Languages Similar To Turkish- Explore 9 Major Languages

The Turkish language belongs to the Ural-Altaic linguistic family.

Thus, languages similar to Turkish have always been important for learners. 

You will become more confident in your speech by gaining knowledge of these languages.

Moreover, you will get a brief yet informative description of languages similar to Turkish.

Explore 9 Languages Similar To Turkish

Turkish is a significant language because of the sheer number of people who speak it. 

Seventy-five million people speak Turkish as their first language. 

That makes it one of the globe’s 15 most widely spoken first languages.

Some languages also have some common features with Turkish. 

Below are some languages similar to Turkish.

Let us read to learn more about these languages and their significance: 

1. Azerbaijani- One Of the Languages Similar To Turkish:

Azerbaijani is Azerbaijan’s official language.

The majority mainly speaks of the country’s people.

Moreover, it is essential to note that Azerbaijan’s population is 90% Turk (ethnically). 

Both languages are more grammatically similar.

During the Seljuk Empire, Turkey and Azerbaijan shared a border.

Native Azerbaijani Speakers Were Exposed To Turkish:

In the study, 40 native Azerbaijani speakers in Iran were also exposed to Turkish. 

That is done by using short videos taken from Turkish TV shows. Is not that interesting to hear?

Turkish and Azerbaijani speakers can communicate to some level. 

Both languages have significant diversity and are mutually intelligible to some extent.

Thus, it is easier for an Azerbaijani speaker to grasp Turkish than vice versa.

2. Uzbek Language – Languages Similar To Turkish:

Uzbek is the second most commonly spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

Approximately there are 34 million native people in Uzbekistan.

According to an 11th-century linguistician, Uzbek belongs to the Karluk Turkish dialects.

On the other hand, Anatolian Turkish belongs to the Oghuz Turkish dialects.

There are also two types of words in Uzbek: nominal and verbal.

Uzbek is around 50% comprehensible.

Often, the pronunciation differs somewhat. It has:

– No articles 

– No noun classes that are null subject and agglutinative 

– Subject-Object-Verb is the word order

3. Hungarian Language:

The Hungarian language is a part of the Uralic language family’s Ugric subgroup.

At the same time, Turkish is a contentious Altaic language family member. 

Nonetheless, Hungarian has had some contact with Turkic languages.

The vocabulary effect can be easily observed.

Many similarities exist between Uralic and Altaic languages:

– Harmony of vowels

– Oriented to the suffix

– No plural form after a number, such as two cows.

– No genders such as it, she, or he.

Both languages are Asiatic, and they come from the same region.

They are from the same steppes, so there are cultural parallels.

Turkish and Hungarian are also comparable in terms of typology.

Both are agglutinating languages with vowel harmony and a large vowel inventory. 

4. Is Finnish Among The Languages Similar To Turkish?

Finnish is a Finnish branch of the Uralic language.

Most Finns and ethnic Finns living outside of Finland speak this language.

These are agglutinative languages with a heavy emphasis on vowels and harsh consonants.

Both have no gender in the grammatical sense. 

In Finnish, the aggregation of affixes to verbs, nouns, adjectives, and numerals is common.

Finnish has a nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment, but there are two object cases:

– Accusative 

– Partitive.

Aside from that, many words are similar in Turkic and Uralic languages, such as Finnish.

That is, since Finns and Kygyzes were neighbors for thousands of years.

5. Mongolian Language:

Mongolian and other Siberian East– and Southeast-Asian language groups have connections to Turkish.

It also has other Turkic languages.

Grammar, morphology, and syntax are pretty similar.

There are a lot of similar vocabulary and cognates.

If this is from a recently shared proto-language, it is debatable.

Turks And Mongols:

Turks and Mongols share many of the same cultural values.

They are nomadic people who have affected each other’s way of life. 

According to studies, both countries’ vocabulary also shares certain commonalities.

Many loanwords from Arabic have entered both vernaculars.

Verbs have a stem and an ending in Mongolian.

The present/future tense is produced by adding нэ, на, нo, or нө. For different pronouns, these do not alter. 

The lone exception is reduplication, an agglutinative, virtually entirely suffixing language.

Mongolian also lacks gendered nouns and definite articles such as “the.”

The majority of suffixes consist of just one morpheme.

6. French Language – Languages Similar To Turkish:

Turkish borrows a startling number of words from French.

That is, even though it does not belong to the Indo-European family of languages. 

Apart from Arabic, French is the language that gives the most loanwords to Turkish.

While most loanwords have a “genuine Turkish” equivalent, a few exceptions exist.

Many words in Arabic and Farsi were originally from the Turks.

They began using French terms 150 years ago.

There were over 5,000 French loanwords in the Turkish language.

It was at one point near the end of the nineteenth century. 

Many of these words depict bourgeois life in towns.

Moreover, they were precisely adapted when Turks came to settle in cities.

7. Kazakh Language – Languages Similar To Turkish:

Kazakh is a Turkic language from the Kipchak branch of the Turkic language family.

It is also Kazakhstan’s national language.

The Old Turkic script was used to write the earliest known written records of languages.

Except for a few words of foreign origin, Kazakh has tongue-root vowel harmony.

There are 12 phonemic vowels in Kazakh, three of which are diphthongs. 

Kazakh has vowel harmony (“soft and hard vowels” ) like all Turkic languages.

Turkish and Kazakh share a 60-70 percent commonality in their languages. 

On the other hand, Turkish has a milder pronunciation than Kazakh words.

Thus, that requires some hard consonants. Many words have nearly identical meanings and are also pronounced similarly.

8. Turkmen Language – Languages Similar To Turkish:

Turkmen is a member of the West Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.

That also includes Kazakhstani, Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Kyrgyz.

Turkmen is so similar to Turkish that linguists believe these languages are interchangeable.

Turkmen, like many other Turkic languages, features vowel harmony.

Moreover, it is an agglutinative language.

The Turkmen word for child is “çaga,” while the Turkish word is “çocuk.” 

When we check the word “çağa ” in the Turkish dictionary, we find it has the same meaning but is old.

It is not widely used any longer. 

Both of these languages have various common pronunciations.

However, a foreign ear could mistake them for each other due to their similarities.

Moreover, they are linguistically similar languages with a common vocabulary.

9. Urdu Is Among The Languages Similar To Turkish:

Urdu is a South Asian Indo-European language. Moreover, it belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Central Zone.

It is also regarded as Indo-European by Ethnologue (a comprehensive language catalog). 

‘Urdu‘ comes from the Turkish word ‘ordu,’ which means ‘army.’

Several terms in Turkish have the same meaning in Urdu.

Some words have different pronunciations, but the meanings are the same. For example:

ENGLISH	URDU	TURKISH
Happy	Khush	Hoş (ş=sh)
World	Duniya	Dünya
Love	Mohabbat	Muhabbet
Justice	Adalat	Adalet
Curtain	Parda	Parde
Enemy	Dushman	duşman

Some words have somewhat different pronunciations, but the meanings are the same.

The SVO order is the same in both languages.

Another similarity is that both languages contain elements of Persian and Arabic.

Let’s Wrap It Up:

Turkish is a beautiful yet immensely populated language. It isn’t as difficult to learn as many other languages.

That is because of its simple alphabet, pronunciations, and well-organized sequence.

Moreover, learning languages similar to Turkish have their own significance.

If you know any of these languages, learning Turkish is also simple, and vice versa.

Learning these languages also allows you to put your thoughts to work in a useful way.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What Languages Are Similar To Turkish?

Languages similar to Turkish belong to the Turkic language family. These include Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz. These languages share similar grammatical structures, vocabulary, and phonetic characteristics.

2. What Are The Main Characteristics Of Turkic Languages?

Turkic languages typically feature vowel harmony, agglutination (where words are formed by stringing together morphemes), and a lack of grammatical gender.

They also often use suffixes to convey grammatical relations and to build complex words.

3: How Mutually Intelligible Are Turkic Languages?

The degree of mutual intelligibility among Turkic languages varies. For example, Turkish and Azerbaijani are relatively mutually intelligible, while Turkish and Uzbek have less mutual intelligibility.

The level of understanding depends on the specific languages and the speakers’ familiarity with each other’s dialects and vocabularies.

4: What Is The Historical Background Of Turkic Languages?

Turkic languages have a long history, dating back to the early medieval period. They originated in modern-day Mongolia and Siberia and spread through migration and conquest.

Over centuries, Turkic peoples established several empires and states, facilitating the spread and evolution of these languages across Central Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

How Has The Turkish Language Influenced Other Languages?

Through vocabulary and loanwords, the Turkish language has influenced many languages, particularly in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and parts of the Middle East.