Turkish Languages

Overview

Turkish languages, also known as Turkic languages, form a language family that spans across a vast region from Eastern Europe to the west of China and from Cyprus to Siberia. The family consists of at least 35 living languages.

Distribution and Speakers

The area of distribution of Turkic languages extends from the Kolyma River basin in the northeast to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the southwest. It is estimated that over 195 million people use Turkish as their mother tongue, with several tens of millions more speaking it as a second language.

Classification

The classification of Turkic languages is a well-known problem in comparative studies, consisting of various options based on different ratios of classification features such as phonetic, grammatical and lexical features, geographical and historical criteria. Some notable classifications include:

* **G. H. Akhatov's classification**
* **A. V. Dybo and O. A. Mudrak's classification**
* **M. T. Djaczka's classification**
* **Mahmoud al-Kashgari's classification**

Traditional Division

The Turkic languages are traditionally divided into four groups:

### Southern Eastern group or Uighur
This group includes several languages, but the exact number and boundaries are not specified in the provided sources.

Relationship to Other Languages

Turkic languages branch off from the Altaic languages, which is a broader language family that also includes other languages such as Mongolian and Manchu.