Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

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Dtmont
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Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby Dtmont » Sat Sep 22, 2018 6:02 pm

I am curious if anyone knows (or can make an educated guess) which language of the Turkic branch has the least amount of loanword and largest amount of Turkic vocabulary? On this note does anyone know what Turkic language would be the best to learn if your goal was to understand them all?
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Re: Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby tarvos » Sat Sep 22, 2018 6:20 pm

Probably an isolated one located somewhere on top of a mountain. Wouldn't know which one that would be. I am kind of miffed at your notion of purity though. Loanwords don't make a language impure, they just (usually) reflect a culture's refusal to integrate or the fact they are located somewhere without much contact with other people such as Icelandic. Meaning they are spoken by about three people in a rainforest in the Amazon.

As for the languages, as far as I understood it, there is basically the "Turkey" branch with Turkish and Azeri and a few others, and then another branch covering the stuff in central Asia. There isn't that much mutual intelligibility between the two, so you'd need to learn at least two.

But I guess Turkish gives you your best bet? I don't know, you can't learn them all in one fell swoop, that much I am certain of.
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Dtmont
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Re: Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby Dtmont » Sat Sep 22, 2018 6:38 pm

tarvos wrote:Probably an isolated one located somewhere on top of a mountain. Wouldn't know which one that would be. I am kind of miffed at your notion of purity though. Loanwords don't make a language impure, they just (usually) reflect a culture's refusal to integrate or the fact they are located somewhere without much contact with other people such as Icelandic. Meaning they are spoken by about three people in a rainforest in the Amazon.

As for the languages, as far as I understood it, there is basically the "Turkey" branch with Turkish and Azeri and a few others, and then another branch covering the stuff in central Asia. There isn't that much mutual intelligibility between the two, so you'd need to learn at least two.

But I guess Turkish gives you your best bet? I don't know, you can't learn them all in one fell swoop, that much I am certain of.


I apologize I specifically avoided using words like purity in my post so I don't understand where you got that in my post, I agree with your views on languages. I was just curious to know if there was such a language.
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Re: Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby Longinus » Sat Sep 22, 2018 7:44 pm

Dtmont wrote:I am curious if anyone knows (or can make an educated guess) which language of the Turkic branch has the least amount of loanword and largest amount of Turkic vocabulary? On this note does anyone know what Turkic language would be the best to learn if your goal was to understand them all?

I know someone who speaks several Turkic languages. Next time I see him I will ask him your last question. I think they all have a fair number of loan words, so I can't help you there. You might have a look at Khirgiz -- I know the government there has a French attitude towards the language and is actively trying to remove Russian loans. I also know that the most divergent member of the family is Chuvash, so if you plan on studying several of them, don't start with Chuvash.
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Re: Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Sep 22, 2018 8:59 pm

Chung is probably the best person to ask about this around here. In my experience, Kazakh has somewhat fewer Perso-Arabic vocabulary than the Turkic languages to the south and west of it (and even some to the east, like Uyghur), and Kyrgyz apparently has even fewer. Turkic languages spoken by non-Muslim peoples tend to lack such vocabulary almost entirely, but they also tend to have loanwords from other sources: Finno-Ugric in the case of Chuvash, Mongolian in Tuvan, Tungusic and Mongolian in Sakha, not to mention Russian in pretty much all of them. My best guess for the Turkic language with "the most Turkic vocabulary" would be something like Khakas, which is pretty deep inside Siberia and not particularly close geographically to areas with other historically dominant language groups, but I don't really have much direct experience with it so I'm not 100% sure.
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Re: Turkic language with least amount of loanwords?

Postby Chung » Sat Sep 22, 2018 9:53 pm

Thanks for the props, vonPeterhof.

I have no idea which Turkic language's lexicon has the fewest loanwords. The living languages have all been affected by the neighbors to varying degrees as vonPeterhof has mentioned. I suppose that Old Turkic could have had fewer loanwords than modern Turkic languages, but I don't think that you're thinking of dead languages.

I guess that knowing Crimean Tatar on its own might facilitate understanding other Turkic languages the most. It's just too bad that it has so little learning material for outsiders. In its standard form, which is based on the central dialects, it's a Kipchak language that's genetically closest to the languages in the western subset of the group (e.g. Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk) but has been strongly influenced by Ottoman Turkish. Its southern dialects though are pretty much Oghuz dialects/languages now like Turkish, and because of this fact, "Crimean Tatar" encompasses two subdivisions of Turkic when considering all of its dialects (the northern dialects of Crimean Tatar were much less influenced by Ottoman Turkish and show their Kipchak traits more strongly). Outside this nitpicking, what any outsider would most likely learn is the standard form, which is thus a Kipchak language with noticeable Oghuz influence. Someone knowing just an Oghuz language (e.g. Azeri, Gagauz, Salar, Turkish, Turkmen) would often have a surprisingly easy time figuring out Crimean Tatar compared to the other Kipchak languages (e.g. Bashkir, Kazakh, Tatar) let alone Turkic languages used further to the north or east (e.g. Chuvash, Sakha, Tuvan, Uyghur). Chuvash is indeed rather screwy for most other speakers of a Turkic language. Khalaj is also weird for many of them because of the Iranic influence and how it seems to have retained certain traits found in Old Turkic which the other living Turkic languages have dropped.

I'm on the road right now. If I remember to look up this thread later on, I'll add to it if I find something in my books at home.
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