| Orkhon Turkic | |
| Also Known As: | Orkhon Uyghur, Göktürk |
| Region: | Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Eastern Asia |
| Era: | 5th–8th century |
| Script: | Old Turkic |
| Familycolor: | Altaic |
| Fam1: | Turkic |
| Fam2: | Common Turkic |
| Fam3: | Siberian Turkic |
| Fam4: | Southern Siberian |
| Fam5: | Old Turkic |
| Glotto: | orkh1234 |
| Glottorefname: | Orkhon Turkic |
| Iso3: | otk |
| Ethnicity: | Göktürks, Yenisei Kyrgyz |
| Dia1: | Orkhon |
| Dia2: | Yenisei Kyrgyz |
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.[1] [2]
Turkic people used a common literary language in the 5th-8th centuries, but there were some differences.[3] 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.
See main article: Orkhon inscriptions. The language used in the inscriptions, most of which are found along the Orkhon river[4] 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.
See main article: Yenisei Inscriptions. The language used in the inscriptions found along the Yenisei river is called the Yenisei Kyrgyz dialect.
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.
A completely morphological difference was not detected in the Yenisei Inscriptions. But there are some points:
They are found around Talas, Issyk-Kul and Kochkor.[5] They were written with the Yenisei variants of the Orkhon alphabet. It is believed that these inscriptions were also written by the Kyrgyzs.[6]
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.[7]
Orkhon Turkic is a Shaz Turkic language, and a d-type Turkic language (e.g.; Turkish: ayak, Chuvash: ура (ura) but Old Turkic: ' (adaq)) which belongs to the Siberian Turkic branch.
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /link/ | ||
| voiced | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Affricate | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| voiced | ||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
It sometimes has long vowels.[8] [9] [10]
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.[11] [12] Mehmet Ölmez claims that about 20% of the vocabulary in Orkhon Turkic comes from neighboring cultures.[13]
The borrowed words of the Orkhon Turkic period include Chinese, Sogdian, Mongolian, and Tibetan loanwords.[14] 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.[15]