A few words on Turkic languages

'... An eminent orientalist remarked: "We might imagine Turkish to be the result of the deliberations of some society of learned men"; but no such society could have devised what the mind of man produced, left to itself in the steppes of Tartary, and guided only by its innate laws, or by an instinctive power as wonderful as any within the realm of nature'

- Max. Müller 'Lectures on the Science of Language', Vol. I, Lect. VIII.

'The Turkish tongues are of singular interest to the student of language. They are to him, what the mountains which surround their birth-place are to the geologist; who there can observe many of the vastest operations of nature and their results, naked as it were, and not veiled by the superficial covering which in other less barren countries makes the investigation and tracing out of the various formations so laborious a task.

The Indo-European languages are like an ancient building, where frequent restorations have interfered with the original design, and where finally a universal coat of plaster has destroyed all outward distinction between old and new. In the Turanian structure, on the other hand, every tool-mark is still fresh, the places where the scaffolding has rested are still visible, and we can almost trace each course of the stone-work to its origin in the quarry whence it was hewn.

It may seem strange that a language developed by the rude and nomad tribes of Central Asia, who in their own home have never known how to reduce it to rule (or rather to distinguish the laws through which they themselves had unconsciously formed it), should present in fact an example of symmetry in complexity such as few of the more cultivated forms of speech exhibit. Although its own people would have one believe that it is subject to no rule and almost purely arbitrary (their only notion of grammar being that of Arabic and Persian with which the Turki cannot be made to fit); yet in reality a few simple and transparent rules suffice to account for all its permutations. These rules, possessing an accumulative power, are enough to produce the immense variety of forms noticeable in the Eastern Turki.

We are now learning to believe that even in languages such as Greek, German, or even English, every seeming irregularity is really the result of laws, some of which we know and can trace in their action, and some of which are yet to be discovered. But in Turki we can see them; it is as if the centuries were to flow backwards, and we could watch the building of the Pyramids and solve by ocular demonstration the doubts of the learned as to the method by which the vast blocks were transported form the quarries, and placed in their present positions. We can even detect in some instances a commencement in this Turanian tongue, of the process by which the Aryan languages have been polished down and enamelled, as it were, till they reached their present condition.

Viewed in this light the study of the Eastern Turki is seen to have an interest which is not to be measured by the amount of the commercial or other intercourse likely to be facilitated by it. For the Turkish tongues, a journey eastward is pretty nearly equivalent to a study of the earlier forms of an Indo-European language. In either case we get nearer to the source; and the less literary character of the former makes it easier to approach its origin in space than in time. Rémusat, in his "Langues Tartares", truly says: "Le dialecte de Constantinople est celui de tous qui s'est le plus enrichi, je pourrais dire appauvri, par l'introduction de mots Arabes et Persans; et l'on n'en rencontre que fort peu dans la langue des Turks voisins de la Chine, où l'on peut, pour cette raison, espérer de retrouver l'antique langue Turke dans un état plus voisin de sa pureté primitive."

Valikhanoff (the son of a Kirghiz chief in the Russian service, whose name, Valí Khán, with the affixed Russian patronymic ending off, is significant of Russia's progress among those tribes) writes: "The language... spoken in Kashgar is altogether unknown to European savants', and Prof. Vámbéry, in quoting him, adds that this language 'has incontestably the most primitive words and formations amongst all Turkish forms of speech."'

- Extracts from the Preface to Shaw's 'A Sketch of the Turki Language'