| Kipchak | |
| Also Known As: | Northwestern Turkic |
| Ethnicity: | Kipchaks |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Turkic |
| Fam2: | Common Turkic |
| Child1: | Kipchak–Bulgar |
| Child2: | Kipchak–Cuman |
| Child3: | Kipchak–Nogai |
| Child4: | Kipchak–Kyrgyz |
| Glotto: | kipc1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Kipchak |
| Region: | Central Asia, Russia, Northern Caucasus, Balkans, Anatolia Ukraine, China |
The Kipchak languages (also known as the Kypchak, Qypchaq, Qypshaq or the Northwestern Turkic languages) are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family spoken by approximately 30 million people in much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, spanning from Ukraine to China. Some of the most widely spoken languages in this group are Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tatar.
The Kipchak languages share a number of features that have led linguists to classify them together. Some of these features are shared with other Common Turkic languages; others are unique to the Kipchak family.
| Old Turkic | Tatar (for example) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid → high | ||||
| pronounced as //e// | i | pronounced as //i// | |
| pronounced as //o// | u | pronounced as //u// | |
| pronounced as //ø// | ü | pronounced as //y// | |
| High → Mid | ||||
| pronounced as //i// | e | pronounced as //e// | |
| pronounced as //ɯ// | î | pronounced as //ɤ// | |
| pronounced as //u// | o | pronounced as //o// | |
| pronounced as //y// | ö | pronounced as //ø// | |
The Kipchak languages may be broken down into four groups based on geography and shared features (languages in bold are still spoken today):
| Proto-Turkic | Common Turkic | Kipchak | Kipchak–Bulgar (Uralian, Uralo-Caspian) | ||
| Kipchak–Cuman (Ponto-Caspian) |
| ||||
| Kipchak–Nogai (Aralo-Caspian) | |||||
| Kyrgyz–Kipchak (Kyrgyz) | |||||