Talk:Proto-Turkic language

transliteration

hello humans, it seems the transliteration in the vocab is different from the transliteration in the phonology. should i take it that

• phonology e = vocab é
• phonology ë = vocab e

thanks 80.187.107.149 (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Proto-Turkic people?

If there was a Proto-Turkic language, it seems logic to me that there would have been a Proto-Turkic people. Perhaps someone could start an article on them? Gringo300 (talk) 17:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Reconstruction(s) of Proto-Turkic

It would be good if someone added how Proto-Turkic is reconstructed, the regular correspondences between the Turkic languages, etc. --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 23:40, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The whole layout of the page is flawed; someone should edit it and make it similar to the pages regarding Proto-Austronesian and PIE. The grammar of the English here is also very confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Van Gulik (talk • contribs) 22:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

sibilants/liquids?

Reading some stuff from Eugene Helimski (see his homepage, eg. this it seems he argues *š *z were actually palatalized liquids *lʲ *rʲ. Is this generally accepted these days? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like we are using this same convention in Altaic languages. Think I'll be bold here. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Oldest record of Turkic Language

Orkhon inscriptions are not the oldest record of Turkic Language. Golden Man sculpture is the oldest evident for now. It was founded by coincidence ;http://www.dilimiz.com/tarih/altinelbise.htm. It's time about 500 BC. It is striking evident for Turkic Language and Turks Civilizations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abcçdefghıijklmnoöprsştuüvyz (talk • contribs) 08:27, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

That inscription is in Saka, an Iranian language. See Issyk kurgan. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Dating

The "high limit" is extremely conjectural (based only on the start of the Neolithic in Kazakhstan, which seems arbitrary and moreover assumes that the origin of Altaic/Turko-Mongolic/Turkic is to be found there, which is just one possibility among many, and not even the most mainstream one; BTW, Kabak's quote seems to say that Altaic came into existence around 4500–4000 BC!) and misleading. This is like claiming: "A separate Uralic family is believed to have existed since approximately 8000–6000 BC" based only on Fortescue's Uralo-Siberian or Kortlandt's Indo-Uralic. This is all speculation based on the flimsiest of conjecture. Mainstream historical linguistics views Turkic as a family of its own without any reliably demonstrated affiliations. Altaic remains controversial, I don't see that this state of affairs has been overturned, and you can base nothing on Altaic or even only Turko-Mongolic.

Precisely speaking, proto-languages date to the moment immediately before the start of divergence into attested branches, so the "high limit" is irrelevant anyway. In 4000 BC, Proto-Turkic proper did not exist yet and it is more proper to speak of Pre-Proto-Turkic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:31, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

About deep linguistic prehistory

I'd just like to point out that the proto-language stage of the average language family (even including ancient families such as Hurro-Urartian!) is about 4000–2000 years old, and there are numerous isolates like Basque whose reconstructible time-depth is perhaps 1000–2000 years; celebrated cases such as Austronesian or Indo-European are far from the norm. Even Proto-Sino-Tibetan (whose age is unclear – Old Chinese does not seem to have been radically different from Proto-Sino-Tibetan, so there is no certainty that Proto-Sino-Tibetan is really as old as Proto-Indo-European or even more) is poorly known and surrounded by certain doubts, while proper reconstructions of Proto-Afro-Asiatic or Proto-Niger-Congo are conspicuously lacking, let alone various other large families (Proto-Pama-Nyungan and Proto-Trans-New-Guinea look even more credible than the African "superstocks", because there is at least some attempt at actual reconstruction). Other families such as Uralic or Austro-Asiatic turn out not to be as old as long assumed. So keeping that in mind, I don't really understand the zeal to push back one's linguistic history into the Neolithic. Even Indo-European is almost certainly not older than 7000 years, and probably not even much older than 5000. It remains likely that languages just change too much and innovate too much lexically and morphologically to reconstruct back more than 4000 years (at best) from the oldest attestations on average, with only extremely few lucky exceptions such as Austronesian. In sum: Historical linguistics provides only a shallow time-depth, and most language families are not particularly old. We know basically nothing about the languages of the world in 4000 BC, and this is not likely to change anytime soon (if ever). That's too bad, but it's better to learn to live with this state of affairs rather than to fight it and grasp at straws. So if you're interested in the history of the Turkish (or any other Turkic) language, it's best to content yourself that this history (so far) starts no earlier than the break-up of Proto-Turkic, some 2000 years ago or so, possibly in a desolate region of Central Asia or Mongolia, without any awesome civilisation. Perhaps the amazing geographical spread (hey, that's at least something!) of the language family was achieved by piggybacking on the success and extent of another (Iranian). That may hurt one's patriotic sensibilities, but one has to decide if one is interested in science or fantasy and myths. (My own linguistic ancestors didn't have any particularly remarkable civilisation either 2000 years ago, quite possibly not even any of my ancestors, not to mention my known ancestors: I've got nothing to boast with, either.)

--Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Palatal Rhoticity

So apparently in this proto-language, there is a palatal rhotic consonant. Represented by ŕ. Anyone know what this means? Macy 00:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

It's a palatalized r (the text sufficently explains that), a sound you e.g. find in Russian. –Austronesier (talk) 18:00, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

That makes sense. It could either have been rʲ or ɾʲ. Thank you for clarifying this for me. Macy 16:27, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Study published in Nature

User:Austronesier User:Beshogur

"These dates are about the putative common ancestor of the proposed Transeurasian macrofamily. This article is about Proto-Turkic, not the pre-pre-history of the Turkic languages"

No, you are wrong. That study says, all those languages split from each other 9000 years ago. Which means the start of the Proto-Turkic language, not the Pre-pre-pre-Turkic. Anyway, if it is not good to change the ERA section from 500bce to 9000bce, that is fine. But what's the problem with the information of the study displayed on the page? How can a serious study about the birth of the Turkic languages be so irrelevant to the Proto-Turkic page? It must be on all pages about Proto-Turkic, Turkic, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Tungusic.

Alasiyan (talk) 10:36, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

The proposed Transeurasian macrofamily is not generally accepted by historical linguists. The deepest we can get back in time with certainty is the common ancestor of the extant and historically documented Turkic languages. This is what is presented in this article. We might add a section "Wider connections" and mention the controversial Altaic/Transeurasian proposal (which is not at all "revolutionary") there, but not in the lede and infobox as hard uncontroversial facts. –Austronesier (talk) 10:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

That is not a theory or proposal, it is a scientific "calculation". I know things less than 1/1000 as scientific as this, to be in the first sentence of the lede. Anyway, please place it to what section you see appropriate. I am too old to fight for this. Alasiyan (talk) 10:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

That is not a theory or proposal: it is. Please read the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of the paper (pp. 616-617 in the print version). The Transeurasian proposal is explicitly introduced as a working hypothesis on which the entire paper is based. –Austronesier (talk) 11:41, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Languages separated 11000 years ago cannot understand each other. These languages did not split in 9000 BCE. The word eight is 'sekir' in Bulgar Turkic, and 'sekiz' in Common Turkic, same in 'yal' and 'yaš'. The only difference is that one is l-r and the other is sh-z, nothing else. That's why we call it Lir and Shaz. What if it was separated in 9000 BCE? You can check out the similarity between Indo-European languages. BurakD53 (talk) 11:41, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Adding to BurakD53's comment: Robbeets et al. posit a realistic and relatively shallow date of 2100 ± 175 BP as tree prior for the diversification of the Turkic languages, which is a far cry from the asserted date 9000 BCE. If ever we cite this Nature article, we will do it properly. –Austronesier (talk) 11:49, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

It is more appropriate to move it to Proto-Altaic language, that figure. Beshogur (talk) 11:57, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 3 December 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 22:45, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

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Proto-Turkic language → Proto-Turkic – Redunancy. Only article with the words "Proto-Turkic", so it's already clear that it's going about a proto-language, not people. Otherwise it could be "Proto-Turks". Beshogur (talk) 14:03, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Might not be clear to all. "Proto-Turkic people" is still a phrase - not everyone uses "Proto-Turks". Rather it remain. Helpful and unobstrusive. Walrasiad (talk) 17:54, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. All or almost all other proto language articles use language, Turkic doesn't need to be different.

EOT3000 (talk) 14:14, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Eastern part of Central Asian steppe

In relation to the consensus that proto-Turkic originated in the "eastern part of Central Asian steppe", what present-day countries composed such a sub-region of a part of the Eurasian steppe? 136.158.67.56 (talk) 02:49, 15 April 2023 (UTC)