Introduction

The Turkic languages are a language family of about 40 different languages, which are spoken throughout Eurasia. There are approximately 180 million people worldwide who have a Turkic language as their mother tongue. The largest Turkic people group are the Turks (80 million), followed at a distance by the Azerbaijanis and the Uzbeks (both numbering between 30 and 35 million). There are about 20 Turkic peoples native to the Russian Federation, and in total they number around 11 million. The most numerous of these are the Tatars, of which around 5.5 million, out of 7 million worldwide, live in the Russian Federation.

Based on language affiliation, there are 4 different Turkic language families spoken in the Russian Federation: the Oghuric languages, the Kipchak languages, the Siberian Turkic languages and the Oghuz languages.

1. Map of the Turkic languages in Eurasia. Oghuric (orange), Kipchak (green), Siberian-Turkic (purple) and Oghuz (red). Author and source: see below.

Oghuric

The Chuvash language is the only surviving memeber of Oghur languages. Both the Bulgar and Khazar (the latter its classification is disputed) have gone extinct since the Middle Ages. The number of speakers of the Chuvash is around 1.1 million. The Chuvash people number 1.5 million, making them the 5th largest ethnic group in Russia. The Chuvash language has an exceptional position within the Turkic language family because it has been partly influenced by the Uralic languages throughout history. Because of that there is no mutual intelligibility between the Chuvash language and the other Turkic languages. Another feature that distinguishes the Chuvash people from most other Turkic peoples in Russia is the fact that they are not Islamic but mainly Russian Orthodox.

Introduction

Oghuric

Kipchak

Siberian Turkic

Oghuz

Bibliography

Sources pictures

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