Old Turkic

Not to be confused with Proto-Turkic language or Turkic languages.

For the form of Turkish spoken in what is now modern Turkey during the 11th-15th centuries, see Old Anatolian Turkish. For the form used in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE), see Ottoman Turkish.

Old Turkic
East Old Turkic
Region	East Asia, Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe
Era	8th–13th centuries
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Siberian Turkic South Siberian Old Turkic
Dialects	Orkhon Turkic Old Uyghur
Writing system	Old Turkic script, Old Uyghur alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: otk – Old Turkish oui – Old Uyghur
Linguist List	otk Old Turkish
	oui Old Uyghur
Glottolog	oldu1238

Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It is the oldest attested member of the Siberian Turkic branch of Turkic, which is extant in the modern Western Yugur language. It is not the ancestor of the Uyghur language; the contemporaneous ancestor of Uyghur is called Middle Turkic, later Chagatai or Turki.

Old Turkic is attested in a number of scripts, including the Old Turkic script, the Old Uyghur alphabet (a form of the Sogdian alphabet), the Brahmi script, and the Manichaean script.

Old Turkic often refers not to a single language, but collectively to the closely related and mutually intelligible stages of various Common Turkic languages spoken during the late first millennium.

Sources

The sources of Old Turkic are divided into two corpora:

• the 8th to 10th century Orkhon inscriptions in Mongolia and the Yenisey basin (Orkhon Turkic, or Old Turkic proper).
• 9th to 13th century Uyghur manuscripts from Gansu and Xinjiang (Old Uyghur), in various scripts including Brahmi, the Manichaean, Syriac and Sogdian alphabets, treating religious (Buddhist, Manichaean and Church of the East), legal, literary, folkloric and astrological material, as well as personal correspondence.

Writing systems

Main article: Old Turkic script

The Old Turkic script (also known variously as Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script) is the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates during the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.

The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolai Yadrintsev.

This writing system was later used within the Uyghur Khaganate. Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Yenisei Kirghiz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and the Old Hungarian alphabet of the 10th century. Words were usually written from right to left. Variants of the script were found from Mongolia and Xinjiang in the east to the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 8th and 10th centuries.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front		Back
	Unr.	Rnd.	Unr.	Rnd.
Close	i	y	ɯ	u
Mid	e	ø		o
Open			ɑ

Vowel roundness are assimilated thorough the word through vowel harmony. Some vowels were considered to occur only in the initial syllable, but they were later found to be in suffixes. Length is distinctive for all vowels; while most of its daughter languages have lost the distinction, many of these preserve it in the case of /e/ with a height distinction, where the long phoneme developed into a more closed vowel than the short counterpart.

Consonants

	Labial		Dental		Post- alveolar		Velar		Uvular
Nasal		m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t	d	tʃ		k	g	q	ɢ
Fricative			s	z	ʃ
Tap/Flap				ɾ
Approximant			ɫ	l		j

Old Turkic is highly restrictive in which consonants words can begin with: words can begin with /b/, /t/, /tʃ/, /k/, /q/, /s/, /ɫ/ and /j/, but they do not usually begin with /p/, /d/, /g/, /ɢ/, /l/, /ɾ/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, /m/, /ʃ/, or /z/. The only exceptions are 𐰤𐰀 (ne, “what, which”) and its derivatives, and some early assimilations of word-initial /b/ to /m/ preceding a nasal in a word such as 𐰢𐰤 (men, “I”).

Nominal suffixes

This is a partial list of nominal suffixes attested to in Old Turkic and known usages.

Denominal

The following have been classified by Gerard Clauson as denominal noun suffixes.

Suffix	Usages	Translation
-ča	anča	at least one
-ke	sigirke yipke	sinew string/thread
-la/-le	ayla tünle körkle	thus, like that) yesterday, night, north) beautiful
-suq/-sük	bağïrsuq	liver, entrails
-ra/-re	içre	inside, within
-ya/-ye	bérye yırya	here north
-čïl/-čil	igčil	sickly
-ğïl/-gil	üçgil qïrğïl	triangular grey haired
-nti	ékkinti	second
-dam/-dem	tegridem	god-like
tïrtï:/-türti	ičtirti	inside, within
-qı:/-ki	ašnuki üzeki ebdeki	former on or above in the house
-an/-en/-un	oğlan eren	children men, gentlemen
-ğu:/-gü	enčgü tuzğu buğrağu	tranquil, at peace food given to a traveller as a gift woodwork
-a:ğu:/-e:gü:	üčegü ičegü	three together inside human body
-dan/-dun	otun izden	firewood track, trace
-ar/-er	birer azar	one each a few
-layu:/-leyü	börileyü	like a wolf
-daš/-deš	qarïndaš yerdeš	kinsman compatriot
-mïš/-miš	altmïš yetmiš	sixty seventy
-gey	küçgey	violent
-çaq/-çek and -çuq/-çük	ïğïrčaq	spindle-whorl
-q/-k (after vowels and -r) -aq/-ek (the normal forms)/-ïq/-ik/-uq/-ük(rare forms)	ortuq	middle partner
-daq/-dek and(?) -duq/-dük	bağırdaq beligdek burunduq	wrap terrifying nose ring
-ğuq/-gük	çamğuq	objectionable
-maq/-mek	kögüzmek	breastplate
-muq/-a:muq	solamuk	left-handed (pejorative?)
-naq	baqanaq	"frog in a horse's hoof" (from baqa frog)
-duruq/-dürük	boyunduruq	yoke

Deverbal

The following have been classified by Gerard Clauson as deverbal suffixes.

Suffix	Usages	Translation
-a/-e/-ı:/-i/-u/-ü	oprı adrı keçe egri köni ötrü	hollow,valley branched,forked evening, night crooked straight, upright, lawful then, so
-ğa/-ge	kısğa öge bilge kölige tilge	short wise wise shadow slice
-ğma/-gme	tanığma	riddle
-çı/-çi	otaçı: okıçı	healer priest
-ğuçı/-güçi	ayğuçı bitigüçi	councilor scribe
-dı/-di	üdründi ögdi alkadı sökti	chosen,parted,separated,scattered customs praised bran
-tı/-ti	arıtı uzatı tüketi	completely, clean lengthily completely
-du	eğdu umdul süktü	curved knife desire, covetousness campaigning
-ğu:/-gü	bilegü kedgü oğlağü	whetstone clothing gently nurtured
-ingü	bilingü etingü yeringü salingü	be in the know be prepared disgusted be moving violently
-ğa:ç/-geç	kışgaç	pincers
-ğuç/-güç	bıçgüç	scissors
-maç/-meç	tutmaç	"saved" noodle dish
-ğut/-güt	alpağut bayağut	warrior merchant

Literary works

• Uyuk-Tarlak inscription (date unknown) by an unknown writer (in Yenisei Kyrgyz)
• Elegest inscription (date unknown) by an unknown writer (in Yenisei Kyrgyz)
• Orkhon Inscriptions (732 and 735) by Yollıg Khagan (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Bain Tsokto inscriptions (716) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Ongin inscription (between 716 and 735) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Kul-chur inscription (between 723 and 725) a writer called "Ebizter" (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Altyn Tamgan Tarhan inscription (724) by an unknown writer (in Orkhon Turkic)
• Tariat inscriptions (between 753 and 760) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Choiti-Tamir inscriptions (between 753 and 756) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Sükhbaatar inscriptions (8th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Bombogor inscription (8th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)
• Book of Divination (9th century) by an unknown writer (in Old Uyghur)

See also

• Old Turkic script
• Proto-Turkic
• Orkhon Turkic language

Further reading

• Noten zu den alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei und Sibiriens (1898)
• Ö.D. Baatar, Old Turkic Script, Ulan-Baator (2008), ISBN 0-415-08200-5
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic word formation: A functional approach to the lexicon, Turcologica, Harassowitz (1991), ISBN 3-447-03084-4.
• M. Erdal, Old Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN 978-99929-944-0-5
• M. Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8 Uralic & Central Asia, Brill, Leiden (2004), ISBN 90-04-10294-9.
• Marcel Erdal (1 January 2004). A Grammar Of Old Turkic. BRILL. ISBN 90-04-10294-9.
• L. Johanson, A History of Turkic, in: The Turkic Languages, eds. L. Johanson & E.A. Csato, Routledge, London (1998), ISBN 0-415-08200-5
• Talat Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic, Uralic and Altaic Series Vol. 69, Indiana University Publications, Mouton and Co. (1968). (review: Gerard Clauson, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1969); Routledge Curzon (1997), ISBN 0-7007-0869-3.

External links

• Old Turkic inscriptions (with translations into English), reading lessons and tutorials
• Turkic Inscriptions of Orkhon Valley (with translations into Turkish)
• VATEC, pre-Islamic Old Turkic electronic corpus at uni-frankfurt.de.
• A Grammar of Old Turkic by Marcel Erdal
• Old Turkic (8th century) funerary inscription (W. Schulze)
• Kuli Chor inscription complete text
• Tonyukuk inscription complete text
• Kul Tigin inscription complete text
• Bilge Qaghan inscription complete text
• Eletmiš Yabgu (Ongin) inscription complete text
• Bayanchur Khan inscription complete text
• Ongin inscriptions by Gerard Clauson
• Timeline of Turkic Languages (Turkish)