Karluk languages

Karluk
Qarluq, Southeastern Turkic, Turkestan Turkic
Geographic distribution	Central Asia
Linguistic classification	Turkic Common Turkic Karluk
Early forms	Middle Turkic Karakhanid Khorezmian Turkic Chagatai
Subdivisions	Western Karluk   • Northern Uzbek   • Southern Uzbek Eastern Karluk   • Äynu   • Ili Turki   • Uyghur Intermediate   • Tor Tajik
Language codes
Glottolog	uygh1241
Uzbek   Uyghur   Ili

The Karluk or Qarluq languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family that developed from the varieties spoken by Karluks, an ancient people present in Central Asia in the 5th-8th centuries CE. ^[1] By far the largest languages of this branch are Uzbek and Uyghur.

Many Middle Turkic works were written in these languages. The language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate was known as Turki, Ferghani, Kashgari or Khaqani. The language of the Chagatai Khanate was the Chagatai language.

Karluk Turkic was once spoken in the Kara-Khanid Khanate, Chagatai Khanate, Timurid Empire, Mughal Empire, Yarkent Khanate and the Uzbek-speaking Khanate of Bukhara, Emirate of Bukhara, Kokand Khanate, Khiva Khanate, Maimana Khanate. ^[2]

Classification

Languages

• Uzbek – spoken by the Uzbeks; approximately 44 million speakers ^[3]
• Uyghur – spoken by the Uyghurs; approximately 8–11 million speakers ^[4]
• Ili Turki – moribund language spoken by Ili Turks, who are legally recognized as a subgroup of Uzbeks; 120 speakers and decreasing (1980)
• Chagatai – An extinct language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, it remained a shared literary language across more than one culture there until the early 20th century.
• Karakhanid – A literary language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate (9th to the early 13th century), it is considered a standard form of Middle Turkic. ^[5]
• Khorezmian Turkic – literary language of the Golden Horde that is considered a preliminary stage of the Chagatai language.

Proto-Turkic	Common Turkic	Karluk	Western	Uzbek
			Eastern	Uyghur Ili Turki Äynu
			Old	Chagatai † Khorezmian Turkic † Karakhanid †

Glottolog v.5.2 refers to the Karluk languages as "Turkestan" and classifies them as follows: ^[6]

Turkestan	Chagatai Modern Turkestan Uyghuric Ainu (China) Ili Turki Uighur Uzbek Northern Uzbek Southern Uzbek

References

1. Austin, Peter (2008). One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. University of California Press. p. 145. ISBN   978-0-520-25560-9.
2. McChesney, R. D. (14 July 2014). Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480-1889. Princeton University Press. ISBN   978-1-4008-6196-5.
3. Uzbek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Northern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Southern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
4. "Uyghur". Ethnologue. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
5. Glottlog 5.0 places this with Old Turkic.
6. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). "Karluk languages". Glottolog . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.