Old Turkic language

All you want to know about Old Turkic language

Old Turkic/Old Uyghur
Spoken in: Central Asia
Language extinction: evolved into Uyghur by the 13th century
Language family: Altaic
 Turkic
  Southeastern Turkic (Uyghuric)
   Old Turkic/Old Uyghur 
Writing system: Orkhon, Brahmi, Aramaic-derived, Arabic
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3: otk

Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested Turkic language, found in inscriptions by the Göktürks and the Uyghurs in ca. the 7th to 13th centuries AD. It cannot be considered a direct predecessor of the Uyghur language, but elements of Old Turkic can be traced in Middle Turkic such as Chagatai. Old Turkic is now considered as belonging to the Southeastern Common Turkic branch of Turkic languages.

Contents

Differences between Old Turkic and Ottoman Turkish

Old Turkic
Üze Tenri basmasar, asra yir telinmeser, Türk budun ilingin terürgün kim atardı?
Turkey Turkish
Üstte Tanrı(Gök) basmadıkça(Çökmedikçe), altta yer delinmedikçe, Türk Milleti(Budunu) ilini töreni kim bozabilir?
English
Unless the sky collapsed, the earth was pierced, Turkish nation, who can destroy your land and your tradition?

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 (Old Uyghur), in various scripts including Brahmi, the Manichaean, Syriac and Uyghur alphabets, treating religious (Buddhist, Manichaean 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, Qutaδγu bilig "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, ė, 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 (β), m;
dental: t, d (δ), n;
palatal: č, y, ń;
velar: k (q, χ), g (γ), ŋ;
sibilant: s, š, z;
liquid: r, l.

See also

References

  • M. Erdal, Old Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN 0415082005
  • M. Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8 Uralic & Central Asia, Brill, Leiden (2004), ISBN 9004102949.
  • M. Erdal, Old Turkic word formation: A functional approach to the lexicon, Turcologica, Harassowitz (1991), ISBN 3447030844.
  • Talat Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, Uralic and Altaic Series Vol. 69, Indiana University Publications, Mouton and Co. (1968). (review: Gerard Clauson, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1969); RoutledgeCurzon (1997), ISBN 0700708693.
  • L. Johanson, A History of Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN 0415082005

External links


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