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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 30 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.
| Kipchak | |
|---|---|
| Northwestern Turkic | |
| Geographic distribution | Central Asia, Russia, Northern Caucasus, Balkans, Anatolia, Ukraine, China |
| Ethnicity | Kipchaks |
| Linguistic classification | Turkic
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | kipc1239 |
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
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/ |
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) | ||
| Kipchak–Cuman (Ponto-Caspian) |
| ||||
| Kipchak–Nogai (Aralo-Caspian) | |||||
| Kyrgyz–Kipchak (Kyrgyz) | |||||
- Except for the Southern "dialect", which is classified among the Western Oghuz languages despite its dialect status.[2]
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