Let's say I learn standard Turkish (I have a good start). How well will this help me in other Turkic places, such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang (China)?
Michael C
Posts: 201 | Location: Honolulu | Registered: 25 October 2006
You'll do fine, since most variations of turkish are very similar. You'll actually do more than fine, since they love foriegners that speak their language.
Posts: 2277 | Location: spain | Registered: 19 November 2004
I lived in Turkey for over three years and became quite proficient in the language. Though I never traveled to any of the other Turkic-speaking countries, I have met people from them and talked to them with varying levels of mutual (in)comprehension.
The languages in the Turkic family seem to form a sort of continuum, much like the Germanic family, maybe even more so. The change from one language to the next doesn't suddenly occur at the border but gradually happens. What I noticed was that I could have pretty normal conversations with people from Kazakstan westward but found it difficult to communicate with people from east of there. A lot of the vocabulary is shared throughout all the languages, but pronunciation might vary quite a bit. Another issue is the alphabet -- some countries use a modified Roman alphabet, while others use Cyrillic, and I believe the people in Xinjiang use an Arabic-based alphabet.
Turkish will definitely help though as a lot of people apparently learn Turkish as a second language.
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