Turkic Languages
The Turkic languages are spoken across Eurasia from eastern Siberia to Iran and from China to Ukraine, but they are concentrated in Central Asia, where groups of two to twenty million are represented; the total number of speakers of Turkic languages exceeds 130 million. Turkish (approximately 57 million speakers) is the largest group. Despite their broad geographic reach, speakers of Turkic languages can usually understand each other. Turkic peoples lived in the paths of countless invasions of Eurasia, and they comprised a large part of the nominally Mongol army. This contact and mobility has rendered classification difficult.
Further Reading
Csató, Éva Ágnes, and Lars Johanson, eds. (1998) The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge.
Erdal, Marcel (1991) Old Turkic Word Formation. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz. Golden, Peter B. (1992) An Introduction to the History of the
Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz.
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