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Turkish family of languages

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!LH@N
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6601 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 6445 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 6601 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 6636 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.


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
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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)


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 6601 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
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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)


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")


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 6601 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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