TURKIC LANGUAGES

group of closely related languages that form a subfamily of the Altaic languages. The Turkic languages show close similarities to each other in phonology, morphology, and syntax, though Chuvash, Khalaj, and Yakut differ considerably from the rest. The earliest linguistic records are Old Turkic inscriptions, found near the Orhon River in Mongolia and the Yensiey River valley in south-central Russia, which date from the 8th century AD. Turkic languages are distributed over a vast area in eastern Europe and Central and North Asia, ranging, with some interruptions, from the Balkans to the Great Wall of China and from central Persia to the Arctic Ocean. The core area, between the 35th and 55th parallels, includes a western section comprising Asia Minor, northern Iran, and Transcaucasia, a central West Turkistan (Russian) section to the east of the Caspian Sea, and an East Turkistan (Chinese) section beyond the Tien Shan. The northern area extends from western Russia to northern Siberia. States in which Turkic languages are spoken include Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, northern Cyprus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Romania, Lithuania, and, because of recent industrial migration, several western European countries. group of closely related languages that form a subfamily of the Altaic languages. The Turkic languages show close similarities to each other in phonology, morphology, and syntax, though Chuvash, Khalaj, and Yakut differ considerably from the rest. The earliest linguistic records are Old Turkic inscriptions, found near the Orhon River in Mongolia and the Yenisey River valley in south-central Russia, which date from the 8th century AD. Additional reading A good, if uneven, handbook on the Turkic family is Karl H. Menges, The Turkic Languages and Peoples, 2nd rev. ed. (1995). Descriptions of the individual languages are contained in Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta, vol. 1 (1959); and Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 5, part 1, Turkologie (1963, reprinted 1982). A. Rona-Tas, An Introduction to Turkology (1991), deals almost exclusively with Old Turkic. Rudolf Loewenthal, The Turkic Languages and Literatures of Central Asia (1956), is a useful if somewhat outdated bibliography; for Soviet studies there is also the bibliography by Gyrgy Hazai (ed.), Sovietico-Turcica (1960). Lars Johanson