Turkic

[this article is preliminary and needs to be corrected; it serves primarily illustrative purposes]

Turkic is a family of languages.

Name
The term Turkic derives from türk, a word that is widely used in Turkic languages to denote the ethnicity of their speakers. A clear distinction between Turkish and Turkic has been made in English only since the 1950s.

Composition

 * Bolgar
 * Eastern Turkic
 * Northern Turkic
 * Southern Turkic
 * Western Turkic

Validity
The Turkic languages are so closely related that the validity of the family was never in question. It was first described in some detail by Lemaréchal 1775.

The composition given here follows the most recent comprehensive treatment by Schönig 1998.

Alternative compositions
Baskakov (1956) proposed an alternative to the standard classification of Turkic languages: However, in Baskakov (1969) he changed his mind and endorsed the standard classification by Budagov (1868).
 * Bolgar
 * Northeastern Turkic
 * Southwestern Turkic

Classification

 * Altaic

Alternative classifications

 * Turkic has been claimed not to be further classifiable.
 * Altaic (with Japanese and Korean)
 * Altaic (with Japanese)

Reference

 * Baskakov 1956 ...
 * Baskakov 1969 ...
 * Budagov 1863 ...
 * Lemaréchal 1775.
 * Schönig, C. 1997/1998. A new attempt to classify the Turkic languages (1-3). Turkic Languages 1/2.

Other languages
German Turksprachen