Can Turkish and Turkmen speakers understand Old Turkic (the earliest attested form of Turkic)? Divided into different stages, Old Turkic refers to a collection of several closely related Common Turkic branches. In this video, Güneş will read some short paragraphs from the different stages of Old Turkic, and Bilge (Turkish speaker) and Ataş (Turkmen speaker) will see how well they can understand it.
Dating back to the 7th Century AD, we will start with the Köktürk (Göktürk) language. Kokturk is the language that was used in the oldest known written Turkic Language and the name comes from the Göktürk Khaganate, which is also referred to as the First Turkic Empire. The script used for the Old Turkic languages at this stage is also referred to as Göktürk or Orkhon script. The name Orkhon comes from the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early inscriptions were discovered.
The next Old Turkic stage that we focused on starts at around the 9th century (The Uighur stage). The Uighur or Uyghur Khaganate was a tribal confederation under the Orkhon Uyghur. As time went on, they would convert to and follow different religions (Tengrism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) and in the process used different scripts to write their language. The Old Uyghur language evolved from Old Turkic after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and it's important to note that the modern Uyghur language is not descended from Old Uyghur, it is a descendant of the Karluk languages. Western Yugur is considered to be the descendant of Old Uyghur.
The next stage is the Kara-Khanid stage. The Kara-Khanid Khanate (Karakhanids / Afrasiabids) were in power from the 9th through the 13th century, conquering and moving into Central Asia, signaling a shift from Iranic to Turkic presence in the area. This led to the adoption of certain elements from Persian and Arabic, both culturally and linguistically, as well as conversion to Islam.
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The Turkish language (Türkçe), which is also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with most of its native speakers living in Western Asia, and significant group of speakers in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Ottoman Turkish, which was a variation of the Turkish spoken today, influenced many parts of Europe during the time that the Ottoman Empire expanded. When the modern Turkish republic was established, one of Atatürk's Reforms consisted of changing the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with a Latin alphabet. Today, Turkish is recognized as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Iraq, Macedonia, and Romania.
The Turkmen language (türkmen dili) is a member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages and it is spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia, primarily in Turkmenistan where it has official status, and also in Iran and Afghanistan which both have a significant Turkmen community.
The Turkic languages consist of over 35 different documented languages, originating from East Asia. Turkish has the highest number of native speakers out of all Turkic language. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz-influenced Crimean Tatar.