Tatar vs Turkish vs Uzbek vs Kazakh (How Similar Are They?)

Can Turkish, Tatar, Uzbek, and Kazakh speakers understand each other? In this episode we showcase some of the similarities and differences, and test the level of mutual intelligibility between them, with Şimal from Antalya, Turkey, Yerkebulan from Taraz, Kazakhstan, Hayitbek from Chirchik, Uzbekistan, and Lenar from Sardygan, Baltach district, Tatarstan in Russia.

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The Turkish language, which is also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with most of its native speakers living in Western Asia, and significant group of speakers in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Ottoman Turkish, which was a variation of the Turkish spoken today, influenced many parts of Europe during the time that the Ottoman Empire expanded. When the modern Turkish republic was established, one of Atatürk's Reforms consisted of changing the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with a Latin alphabet. Today, Turkish is recognized as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Iraq, Macedonia, and Romania.

The Kazakh language (qazaqşa) belongs to the Kipchak branch of Turkic languages with official status in Kazakhstan and a minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of Mongolia.

Uzbek is the first official and only declared national language of Uzbekistan and is spoken primarily in Central Asia. It is the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish.

The Tatar language (татар теле) is primarily spoken by the Volga Tatars in Tatarstan, which is a federal republic of the Russian Federation. The language is closely related to Crimean Tatar, as well as Siberian Tatar, but it is different and should not be confused as being the same. Tatar has official status in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, and officially uses the Cyrillic script with some additional letters. Although attempts have been made to change the official Tatar script to Latin, Russian federal law has overrode those attempts, making Cyrillic the sole official script in Tatarstan. However, the Latin script, as well as the Arabic script, are both unofficially used and throughout history, Tatar has been written in Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts, with the Arabic script being the most popular one prior to 1928. Under the Soviet Union, Tatar was written in the Latin script for a short period of time, until the Cyrillic script was ultimately adopted in all parts of the Soviet Union, and that is the script still used to write Tatar today.

The Turkic languages consist of over 35 different documented languages, originating from East Asia. Turkish has the highest number of native speakers out of all Turkic language. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz-influenced Crimean Tatar.