The origins of Bulgaro-Turkic languages

The Turkic languages is a closely related phylogenetic group further related to Mongolic and Tungusic languages [see, for instance, Hugjiltu (1995)^[5] and herein (2009-12)^[4](2012)^[5a]] within the proposed Altaic family [e.g. Starostin (1991)^[8]].
Whereas Turkic languages is a generally-accepted term, another correct name for a grouping comprising the Turkic and Bulagric languages could be Bulgaro-Turkic because of the early separation of the Bulgaric branch from the rest of the stem; consequently, Bulgaric and Turkic can rather be used as names of the two sibling taxons, even though this usage is far less common. According to the present glottochronological study,^[2] the Bulgaric languages apparently branched off from the Turkic languages at a rather early period of time, most likely c. 1100-900 BC, which is considerably earlier than normally cited elsewhere.^{[10][10a][10b]} The discrepancy can be attributed to the use of apparently incorrect Starostin's glottochronological formulas in other studies, although the exact date cannot be calculated with precision due the taxonomical uniqueness of Chuvash and possible lexicostatistical fluctuations.

The location of the Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic homeland is still controversial, however the present study sugests that it was most likely confined to the area in northern Kazakhstan south of the Irtysh River /eer-TISH/, including its tributaries Tobol /taw-BAWL/ and Ishim /ee-SHIM/. This conclusion can be drawn from the position of the Bulgaro-Turkic center-of-gravity and the corroborative geolexical analysis [see herein (2009-2013)^[3]]. The combined results of this investigation and the archaeological evidence suggest that the Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic people inhabited the forested steppeland of West Siberia during the classical Bronze Age period (c. 2000-1000 BCE), thus apparently matching certain cultures from the Andronovo archaeological horizon.

The geolexical analysis based on the materials collected in SIGTY, Lexis (2002)^[9] suggests that the Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic people lived in the open habitat with deciduous groves (birch, willow, aspen, linden); occasional marshland; freshwater and saline lakes with various fish, waterfowl and small mammal fauna, particularly beavers. Terms denoting taiga or desert ecozone have not been preserved. The Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic people were well familiar with crop cultivation (millet, barley, Spelt, possibly flax), cattle and horse breeding, dairy products, metal working (bronze, copper and precious metals), horse harnessing and riding, as well as probably the wheeled cart.

The active spread and diversificational migration of Proto-Bulgaric and Proto-Turkic apparently began between 900 and 200 BCE, which matches the onset of the Iron Age in West Siberia and could be connected with the widespread introduction of equestrianism and iron weapons,^[3] though most details of this process are still hypothetical.

The geographical tree of Turkic languages (2012)

On the present classification of Bulgaro-Turkic languages

Turkology is probably one of the oldest branches of historical linguistics, given that the earliest sketch of Turkic dialects was drawn by Mahmud al-Kashgari c. 1073, years before the first Crusade. There were many previous attempts to build a consistent classification of Turkic languages [see for instance, Baskakov's review (1969)^[7] for historiographic details]. The most prominent classifications were those of Rémusat (1820), Balbi (1847), Berezin (1848, 1857), Ilminskiy (1861), Vámbéry (1885), Radloff (1882), Katanov (1894), Aristov (1896), Müller (1896), Foy (1903), Korsh (1910), Winkler (1921), Samoylovich (1922), Rahmati (1922), Bogoroditskiy (1934), Ligeti (1934), Batmanov (1947), Räsänen (1949), Malov (1951),  Baskakov (1952, 1969, 1988), Benzing (1959), Menges (1959), Tekin (1980), Johanson (1998), Schoening (1999), Dyachok (2001), Anna Dybo (2006), Mudrak (2002, 2009), ASJP (2009). Accordingly, a slightly different version was published about every five years for the past two centuries or so. Whereas some of these classifications were just superficial attempts without much justification, others were part of a lifetime work (e.g. Radloff, Baskakov).

The classical Baskakov's classification,^[6][7] first presented in 1952 (then republished in 1969, 1988), was widely accepted in the Soviet/Russian Turkology at least until the 2000's, and seems to have affected even some of the western approaches. It did not include, however, any lexicostatistical study, and most of its conclusions were based upon phonological and some grammatical observations alone. In his books, Baskakov used expressions like "a complex system isogloss" by which he apparently understood a vague conglomeration of lingustic traits, which marks his classification as rather phenetic in nature.
As to other recent works, Anna Dybo's research (2006)^[10a] is purely lexicostatistical, based on Swadesh-100, whereas Oleg Mudrak's classification (2002, 2009)^[10b] is phono-morphostatistical.

The present taxonomic system was rebuilt nearly from scratch, and is not directly based on any previous classification system, consequently, it may differ from earlier works in several aspects. It tries to take a look into phonolgical, grammatical, and lexical features of Turkic languages, as well as their known geography, history and archaeology. Speaking in biological terms, it can also be seen as an attempt at a cladistic phylogeny which tries to differentiate between plesiomorphies and shared innovations.

All the linguistic argumentation and other theoretical studies concerning the present classification are provided in The Internal Classification and Migration of Turkic Languages (2009-2012), a separate online article. The lexicostatistical research with possible dates can be found in The Lexicostatistics and Glottochronology of the Turkic Languages (2009-2012). Finally, the research into the homeland position and the history of the early migrations is presented in The Proto-Turkic Urheimat & The Early Migrations of Turkic Peoples (2012).

The present taxonomic description does not address any rare or obsolete languages, for which no lexical data were found either because of access difficulties or the nearly complete absence of historical evidence (e.g. "Hunnic"), therefore by no means should this study be viewed as exhaustive. The total number of modern Turkic ethnicities exceeds 50, especially if all the large dialect-languages and notable ethnic groups with individual self-appellations are counted, so it is difficult to mention and describe all of them. Consequently, the present series of articles has mostly been focused on getting all the major subgroups together in the proper order, something that was particularly hard to accomplish considering the close proximity of most Turkic sub-branches and their posterior interaction.

It should also be noted that this particular page was inspired by the comprehensive work on the numerals of the world conducted by Mark Rosenfelder.

The nine nouns listed below were carefully chosen to visually demonstrate the maximum phonological differences across the Turkic languages, unlike the numbers which simply run from 1 to 10. Font colors tend to mark phonologically similar lexemes, except the black color that stands for "unclassified", or gray that marks an "internal lexical replacement or borrowing". One should not pay much attention to the colors, these are mostly auxiliary and were used to analyze the material at the initial stage, but were not removed afterwards, since they still help to visually pick up similar phonetic elements.

On the mutual proximity of Turkic languages

The lexicostatistical proximity map of Turkic languages (2012)

A frequently asked question concerns the mutual intelligibility between Turkish and other Turkic languages. The question has been explored, for instance, by Talat Tekin (1979).^[22] Of course, no two languages can be entirely "mutually intelligible", let alone the subjectivity of this concept, so by mutual intelligibility we understand mutual lexical proximity under standardized conditions. In any case, it turns out that Turkish is pretty much a western language and therefore is rather distant from other Turkic subgroups. Of the major Turkic languages, it exhibits close proximity only to Azeri and some of the lesser Seljuk languages (such as Gagauz, to which it is particularly close), sharing with them most grammar and vocabulary (cf., say, the relatedness between Spanish and Portuguese). There's much less mutual intelligibility with Turkmen than one could expect from their common Oghuz descent. On the other hand, Uzbek and Uyghur, despite being even further geographically, still share lots of familiar Old Turkic, Persian and Arabic words with Turkish and can be learned with some effort as any two comparale in-group languages, cf. for instance English and Danish. The intelligibility of Turkish with the languages that had limited contact with Oghuz tribes and the Perso-Arabic world, such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz, let alone the languages located east of the Irtysh River line or beyond the Altay Mountains, is extremely poor or zero. For isntance, speaking kust one of the Oghuz languages, it is hardly possible to understand anything but a few words in Kazakh or vice versa without preparation. However, many similar words and typical idioms — for instance, such as the local variants of var/bar/pur "there is" and yok/jok/s'uk "there is not", to name just one of the most frequently used ones — can be picked up even as far as Sakha and Chuvash, whereas the fundamentals of basic grammatical structure and many mophological suffixes are largely similar in all the Turkic languages.

Using the meticulous lexicostatistical study of 215-word Swadesh lists,^[2] we can now make precise conclusions concerning the actual mutual proximity of the Turkic languages (see the clickable map above). Outside of (1) Chuvash and (2) Sakha, which have been notorious for centuries for their independent positions, there are several internal lexical clusters or intelligibility islands: (3) Oghuz-Seljuk, (4) Great-Steppe, (5) Altay-Khakas, (6) Tuvan, (7) Yugur (Yugur is not measured herein because of the scarcity of lexical materials but it is clearly different), although (3a) Turkmen and (4a) Karachay-Balkar likewise seem to be rather detached from the rest.

Note that in real speech, the value for the subjective intelligibility will normally be much lower than the figures in the map obtained for the standardized lexical lists. For instance, 50% in the diagram will approach zero in a real idiomatic fluent speech of a native speaker, because of many additional effects. On the other hand, the abundance of shared Arabic, Persian or Russian borrowings will contribute to the intelligibility in formal speech even between distant languages.

A note on the Silk Road and the Central Asian Bridge

One can better understand the migration of Turkic languages after familiarizing with the geography of the Silk Road and the concept of the *Central Asian Bridge. During the Middle Ages, people could not use flying carpets. Any kind of travel or ethnic migration could only proceed along narrow, geographically suitable pathways extending between deserts and mountain ranges and forming a natural, permanent network of migration routes. Basically, in Central Asia, a considerable part of this network became known as the Silk Road. The Silk Road is often considered merely from the economic perspective, although it also played a critical military, cultural, demographic, and linguistic role being a unique, vital artery which conveyed and maintained life in Eurasia for many generations. The Huns, the Turks, the Mongols, the Gipsies, whoever passed through Central Asia, could only travel along this natural migratory system; consequently, the distribution and classification of peoples in Asia is in fact nearly predetermined by the geographical structure of its routes and adjacent areas. That is especially true of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Iranian peoples who have lived by and off the Silk Road for hundreds of years. The Silk Road was also a streaming jet of genes running in the opposite directions that contributed to the exchange of the human DNA in Eurasia. It also carried infections, such as plague, in both directions, and brought tea, paper, compass, gunpowder, and other inventions to Europe causing it to rise from the Middle Ages into the era of art, reason, technology, as well as fierce firearm warfare.

A note on clan societies

The social structure of Turkic (and other Eurasian) tribes has been based on the system of patrilineal clans. In Europe, the clan structure has been well-known for the Celtic tribes [cf. Scottish Gaelic clann, Old Irish cland "tribe, offspring", also cf. semantically similar English kin, Old English cynn "relatives, family"]. In many ways, clans and their names worked in the same way as modern European surnames, which are apparently nothing but remnants of the Indo-European clan structure.

Until the 20th century and sometimes even later, the Turkic clans dictated many rules and laws of social living. Each man was supposed to know his family tree down to the 7th generation (as in the case of the Bashkirs and Kazakh) or at least to the 4th (Altayans?). Each clan had a guardian spirit that could be interacted with through a shaman (kam) and some specific sacrifices and practices. A clan often had a legendary progenitor, whose story had been passed down in oral tradition, and who had often been connected to a totem animal.^[23b][25] Moreover, a clan often possessed a cattle tamga (Mong. "brand"), which apparently is historically similar to the European coats of arms. We assume herein that the Turkic clan structure can be seen as a model for many societies of the Bronze and Iron Age, including Indo-European.

Naturally, a clan members were considered brothers and sisters who had many social responsibilities and could not intermarry either entirely (Altayans) or until a certain generation. Even today many Turkic society members often regard themselves as part of a large social family as opposed to the Western much individualistic worldview. Marriages were often arranged by parents at a very early age — sometimes even at the cradle — with a member of a specific neighboring clan. The memory of cradle or children's marriages seems to be reflected in modern life when we say that "people are destined for each other". Though generally the marriage customs varied. For instance, in other cases, the young man could choose his bride, and the marriage was accompanied by paying the bride price (qalïn) to the bride's family. Furthermore, at least judging by Genghis Khan's story,^[23a] in the case of the Mongols, wives and concubines could be obtained by force as war trophies. Alien clans could also be integrated into a local society, which explains why we find, for instance, Kipchak clans as far apart as the Altai Mountains and the Black Sea, and which also explains why people with different DNA haplogroups could be part of a society speaking the same language.

The names of Turkic languages and clan names often seem to be connected. As it was shown in [On the origins of Turkic ethnonymy],^[1] the name of the strongest and richest clan was often passed to the confederacy of clans, and sometimes, after a thousand years or so, to the name of a language. Taking the example of the Smiths in English, we could make a reconstruction of a certain male, apparently a blacksmith, that lived in England during a certain unknown period before the 10th century, and if the English clan structure were fully developed, the English language could presently be called something like "Smithish" or "Smithonian". Sometimes, such language naming was done almost deliberately in the course of the 20th century, for instance the failure to realize that the word Kypchak functioned basically in the same way as a family clan name, resulted in its rather unfounded extrapolation in Baskakov's classification [see below]. Moreover, and in practice, the Smith family name was probably reinvented and readopted many times, so not all the Smiths are related to each other; by the same token, this analogy explains that not anyone who is called a Tatar or Kypchak has in fact anything to do with the original progenitor of the Tatars or Kypchaks. In many cases, trying to find the original meanings of Turkic ethnonyms seems to be quite pointless, since they often do not contain any more meaning than, say, such English surnames as Archer, Hawkins or Green, so unreasonable ethnonymic guessing is a constant source of errors and folk etymologies.

As Radloff explained in the 1860's,^[23b] the 19th century's Kazakh social structure, which is apparently a typical representation of early Turkic societies in general, was built in the following way. At the basement of the social pyramid, there were 6-10 families forming an aul (a village) that used the same geographic pattern of migration throughout the year. The head of the aul was usually the oldest and the richest man, and most of the other aul members were personally related to him. At winter camps (qïshlïq), several auls formed a larger gathering, where the judicial power belonged to a bey, the richest alderman that was able to settle any conflicts or disputes between different auls. Several clan subdivisions of this type formed a full clan, where the internal matters were usually settled by a council of beys. At times, a group could branch off from the rest of the old clan and receive the name of its new ruling bey leader, thus forming a new clan. Finally, to defend from external enemies or to invade them and capture their pastures, cattle or slaves, a number of clans could be united into a horde (an army) headed by an electable khan. The rulers and the ruling clans were known as ak sök "white bone", whereas the common people were called kara kalk "black people" or kara sök "black bone".

Notes on transcription

The UTF encoding, let alone the IPA signs, were avoided right from the beginning for reasons of compatibility, consequently the present system of transcription and transliteration may initially seem slightly unusual.

ü, ö is used as in Turkish or German; ï is a back high vowel similar to the Russian <bI> letter or the Turkish <I> vowel; [A special note should be made on the pronunciation of /ï/ for English speakers, since the information in en.wikipedia.org tends to be misleading. The closest match of /ï/ is the short English /i/ in kit, din, however /ï/ is a back vowel with the tongue being pushed much further into the throat, which creates a rather peculiar acoustic effect, distantly similar to cut or dun. this vowel does not exist in English and it cannot be directly compared to a shwa in about, ago, since the schwa is a middle-middle vowel, and the /ï/ is supposed to be high-back. This sound seems to be a Eurasian areal phenomenon, so in addition to Turkic, it also exists in Mongolic, Korean, Slavic and many other neighboring languages. In the English spelling, it is usually denoted as <y>, e.g. Kyrgyz /kir-GIZ, keh-r-GEHZ/.]

ê is mostly schwa as in about, but in some languages may denote a different sound; N is the nasal /ng/; x is usually a velar <kh> similar to the Russian <x> or the Spanish <j> ; sh as in English; zh as in treasure but usually less palatalized; ð (in Bashkir, Turkmen) as in this; ß as in thump; s' (in Chuvash) is a palatalized form of /s/ similar to the Russian <Cb> letters (an S with the soft sign at the end) or just a soft /s/ to some extent similar to the Japanese <sh>; d' is a palatalized /d/ in Altay Turkic similar to the very light pronunciation of <J> in English; /J/ and /j/ is a sound similar to the <j> in Jack or a strongly palatalized /d'/;

q and G are respectively voiceless and voiced deep velars (or even uvulars). [Note that <q> is the traditional way to denote the voiceless "throaty" velar sound in English, usually of Arabic, cf. "Quran", or Turkic origin, cf. "Nissan Qashqai". Even though this sound must have been the original Proto-Turkic phoneme, it seems to be falling out of use throughout the Turkic history, being slowly replaced by /k/ and /g/ from Russian, Greek and other western languages. In other words, the /k/:/q/ distinction is in fact often non-phonemic: the /q/ is usually pronounced in /qa/, /qu/, /qo/, /qï/, but moved forward allophonically in /ke/, /ki/. Moreover, the younger Russian-influenced speakers may replace it by /k/ or attenuate it in all the cases.];

*P/B (in Tuvan, Tofa, Proto-Turkic) is a way to denote reconstructed phonemes probably intermediate between /p/ and /b/ as in Mandarin or some Mongolic languages; D- (in Yugur, Tuvan) is a reconstructed phoneme probably intermediate between /t/ and /d/ as in Mandarin; -D- (in Old Turkic, intervocal) is a reconstructed phoneme that was probably similar either to the Spanish intervocal -d- or the interdental English /ð/; *S (in Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic) is a reconstructed phoneme with much surrounding controversy, probably similar either to the palatalized /s'/ as in Chuvash or the Japanese /sh/ or the Russian /sch/ or even the English /j/; *R (in Proto-Turkic) is a reconstructed trill, probably a mixture of /r/ and /z/ as in Czech; *L (in Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic) is a reconstructed palatalized lateral fricative similar to the one in modern Khalkha Mongolian, essentially a mixture of /l/ and /s/; *H marks intense aspiration or a similar reconstructed phoneme; ' after vowels (in Chuvash) marks stress; the pronunciation of certain other phonemes may in fact be unconfirmed, unattested or unknown.

The Turkic languages do not have any clearly defined rules for the dynamic stress as the European languages do, and the stress seems to vary depending on the intonation, but separate words are normally pronounced with the stress on the final syllable, e.g. usually Tatar /tah-TAR/.

Attempts at the Proto-Bulgaro-Turkic reconstructionm

Any kind of reconstruction of a proto-language is more of an art than an exact science, so inevitably it should be taken with a grain of salt. As one should understand perfectly well, there is no such thing as the correct or generally-accepted reconstruction, they all are merely artificial approximations that normally cause much unsubstantiated argument among different authors, and in many cases are unfalsifiable. Consequently, Starostin's team's work typically cited for Proto-Turkic cannot be viewed as ultimate reality, either. For the same reason, there was some disagreement between Yusuf Gürsey and me (2009-10) on a number of issues in Proto-Turkic, e.g. the problem of the initial S*- vs. y*, the initial t-/d-, b-/m- controversy, the final -q in Chuvash, etc. In any case, the following brief reconstruction was performed to the best of our knowledge and according to the outlines in the introduction to the main article.^[1]

Chuvash /chah-VAHSH, chuh-VUSH/, cf. Russified pronunciation /choo-VUSH/ is still spoken in the Chuvash Republic (capital: Cheboksary /chehbok-SAH-reh/) and is believed to be the direct descendant of the language of Volga Bulgaria (ancient capitals: Bolghar and Bilar; the latter was a large city about 2 miles across). Volga Bulgaria was founded c. 670, near the confluence of the Volga and Kama /KAH-ma/^[26] River. Commanding the middle Volga, this state controlled trade between the northern Europe and Persia, and was similar in this respect to the Kievan Rus that controlled the Dnepr /NEE-per/^[26] River. Volga Bulgaria was Islamized in 922 after being visited by an Arab writer and diplomat Ibn-Fadlan. Curiously, his famous account inspired a modern book, whose plot was used to make The 13th Warrior movie starring Antonio Banderas. Volga Bulgaria was destroyed during the Tatar-Mongol invasion in 1236. Consequently, Middle Chuvash has been strongly affected by Tatar. Today, the "Devil's Tower" in the Yelabuga /ye-LAH-booga/ town on the Kama River (see left fig. below) is one of the few standing remnants of this long gone civilization, although the 13th-14th century buildings in Bolghar (see right fig. below) also preserve its spirit. In 1552, the Russians seized Kazan /ka-ZAN/^[26] further affecting the Chuvash language and culture. In any case, the standalone position of Chuvash among other Turkic languages is rather indisputable, much of its lexical core is quite archaic, and it can be seen as a valuable data source for the purposes of Bulgaro-Turkic reconstruction. There are 1.04 million speakers (2010),^[24d] most of them bilingual in Russian. As an example, here's a very lovely folk song (mp3) in Chuvash with an English translation — note certain Slavic features in music and phonology.

Most music clips below are chosen to have unusual or enthralling tunes, so we recommend them as part of this ethnography study.

Chuvash traditional dress (left); the reconstruction of the Bolghar City (right)
the original Volga Bulgar tower in Yelabuga near the Kama river (left below)
the restored buildings dating from the Golden Horde period (right below)

The topographic map of the Altay-Sayan Mountains (clickable), based on maps from topomapper.com

The supertaxon that excludes any Bulgaric languages is named herein as Turkic (Proper). It is also sometimes confusingly known as common Turkic, which may have misleading associations with Proto-Turkic or even certain Turkic conlangs.

The late homeland of Proto-Turkic Proper was evidently located near the Altai-Sayan Mountains /al-TY^[26], sah-YAHN^[26]/, most likely near northwestern ridges of the Altai between 900 BC and 300 BC. This conclusion^[3] can be drawn from the following evidence: (1) the historical distribution of the early Turkic tribes and the result of backtracking their migration vectors; (2) the location of the center-of-gravity point of the maximum language diversification area; (3) archaeological estimations. The date is inferred from a meticulous glottochronological analysis^[2]. Similar hypotheses were suggested, in fact, at least as early as the 19th century.^[25]

This Proto-Turkic period seems to match the onset of the Iron Age in West Siberia, when iron weapons and horse riding became very common, which might have contributed to the active spread of the early Turkic dialects. The glottochronologically determined time depth of the Proto-Turkic split, therefore, seems to be greater than that of Slavic or Romance (c. 1600 years ago) but more or less similar to that of Germanic.

Apparently, there existed three main early Proto-Turkic dialects: (1) Eastern, that moved towards Lake Baikal thus forming Proto-Yakutic, (2) Central, that initially stayed near the Altai, and (3) Southern, that migrated into Dzungaria and Mongolia.

Despite considerable separation between these earliest branches, some of the Turkic languages within the internal subgroups may still retain a great deal of mutual intelligibility due to their recent diversification, common borrowings or posterior contacts.

Linking Proto-Turkic to "Siberian Scythians"

After the beginning of the Iron Age in West Siberia somewhere between 700 BC and 300 BC, rich archaeological sites in the region of the Tian Shan, Altai and Sayan Mountains mark the presence of the so called "Siberian Scythians" — see the Pazyryk /pah-zeh-RIK/ archaeological culture in the Altai Mountains, the Tagar /tah-GAR/ culture along the upper Yenisei /YEH-ne-SEY/,^[26] and the Uyuk /oo-YOOK/ culture in Tyva. These cultures include burial mounds, horse burials (usually regarded as typically Turkic trait by archaeologists), gold bead clothing (in the Arzhan kurgan, part of the Uyuk culture), iron weapons, horse harness, chariots, petroglyphs, mummies in permafrost, remnants of clothing including well-preserved carpets, and other exceptional finds. Despite the name, no direct relatedness to the true Scythians of the Black Sea described by Herodotus could be demonstrated in any possible way. The term "Scythian" as used in this context should be regarded as a purely archaeological designation describing the mutual resemblance of the Iron Age cultures of Central Eurasia that used similar iron weaponry, horse harness, and particularly, the very specific artistic style with dynamic gold and bronze animal figurines. Therefore, based on the temporal and geographic coincidence, we can infer^[3] that these archaeologically attested ethnic groups could in fact have formed the basis for late Proto-Turkic (Proper) and the early Turkic dialects after their initial spilt, although this hypothesis is still controversial.

Additionally, both the early Chinese records and the anthropological and genetic studies point to the presence of "European invaders" including an unusually high concentration of the Proto-Indo-European R1a1 haplogroup in the Altay-Sayan area, which matches the high R1a1 concentration in modern Altay and Kyrgyz people and other easternmost ethnic groups of Central Asia. These findings may lead to the representation of the early Turks as people of European (Caucasian) rather than Mongoloid descent.

Possible reconstructed migrations of Proto-Yakutic (clickable)

This major grouping includes only two known representatives: Sakha (Yakut) and Dolgan (the northern offshoot of Sakha), which can be collectively named Yakutic. Note that the name Sakha /sah-KAH, SAH-kah/ is the original self-appellation, whereas Yakut /ya-KOOT/)^[26] seems to be a Russophone exonym, but the two words are often used interchangeably.

The drastic discrepancy, that set Yakutic aside from any other Turkic languages, has been well recognized since the 19th century. Generally, there isn't much doubt that the Yakutic subgroup should be viewed as an important, early-splitting branch of the Turkic languages. Most glottochronological studies [e.g. Dyachok (2001)^[10] and herein (2009-12)^[2]] imply a very early separation of Proto-Yakutic from the main stem (somewhere between c. 200-300 and 900 BC). However, there seem to be certain common features that the Yakutic supertaxon shares with the Altay-Sayan languages. After a thorough consideration in this work, these features have been attributed to the secondary contact between the two supertaxa occurring along the Yenisei River soon after the initial Proto Turkic split.

Essentially, the Yakuts are a Turkic group that formed as an outcome of migration along the Lena River (Anglophone: /LEE-nah/, Russophone: /LEH-nah/).^[26] This has led to a large distribution of Yakutic settlers spreading from the area of Yakutsk City all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

The Yakutic branch seems to be highly deviant in many respects, having little to do with its closest neighbors, Tuvan or Khakas. Sakha and Dolgan share many Russian and Mongolic cultural lexical borrowings, and much of their vocabulary seems to come from an unknown source, though they still retain many important archaic Turkic features, just as well.

An approximate distribution of the Altay-Sayan languages circa the beginning of the 20th century (clickable), based on maps from the 1940-60's[12b][12c][12d]

The Altay-Sayan subgroup includes Altay, Khakas, Tuvan and the closely-related languages. This subgroup probably corresponds to the descendants of the so called Yenisei Kyrgyz, a historically important cluster of eastern Turkic tribes that were attested under various names in Chinese chronicles between 200-900 AD, but which dissolved after the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The territory of the Yenisei Kyrgyz in Khakassia was mentioned under the name Kirgizskaya Zemlitsa "The Kirgiz Land" during the clashes with the Russians in the 17th century.

The Yenisei Kyrgyz are said to have destroyed the Uyghur (= Gökturk) Empire in Mongolia and its capital Ordu-Baliq /or-DOO bah-LIK/ in 840 AD, which caused the final dissipation of the Orkhon /or-HON/ Turkic peoples, but led to the rise of the Yenisei Kyrgyz Kaganate (840-1207).

Originally, the Yenisei Kyrgyz seem to have inhabited the Minusinsk Depression in Khakassia [Minusinsk /mee-noo-SINSK/ is a city near Abakan, the capital of Khakassia].The Minusinsk Depression is a geographically suitable plane with steppes, lakes, and valleys located along the upper Yenisei between the Kuznetsk Alatau /kooz-NETSK AH-lah-TOU/, Western, and Eastern Sayan Ridge. Protected by these mountains, the Minusinsk Depression has relatively mild climate convenient for agriculture, to the extent that even cherry and apricot orchards have been grown there at least since the 19th century.

By proceeding south, up the Yenisei River, and after crossing the Western Sayan Ridge, one can arrive into the interconnected Tuva Depression, where the Tyva Republic is located. By following further along the uppermost reaches of the Yenisei, one can get into northern Mongolia originally inhabited by two very remote and frequently omitted Tuvan-related ethnicities, the Tsaatan /tsah-TAHN/ and the Soyot /saw-YOT/.

The traditional Anglophone spelling and pronunciation of Kirg(h)iz is /keer-GEEZ/,^[26] which is based on the Russified variant with an /ee/, but the original Turkic phonology is rather shorter and harder, therefore /kr-GEZ, ker-GIZ/ is also acceptable.

The Anglophone pronunciation of Tuva is /TOO-vah/, however the name of the country itself has been formally changed in the 1990's to Tyva /tuh-VAH/, which is supposed to be closer to the Turkic original, whence the modern-day spelling and pronuciation discrepancy.

Whereas Tuvans often still live in classical yurts, many Khakas and Altay peoples seem to have lived in dugout log huts, leading semi-settled lifestyle, suitable for fishing, crop cultivation and metal working. It is in fact these types of permanent dwellings that are typically found in archaeological sites across West Siberia in the layers corresponding to the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The Proto-Altay-Sayan, or Proto-Yenisei-Kyrgyz settleents seem to be identifiable with the Tashtyk /tash-TIK/ archaeological culture (2nd BC-5th AD) famous for their stunning, poignant funerary masks showing rather European features.

Another striking trait is the odd ethnological resemblance of Altay and Tuvan shamans to the North American Indians, which may be far from coincidental, judging by the geographical proximity of Yeniseian tribes, which have recently been shown to be linguistically related to Na-Dene (see Dene-Yeniseian superfamily). The genetic studies conducted since 1997 too demonstrate high concentration of Native American mtDNA lineages in Tuvan, Soyot, Khakas, Altay, and Buryat population [e.g. Zakharov (2003)].

The Altay and Khakas languages and dialects seem to be rather archaic, and contain relatively few non-Turkic loanwords in their basic vocabulary, except for abundant cultural borrowings from Russian. Generally speaking, because of the smallest number of Arabic and Mongolic loanwords, as well as the purity and archaism of their lexicon, languages like Khakas, Altay, and Kyrgyz can be regarded among the most typical Turkic languages, preserving the maximum number of late Proto-Turkic features, so they may provide an idea of what the late Proto-Central or even late Proto-Turkic Proper may have actually sounded like. Note that Tuvan, on the otherhand, contains too many Mongolic borrowings.

The Altay and Khakas population has been historically subdivided into moe than a hundred patrilneal clans, known as seoks (sö:k "bone").

On the origins of the ethnonym Kyrgyz: (Note: any ethnonymic remarks are unavoidably hypothetical.)
The word "Kyrgyz" probably originates from the name or alias of a patrilineal clan's progenitor. Many centuries later, this name must have spread to several other neighboring clans or clan confederecies, finally becoming overused and ambiguously applied to many ethnic groups of various descent. It is supposed herein that the word by itself seems to have the same root as in *kork- "to fear" or as in *kyr- "to break" and may contain a reduplication of *kyr-kyr > *kyr-kyz with the first -r retained before the consonant. Moreover, words of the same phonological shape in Turkic of West Siberia seem to allude to terror and force, cf. Tuvan korgysh, Khakas xorGïs, Kyrgyz korkush "fear, terror"; Kazakh qurtu "exterminate", qïrqu "shearing, cutting"; Altai kïr "erase", kïrkïsh "shearing", Sakha kïrgïs "fight, destroy each other", etc.

A more popular but less likely and less meaningful etymological version (apparently first mentioned in the History of the Yuan Dynasty) is that the Kyrgyz ethnonym originates from a juxtaposition qïrq + qïz "the forty girls" or "forty + an unknown suffix".

The outdated ethnonym "Karagas" for Tofa(lar) may too be just another way to pronounce "Kyrgyz"; moreover, note the direct retention of this ethnonym in Fuyu Kyrgyz in China.

However, curiously and quite confusingly, the modern generic self-appellation of Khakas and Altay peoples is in fact Tadarlar (Tatars), probably because of the widespread usage of this name in the Russian Empire of the 18-19th century.

The Tuvan-Tofa subgroup includes Tuvan (proper), Todzin, Tofa, Tsaatan and Soyot. It represents those ethnic groups that settled in the south of the region — along the uppermost reaches of the Yenisei in the Western and Eastern Sayan Mountains. In other words, from the geographic perspective, the Tuvans and their siblings can be seen as the Yenisei Kyrgyz tribes that migrated along the Yenisei from the Minusinsk Depression first into the Tuvan Depression and then into the nearby regions near the Mongolian border. For this reason, the Tuvan subtaxon may also be called the Sayan subgroup.

Glottochronologically, the Tuvan subgroup must have separated from Proto-Khakas and Proto-Altay by about 250 AD.^[2]

The Tuvan languages and dialects are rather peculiar and exhibit many unusual words, including Mongolic borrowings, so for the most part, they cannot be understood not only by the Turks of Central Asia but even by their closest Khakas-Altay neighbors. The self-appellation Tofa or Tïva might in some way be related to the name of the Tuba /too-BAH/ River (allegedly originally known as Ul) in the Minusinsk Depression near Abakan, though this suggestion is controversial.

The Tuvan archaeological sites of the Uyuk culture reveal striking round burials under kurgans with unique gold artifacts (Arzhan-1, Arzhan-2)^[11][12] dating to 800-600 BCE, but usually identified with the rather chimerical "Siberian Scythians".

Note that the Tuvan and Tofa(lar) spelling systems may contain voiced symbols, such as <b>, <d>, <g>, which in practice denote the so called "weak" consonants that are normally pronounced as unvoiced in the beginning or as semi-voiced in the intervocal position, as opposed to <p>, <t>, <k> which always denote aspirated consonants.

The Khakas subgroup includes at least the following representatives: (Standard Literary) Khakas /hhah-KAHS/, which is basically a rather artificial 20th century's literary koine based on Sagai, and several more true-to-life vernacular languages, such as Sagai /sah-GY/ (presently, the most commonly spoken vernacular dialect of Khakas, situated to the east of the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountains), Kach(a) (Russian "kAchinskiy"; actually from the old self-appellation /qa:sh/; now rare, though still active in the beginning of the 20th century), Kyzyl (almost extinct), Koibal, Beltir (extinct); Mras-Su Shor, Kondom Shor (meaning the Shor people living along the Mrassu and Kondom Rivers near the Kuznetsk Alatau west of Sagai); finally Middle Chulym /choo-LIM/ (spoken in a couple of villages, in remote northern areas along the middle course of the Chulym River), and possibly Lower Chulym (acc. to a local researcher, the last speaker died in 2010). According to Baskakov's classification (1960-80's), the Khakas subgroup may even include some of the northern Altay dialects.

The modern ethnonym "Khakas" was created only in 1918, patterned on the then-supposed reading of Chinese chronicles [see the discussion in the published correspondence by Yakhontov, Butanayev (1992)].^[13] Except for formal occasions, this word is still out of use in Khakas communities, with the main self-appellation "Tadar(lar)" being used instead. (The "Tadarlar" ethnonym is also accepted among the Altay people.) The reason why the original generic name for Khakas appears to be lost in history must stem from the long-standing differentiation of the Khakas subgroup into many unconnected dialects and languages.

The Khakas peoples had traditionally practiced nomadic herding, agriculture, hunting, and fishing, but were mostly Russified and Westernized in the course of the 20th century.

Shor, located further in the Kuznetsk Alatau, is a small ethnic group closely related to Khakas people. Population: 2840 speakers (2010)^[24d]. The Shor people that lived in forested areas between the Altai and Kuznetsk Alatau created peculiar songs, such as Pörü "The wolf", so skillfully performed by singer Chiltis Tannagasheva. [It sounds like this song really doesn't go along with the modern studio, being associated with an entirely different story of prehistoric survival.]

Fuyu Kyrgyz is an often omitted and oddly located, and presently nearly extinct variant of Khakas in northeastern China. It is now remembered only by the elderly and only to a very small extent. It was originally distributed northwest of Harbin along the Nenjiang River near a town called Fuyü, hence the odd exonym; the self-appellation is in fact Gyrgys or Xyrgys. The Fuyü Kyrgyz seem to have been exiled form Khakssia to Dzungaria in 1703-06 and then resettled to China in 1761 after the conquest of Dzungaria by the Qing Empire. They apparently belongs to the Khakas subtaxon (cf. namir < Khakas nanmïr "rain"; and suG "water"). They were studied by Hu, Zheng-Hua (1982), and recently revisited by Butanayev (2005) from Khakassia, but no detailed description is available (in Mandarin only?). Religion: originally shamanism, then Lamaism.

The Chulym /choo-LIM/ river, the tributary of the Ob, flows through the taiga a very long way from any areas populated by the Khakas or Altay peoples. [Note that there exists another Chulym River, the tributary of Lake Chany]. The local Chulym villages seem to be situated at the very edge of the world: there are basically hardly any human settlements to the north of them for a good thousand miles — nothing but forests and marshland. In the 20th century, Chulym was studied by Dulzon (1940-60's) and Biryukovich (1970's). After their formal recognition in 2001 as a separate ethnicity, the Chulym people managed to set up their own village festivals and teach some language lessons.
Precontact way of living: fishing, millet and barley cultivation, dug-out dwellings. Religion: shamanism before the 18th century, presently atheism or Orthodox. 355 persons, only 45 speakers (2010)^[24d] (cf. 380 speakers in the 1970's).

Subgroup 2c:
Altay (Turkic)

The Yenisei-Kyrgyz migrants to the Altai Mountains

The Altay (Turkic) subgroup is a complex assortment of rather poorly studied dialect-languages with ambiguous classification, some of which may exhibit proximity to Khakas, while others to the Kyrgyz language of Kyrgyzstan. The peculiarities of the lesser Altay languages are frequently underestimated or completely ignored.

There are now 65.500 nominal speakers of the Altay languages (2002), though the local dialects quickly fall out of use. According to Baskakov (1969),^[7] who studied some of the Altay dialects in vivo after the WWII, the Altay subgroup may have the following taxonomic structure:

The North Altay Turkic subtaxon includes:
(1) Kumandy /koo-MAHN-deh, koo-mahn-DEE/; population: 2890 persons, c. 740 speakers (2010);^[24d]
(2) Chalkan /chal-KAHN/ or Kuu /KOO/; population: 1180 persons, all bilingual in Russian; named after the Kuu ("Swan") River;
(3) Tuba /too-BAH/ (rather intermediate between North and South); population: 1965 persons, 230 speakers (2010);

The South Altay Turkic subtaxon includes:
(1) Standard (Literary) Altay, or Altay-kizhi /al-TY kee-ZHEE/ from kizhi "person", or Altay (Proper). There are 74.230 persons formally listed as "Altayans", and circa 56.000 speakers (2010).^[24d] Before 1948, the Altay people were confusingly named "Oyrots" after the subgroup of Mongolic languages due to their interaction with the Dzungarians in the 18th century, though Radloff in the 1860's called them just "Altayans".
(2) Teleut /te-leh-OOT/ was used as a standard before 1917; population: 2640 persons, 975 speakers (2010); for a typical example of the Teleut speech, see this clip (phonologically, it is probably pretty close to what late Proto-Turkic sounded like);
(3) Telengit /teh-len-GIT/is situated further in the mountains, thus is less affected by external influence; population: 3710 persons (2010).

Altay (Turkic) is sometimes viewed as rather intermediate between Khakas and Kyrgyz languages. However, much of the Altay vocabulary seems to match Khakas, and to a lesser extent, Tuvan, therefore, according to the present study,^[1] Altay (Turkic) should be seen as part of the Altay-Sayan subgroup, being closely related to the Khakas subgrouping. Also, note that much of the southern Altai Mountains are located in eastern Kazakhstan, which may explain certain non-Altay-Sayan features in Altay Turkic as a result of secondary interaction with Kazakh.

Note that the difference between the spelling of Altai Mountains and Altay (Turkic) languages; the names ending in -ai reflect an older spelling, whereas -ay is a modern English transliteration.

Also note that the Altai Republic (capital: Gorno-Altaysk) and the Altai Krai /al-TY KRY/(administrative center: Barnaul /bar-na-OOL/) are geographically connected but politically different federal subjects of the Russian Federation that should not be conflated. The Altay people mostly live in the Altay Republic in the mountains, whereas Altai Krai is situated on the plane and presently is almost entirely Russian-speaking.

Kyrgyzstan /KIR-giz-STAN/(capital: Bishkek /bish-KEK/) is a small mountainous country in the Tian Shan Mountains near Lake Issyk Kul /EE-sek KOOL/,^[26] originally situated along the northeastern part of the Silk Road. The legendary history of the Kyrgyz people, including battles against the Khitans and Dzungarians, are described in the Epic of Manas /mah-NAHS/, an extremely long, orally transmitted poem first mentioned in the 16th century and written down in 1885.

Kyrgyzstan was integrated into Russia in 1876, but eventually became independent in 1991. Youngsters often no longer speak Russian. The Kyrgyz people and language were known as "Kara-Kyrgyz" before the 1920's. Religion: formally Muslims, though, as Radloff attested (1860's)^[23b], Islam did not take much root among the Kazakhs, and even less so, among the Kyrgyz tribes of the 19th century, so both languages are relatively free of Arabic borrowings. There are circa 4 million speakers of Kyrgyz.
Listen to the song Aged 18 from the 1960's performed by Zhanetta Bobkova (2009) — a nice voice, poetry and the girl (and the numerals) — as well as to another old song: Ömür daira or Ömür daira (mirror) "The River of LIfe" by Kochkoro.

The Republic of Kazakhstan /KAH-zak-STAN/ (capital: Astana /AHS-ta-NAH/) is just that giant, eye-catching spot on the map of Central Asia. Despite its large size, much of central Kazakhstan's territory is in fact semi-desert continental steppe with most population concentrated in the northern area along the border with Russia or near the Tian Shan Mountains. Note the former capital Almaty /AHL-ma-TEE/, probably from Kyrgyz Alma To: "Apple Mountain". Historically, the Kazakh /ka-ZAHK,^[26] ka-ZAHH/ people seem to be just those Kyrgyz nomads that began to spread beyond their original Jeti-Su and the Chu river homeland near the Tian-Shan after the 1460's, and whose language was afterwards strongly affected by the Nogai and Tatar dialects of the dissolved Golden Horde.^[1] In the 17th-18th centuries the country was divided into the three zhüz (jüzes) (= large confederacies of Kazakh tribes). Since the 1820's, the Russians in Kazakhstan began to use the Kazakh territory for coal mining, agriculture, nuclear tests, and launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kazakhstan became independent in 1990, emerging as a huge Central Asian power with rapidly growing economy and relatively high level of urbanization. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are mutually intelligible, and the Kazakhs were even named Kazak-Kyrgyz or Kaisak-Kyrgyz or just Kyrgyz in the Russian sources between the 1730's and 1920's (the self-appellation was still Kazakh, though) [see e.g. Melioranskiy (1894).^[14]] Cf. an old Kazakh saying, "Kazakh and Kyrgyz are one kin, but who in the world made Sart? (=a Chagatai city dweller, trader, an Uzbek)." (/qazaq qyrGyz bir tuGan, sart shirkindi kim tuGan/) There are circa 12 million speakers. Listen to the Jalgan ay folk song by Asemkhan from the Xinjiang autonomous region of China where Kazakh is also spoken — a nice and clear eastern pronunciation and admirable voice.

Presently, the Baraba /bah-RAH-bah/ are just a tiny spot of villages east of the Irtysh River. Originally, they inhabited the area around large Lake Chany /chah-NEE, chah-NEH/ and the adjacent Baraba Steppe. The Baraba people were first attested by 1595, and then described by the Messerschmidt -Strahlenberg expedition in 1721,^[16] the famous field study which, among other discoveries, led to the early establishment of the main Ural-Altaic language groups by Strahlenberg.^[5a] The Baraba legends mention their relatedness to the Khanate of Sibir (1495-1582)^[16d] and the Samoyedic population,^[16] which seems quite reasonable, and some specific features may indeed relate the Tobol-Irtysh Tatars to Baraba. However, the unique grammatical differences (e.g. the bara-tï-n ("you go") type of the present tense as in Altay) and the lack of certain Kimak features (e.g. the -ar future instead of the -achaq future)^[16d] lead to a hypothesis that the Baraba people might be the remnants of the early Great-Steppe tribes which had inhabited the Baraba and Kulunda Steppe between the Ob and Irtysh Rivers before 500-700 AD and then intermingled with the Kimaks. Also, note the possibility of the Chulym / Baraba interaction (cf. üts : üts "three"). The Baraba language was contaminated by Kazan Tatar during the 20th century. The ethnonym Baraba does not mean bar-ba "don't go" or similar, as it is usually explained in folk etymology, but is probably related to the legendary clan progenitor Baram.^[16d][1] Economy: settled, non-nomadic population originally living in wooden houses; crop cultivation, animal husbandry, hunting, fishing.^[16e] Religion: originally shamanism, then Islamized. About 4000 persons are cited,^[16f] but few actual native speakers.

A Baraba woman (c. 2005)

Clickable, based on an ethnographic atlas (1964)^[12b]

The deviant Bashkir phonology (ch > s, s > h, z > ð) is sometimes explained by an absorption of an unknown substratum. Curiously, Bashkirs might at least partly genetically descend from Proto-Hungarians (or Magyars /mah-JAR/) of the Hungaria Magna and the other closely-related Ugric tribes, as well as possibly from Bulgaric tribes. Proto-Hungarians were mentioned as still speaking Hungarian along Ak-Itil, the main river of Bashkortostan, c. 1235 by Friar Julian,^[1] but apparently were later linguistically assimilated by the local Kimak tribes during the expansion of the Golden Horde. That seems to date the emergence of the Bashkir dialect to after the 13th century.
Between 1220 and 1234, the Bashkirs were fighting the Mongols, preventing their expansion to the west, but then voluntary joined the Moscovy in 1557.
Judging by the rather unreasonable proximity of literary Bashkir and Kazan Tatar languages, which must have almost necessarily involved some secondary interaction, Bashkir may have been afterwards affected by the Kazan Tatar immigration to the Ural Mountains, especially taken that the Ural Bashkir people had certain historical freedoms and suffered less feudal opression.^[1]
Economy: nomadic animal husbandry until the 18th century. Population: 1.3 million speakers, most of them bilingual in Russian. Religion: Islam since the 950s, but mostly non-religious since the Soviet period. Listen to Kiler keshe, kemder bar "Someone's coming, someone's there (at the gate)" with the typical sights of the Southern Urals.

On the origins of ethnonym Bashkir: The ethnonym "al-Bashkïrt" by itself had appeared very early on, being first mentioned in the Arab sources c. 840 and then clearly attested by Ibn-Fadlan near the Emba /EHM-bah/ River and then the confluence of the Volga and Kama in 922. Therefore, there is some terminological discrepancy: as a language similar to Kazan Tatar, Bashkir seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, whereas the historical attestation of this ethnonym in reference to the Kimak-Kypchak-Tatar tribes of the Urals and the Middle Volga seems to be going further back in time.

Crimean Karaites /KA-reh-ite/^[26] are a rather odd and presently very small branch of adherents to Karaite Judaism, which is based on the reading of the Tora itself rather than its interpretations. The exact origins of Karaites are obscure, though they seem to descend from a Jewish sect (probably originally from the Ottoman Empire) that must have switched to a Polovtsian dialect spoken in the Crimean Peninsula by the 13th century. Being socially and religiously detached from the rest of the Turkic community, their language must have branched off from the Kimak main stem in the same way as Ladino, Yiddish and other Judaic languages. It is usually known as Karaim, meaning in Hebrew "those who read (the scriptures)", though the terms Karaite and Karaim are frequently conflated. The connection with the Khazars has been speculated as early as the 19th century but is poorly corroborated. In 1392, a part of the Crimean Karaites were relocated to Lithuania thus forming the branch of Trakai (Lithuanian) Karaim. During the WWII, the Karaites were saved from extermination after managing to demonstrate their formal dissociation from mainstream Judaism. Karaites were literate and many were quite influential despite their small community. Presently, only c. 600 persons in the Crimea (2002), 257 in Lithuania (1997), and c. 1000 in other countries. Self-appellations: Qïrïm qaraylar, Qaray, etc.

The Kumyk /koo-MIK, koo-MEK/ people occupy the steppeland along the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea in Dagestan, which is probably one of the most ethnically complex federal subjects in the world. Neither Kumyk nor Nogai have their own formal autonomies. The Kumyk origins are unclear, though their geographical position and notable dialectal differentiation suggest they arrived to the area of the Caspian Sea before the Nogai people, that is before the mid-16th century, which is supported by the foundation of Shamkhalate of Tarki in the 1440's. The direct descent from Khazars has often been claimed, considering that Tarki Village near Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, has often been associated with the legendary Samandar of the Khazars (destroyed in 969). Printed books since the mid-19th century. Historical economy: agriculture, fishing, settled living in villages. Religion: Sunni Islam. Population: 502.000 persons, 426.000 speakers (2010).^[24d] Self-appellation: qumuq. Dialects: Hasavyurt and Buynaksk (Standard Kumyk), Kaytaksk, Podgorny, Tersk.

Salar /sah-LAR/ is a language of controversial classification. According to legends, the Salar people are said to have moved into Xunhua /shoon-HWAH/ Salar Autonomous County in western China, approximately the same location as the Yugur people. The migration is said to originate either from Samarqand, Uzbekistan, or the Khorasan Province, occurring c. 1370, which matches the rise of Tamerlane. The migration could have been accomplished by traveling along the Silk Road. Traditional Turkology usually describes Salar as "Oghuz", however there is a conspicuous absence of any typical Oghuz-Seljuk innovations. Moreover, the striking phono-semantic mutations, the grammatical similarity to Yugur (including the loss of conjugation), and the strong Chinese influence (e.g. native numbers no longer in use, phonological adaptations, the sporadic use of the "shï" copula, etc.) also tend to contradict this grouping. By no means should Salar be mindlessly viewed as just "Oghuz"— rather it seems to be the outcome of creolized transition from the local Middle Yugur substratum to one of the closely located Turkic languages such as the early Chagatai or late Oghuz, additionally with some Chinese and Dongxiang (Mongolic) influence.^[1] Religion: Islam. C. 100.000 ethnic Salar people, but the language is now mostly spoken only by the elder. Listen to this lovely traditional Salar song, Usher ya maña, usher "Look at me, gather around".

Figs: left to right, examples of the Karakhanid architecture:
(1) A decoration with swastikas; (2) Burana Tower, Balasagun;
(3) Aisha Bibi Mausoleum, Taraz, Kazakhstan;
(4) Mausoleum in Uzgen, western Kyrgyzstan; (5) a Karakhanid Minaret, Bukhara (1127)

Khalaj /hah-LAHJ/ (not to be confused with a Northwest Iranian language of the same name) is a poorly classified Turkic language in western Iran about a 100 miles south of Tehran, which is famous for several unusual features, such as (1) the initial h- where other languages have only vowels, (2) the intervocal -d- as in hadaq "foot" and (3) the retention of long vowels as in Turkmen. Khalaj had been first mentioned in a legend recited by Mahmud al-Kashgari, and then discovered and studied in vivo first by Minorsky (1906) and finally by Doerfer (1968-73), who nearly went to the extent of proclaiming Khalaj as one of the most basic and early-diversified Turkic languages ever. However, according to other studies, such as Mudrak (2002-08)^[10b] and herein^[1], Khalaj should be tentatively classified as a relatively late offshoot of the Karakhanid expansion, which is supported by such features as (1) the presence of the intervocal -D- (as in aDaq) in Orkhon-Kharakhanid; (2) the lack of profound historical changes in Khalaj glottochronologically consistent with an earlier separation from the main stem; (3) the presence of the prothetic h- in Khotanese, an Iranian language spoken in the same part of the Tarim basin, etc. Consequently, as it was suggested as early as Minorsky (1906), Khalaj seems to be just the living continuation of southern Karakhanid, whose archaic features are easily explained by the early separation of Orkhon-Karakhanid-Oghuz sub-stem as a whole.
Khalaj has also been strongly affected by Azeri or other local Seljuk languages, as well as the Iranian adstratum. Economy: agriculture, nomadic sheep breeding. Presumably, c. 42 000 speakers, mostly bilingual in Farsi.

The Oghuz clan confederacy was first attested circa 600 AD in Mongolia. In the 8th century, they waged a war with the Orkhon Göktürks and were subjugated by them, so at the time, they were already regarded as a tribal unity clearly different from Tür(ü)k, Tatar and Qïrgïz.  By 775, the Oghuz tribes were found near Talas in Sogdiana, assumingly having arrived there as part of a mass migrations to the Western Göktürk Kaganate. Eventually, they seem to have traveled along the Syr-Darya /SIR DAR-ya/^[26] (Yaxartes) River towards its delta in the Aral Sea where they formed the confederacy of the Transoxanian Oghuz with a capital named Yangi-Kent and a ruler titled yabgu (=prince). There in the Transoxanian steppeland, they were witnessed by several Arab travelers, including a vivid description by Ibn-Fadlan in 922. Mahmud al-Kashgari (1072) mentioned several Oghuz towns, some of which have been rediscovered by archaeologists; he also explicitly stated that "Turkmen" and "Oghuz" meant essentially the same, which means that the modern-day Turkmen people must be the direct descendants of the Transoxanian Oghuz. On the other hand, the name Turkmen apparently could initially be applied to any Islamized Turks.
The Oghuz dialect-language of the 11th century is documented in Al-Kashgari's writings mostly as few words and phrases. By the 12th century, the Transoxanian Oghuz tribes apparently migrated towards the Kopet-Dag Mountains or dissipated. According to a poorly supported hypothesis, they could also be connected to the Pecheneg raids into the Kievan Rus, but the origins of the latter are highly controversial.

On the origins of ethnonym Oghuz: The ethnonym was first attested as Altï Oghuz (The Six Oghuz) in a Yenisei inscription, and then as the Toquz Oghuz (The Nine Oghuz), Sekkiz Oghuz (The Eight Oghuz) in the Orkhon inscription in Mongolia, and as the Üch Oghuz (The Three Oghuz) near Kyrgyzstan. The numbers before the name apparently meant just the number of tribal units participating in a military confederacy, which could change depending on the current situation^[1].
The ethnonym Oghuz /aw-GOOZ/ most likely goes back to a personal name of a legendary patrilineal clan progenitor, described in oral legends collected in the Oghuz-namah ("The Oghuz Narratives"), with the earliest written record by Rashid al-Din dating to the end of the 13th century. The name or alias itself may presumably have meant öqüz "bull, ox" implying force and vigor.

The remnants of Juvara, an Oghuz city discovered by archaeologists near the Aral Sea in 2008

A Turkmen bride

Ashgabad Trade Center

Seljuk (Oghuz) archer