Orkhon Turkic

Orkhon Turkic
Orkhon Uyghur, Göktürk
Kul Tigin stele, of the Orkhon inscription
Region	Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Eastern Asia
Ethnicity	Göktürks, Yenisei Kyrgyz
Era	5th–8th century
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Siberian Turkic Southern Siberian Old Turkic Orkhon Turkic
Dialects	Orkhon Yenisei Kyrgyz
Writing system	Old Turkic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	otk
Glottolog	orkh1234
ELP

Orkhon Turkic (also Göktürk) is the earliest version of Old Turkic, known as the oldest Turkic literary language, preceding Old Uyghur. It is the language in which the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions are written.

Dialects

Turkic people used a common literary language in the 5th-8th centuries, but there were some differences. It is possible to examine the Orkhon Turkic under two Yenisei and the Classical Orkhon Turkic headings. Orkhon Turkic had two main dialects, both written in Orkhon script.

Orkhon Turkic Inscriptions

Main article: Orkhon inscriptions

The language used in the inscriptions, most of which are found along the Orkhon river is called the Orkhon Turkic language. It contains not only tombstones but also diaries describing state events. For this reason, it is richer in terms of language and the language used expertly.

Yenisei Kyrgyz Inscriptions

Main article: Yenisei Inscriptions

The language used in the inscriptions found along the Yenisei river is called the Yenisei Kyrgyz dialect.

Phonetics

In Yenisei inscriptions, the letters e and i change places from time to time. The same change is seen in b with m, g with k, ş with s, and z with s. It has also been seen once in the letters ı and i.

Morphonology

A completely morphological difference was not detected in the Yenisei Inscriptions. But there are some points:

• In Orkhon inscriptions, the case of direction takes the suffix -a/-e after the possessive suffix, while in the Yenisei inscriptions it sometimes takes the suffixes -qa/-ke/-ğa/-ge when the same is the case.

• In the locative case, the letters l and n sometimes have the suffix -te/-ta but sometimes the suffix -de/-da.

• The past tense begins irregularly, sometimes with a hard consonant and sometimes with a soft consonant.

Other inscriptions

Talas Inscriptions

They are found around Talas, Issyk-Kul and Kochkor. They were written with the Yenisei variants of the Orkhon alphabet. It is believed that these inscriptions were also written by the Kyrgyzs.

The language of the texts used in the inscriptions is the same as the language used in the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions. The suffix -ka after the possessive suffix, which is seen in some of the Yenisei Kyrgyz inscriptions, is not seen in these inscriptions.

Phonology

Orkhon Turkic is a Shaz Turkic language, and a d-type Turkic language (e.g.; Turkish: ayak, Chuvash: ура (ura) but Old Turkic: 𐰑𐰴 (adaq), 'leg) which belongs to the Siberian Turkic branch.

Consonants

Orkhon Turkic consonants

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p	t		k q
	voiced	b	d		g
Fricative	voiceless		s ʃ
	voiced		z		ɣ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡ʃ
	voiced
Approximant			l	j
Rhotic			r

[p] occurs in all positions in a word, but word-initial occurrences are all loanwords.

Vowels

It sometimes has long vowels.

Vocabulary

Most of the vocabulary includes words of Turkic origin in Orkhon Turkic. In addition, a few words used are based on languages such as Sogdian and Middle Chinese. Mehmet Ölmez claims that about 20% of the vocabulary in Orkhon Turkic comes from neighboring cultures.

The borrowed words of the Orkhon Turkic period include Chinese, Sogdian, Mongolian, and Tibetan loanwords. Orkhon Turkic has a vocabulary that is less influenced by Sogdian and more heavily influenced by Chinese. In the period of Old Uyghur, Sogdian loanwords increase exponentially. The main reason for the increase of Sogdian influence is that the Uyghurs embraced Manichaeism.

References

Bibliography

• 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), .