Kipchak languages

Kipchak
	Northwestern Turkic
Ethnicity	Kipchaks
Geographic; distribution	Central Asia, Russia , Northern Caucasus, Balkans, Anatolia Ukraine , China
Linguistic classification	Turkic Common Turkic Kipchak; ;
Subdivisions	Kipchak–Bulgar; Kipchak–Cuman; Kipchak–Nogai(Kazakh); Kipchak–Kyrgyz;
Glottolog	kipc1239

Short description: Sub-branch of the Turkic language family

The Kipchak languages (also known as the Kypchak, Qypchaq, Qypshaq or the Northwestern Turkic languages) are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family spoken by approximately 28 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.

Linguistic features

The Kipchak languages share a number of features that have led linguists to classify them together. Some of these features are shared with other Common Turkic languages; others are unique to the Kipchak family.

Shared features

Change of Proto-Turkic *d to /d͡ʒ/ (e.g. *hadaq > acaq "foot")
Loss of initial *h (preserved only in Khalaj), see above example

Unique features

Family-specific

Extensive labial vowel harmony (e.g. olor vs. olar "them") ^{[citation needed]}
Frequent fortition (in the form of assibilation) of initial */j/ (e.g. *jetti > ʒetti "seven")
Diphthongs from syllable-final */ɡ/ and */b/ (e.g. *taɡ > taw "mountain", *sub > suw "water")

Language-specific

In both Tatar and Bashkir, the original mid and high vowels are swapped in position by vowel raising and lowering:

Old Turkic		Tatar (for example)
Mid → high
*e	/e/	i	/i/
*o	/o/	u	/u/
*ö	/ø/	ü	/y/
High → Mid
*i	/i/	e	/e/
*ı	/ɯ/	î	/ɤ/
*u	/u/	o	/o/
*ü	/y/	ö	/ø/

Classification

The Kipchak languages may be broken down into four groups based on geography and shared features (languages in bold are still spoken today):

Proto-Turkic	Common Turkic	Kipchak	Kipchak–Bulgar (Uralian, Uralo-Caspian)	Bashkir Tatar † Old Tatar (Ural-Volga Turki)^[2]
			Kipchak–Cuman (Ponto-Caspian)	Crimean Tatar^{[nb 1]} Karachay-Balkar (Mountain Turkic) Kumyk Karaim Krymchak Urum † Cuman † Mamluk-Kipchak † Armeno-Kipchak
			Kipchak–Nogai (Aralo-Caspian)	Dobrujan Tatar † Fergana Kipchak Kazakh Karakalpak Nogai Siberian Tatar Baraba
			Kyrgyz–Kipchak (Kyrgyz)	Southern Altai^[4] Teleut^[5] Kyrgyz

Notes

↑ Except for the Southern "dialect", which is classified among the Western Oghuz languages despite its dialect status.^[3]

References

↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Kipchak". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/kipc1239.
↑ Encyclopedia of Bashkortostan.
↑ Yazyki mira. 2. Indirk: Институт языкознания (Российская академия наук). 1997. pp. 19–20.
↑ Some dialects are close to Kirghiz (Johanson 1998)
↑ Nevskaya, I.A.. "The Teleut Language". Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia. UNESCO. https://lingsib.iea.ras.ru/en/languages/teleut.shtml.

Bibliography

Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Ágnes (1998). The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08200-5.
Menges, Karl H. (1995). The Turkic Languages and Peoples (2nd ed.). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-03533-1.

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Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipchak languages. Read more

[4] Except for the Southern "dialect", which is classified among the Western Oghuz languages despite its dialect status.^[3]

[Glottolog-1] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Kipchak". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/kipc1239.

[2] Encyclopedia of Bashkortostan.

[3] Yazyki mira. 2. Indirk: Институт языкознания (Российская академия наук). 1997. pp. 19–20.

[5] Some dialects are close to Kirghiz (Johanson 1998)

[Nevskaya-6] Nevskaya, I.A.. "The Teleut Language". Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia. UNESCO. https://lingsib.iea.ras.ru/en/languages/teleut.shtml.

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