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Turkic Languages

Turkish , Turkmen, Uzbek, Azerbaijani (Azeri), Kazakh, Tatar, and other languages of Eurasia and central Asia.

The Turkic languages are a sub-family of the Altaic group and is spoken in Eurasia (the geographical region bridging Europe with Asia).

Only a linguist will be able to distinguish individual Turkic languages, so the average radio listener should only aim to distinguish Turkish from the other Turkic languages. Tadzhik is essentially Persian (Farsi) while Kirghiz and Kazakh are similar to Uzbek, and Turkmen and Azeri are similar to Turkish. About 40% of Kirghiz/Kazakh is intelligible as "old Turkish".

The Turkic languages spoken in the southern states of the former soviet union have many borrowings from Russian. The term Radiostantsiya (radio station) from the Russian is often heard.

Turkish and Turkic languages show vowel harmony (ie certain vowel sounds are disallowed if others precede) (eg ata, English father). The vowels u and uo are absent from Arabic and Persian but are frequent in Turkish (eg Turkiye).

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Last modified: April 24, 2000