. 22 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6334 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 3 of 56 11 February 2010 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Does anyone know how big is the difference between the Kazakh language spoken in Kazakhstan, compare to the variant spoken in Mongolia and China? I've read the pronunciation is different, but what about the loanwords from Chinese and Mongolian?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5452 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 4 of 56 11 February 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm wondering how well Kazakhs can understand Kyrgyz and vice versa. I heard they are quite intelligible with each other but can anyone verify that?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mr. E Newbie United States Joined 5694 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 56 13 February 2010 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
Wow. Looking at that, Turkish looks completely different from all of the others. I can't imagine it being mutually intelligible with any of them. I don't know about Azeri, but other than that it looks like Turkish is more or less on its own. The first four look pretty closely related, with only small variations (j vs y, t vs ch, also some of the infixes). I could see them being fairly understandable to each other. Of course, I'm judging based on the written language, I have no idea how it's pronounced or anything. It's too bad that materials for the other languages are so limited though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gamauyun Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5652 days ago 26 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Romanian, German | Message 6 of 56 13 February 2010 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||
|
Did Atatürk's reforms have any significant effect on Turkish's relationship to its relatives? I mean, did replacing a lot Arabic and Persian loanwords with native words push Turkish significantly away from other Turkish languages, which might still use these words?
On the other hand, did Turkic peoples under Soviet rule borrow enough Slavic words into their languages that it pushed them away from more western Turkic languages? Edited by Gamauyun on 13 February 2010 at 9:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6334 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 7 of 56 13 February 2010 at 7:24am | IP Logged | ||
About Ataturk's reform, you can read the excellent The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success by Geoffrey Lewis. It's available on Google books. The words that the other slavic languages borrowed from Russian were mostly the kind of "internationalism" you find in all modern languages: иммигрант, комендант, Директор, Диктатор, Машинист, баскетболшы, Республика... But the influence of Russian tends to be bigger in Tatar, Chuvash and Bashkir. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6276 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 8 of 56 13 February 2010 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
On the relationship of Turkish to other languages in the family, my own L2 understanding of Turkish allows me to follow quite a lot of Azerbaijani when I watch satellite TV. I don't know about more distant languages - perhaps they can follow simple Turkish.
Ataturk's reforms removed a lot of the Arabic and Persian words from Turkish, sometimes replacing them with borrowings from other Turkic languages. It may have pushed it a little further away from Azerbaijani, which still has a lot of Persian words (especially the variety spoken in Iran). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
