Kipchak languages

Kipchak
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; Kipchak–Kyrgyz;
Glottolog	kipc1239

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

Family-specific

Extensive labial vowel harmony (e.g. olor vs. olar "them")
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)[1]
			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[3] Teleut[4] Kyrgyz

Notes

Except for the Southern "dialect", which is classified among the Western Oghuz languages despite its dialect status.[2]

References

Encyclopedia of Bashkortostan.
Yazyki mira Языки мира [Languages of the World]. Vol. 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. Retrieved 2021-07-16.

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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[3] Except for the Southern "dialect", which is classified among the Western Oghuz languages despite its dialect status.[2]

[1] Encyclopedia of Bashkortostan.

[2] Yazyki mira Языки мира [Languages of the World]. Vol. 2. Indirk: Институт языкознания (Российская академия наук). 1997. pp. 19–20.

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

[Nevskaya-5] Nevskaya, I.A. "The Teleut Language". Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia. UNESCO. Retrieved 2021-07-16.