Turkic

[Larry Trask]

Hans Holm writes:

>  JS>Observers as late as the 4th century CE said that the Gallic-Celtic of
>  JS>Lyon, in the Rhone valley, was mutually comprehensible with that of the
>  JS>Galatians of Anatolia (who arrived from the Balkans about 270 BCE).

>  .. "mutually comprehensible" here should be seen quite relative.
>  I remember a parallel:

>  Most scholars would regard the branches of Turcic as different languages,
>  wouldn't they?

>  In spite of that, in a recent TV-film, a native speaker of Turcish
>  presented himself talking to people of different Turcic languages (e.g.
>  Uighur) on a bus-tour in central Asia with only little difficulties. But
>  that seemed to be a very rudimental 'small' talk.

>  And in such a sense the above cited "observer" could (should?) be
>  understood.

Indeed.  Uyghur is one of the most divergent Turkic languages, and a
glance through a comparative vocabulary of the Turkic languages reveals
a very modest proportion of shared vocabulary between Turkish and Uyghur.
It is inconceivable that speakers of the two could communicate at anything
beyond the most rudimentary level, if even that.  I doubt that speakers
could get much beyond the stage of smiling, nodding, pointing, and trying
to guess what the other guy might be saying.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk