The Turkic Languages

The languages spoken by Turkic peoples are, very clearly, genetically related, but cultural patterns are submerged in larger wholes. “There is no intra‐Turkic unifying factor, apart from the shared linguistic background.” Though much of the formation of the modern languages took place in the context of Islamic civilisation, far‐reaching changes were wrought by the Ataturk revolution in Turkey, and by the socialist systems of the Soviet Union and China. Writing systems are variously based on Latin, Cyrillic, or Arabic alphabets. Turkish, spoken as a first language by about 55 million people, is the most important single language of the Turkic...