Orkhon Turkic

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Orkhon Turkic, also known as Göktürk, is the oldest known form of Old Turkic and the first literary Turkic language. It dates from the 5th to 8th centuries and is the language of the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions. There were two main dialects written in the same Orkhon script: Orkhon Turkic (the language used in inscriptions along the Orkhon River) and Yenisei Kyrgyz (the language of inscriptions along the Yenisei River). The Orkhon inscriptions include tombstones and records of state events, making the language rich and well developed; the Yenisei inscriptions, found around Talas, Issyk-Kul, and Kochkor, are thought to have been written by Kyrgyz writers. The two dialects are very similar, with only some phonetic differences.

Linguistically, Orkhon Turkic belongs to the Siberian branch of the Turkic family and is considered a d-type Turkic language. Its sound system allows certain letter shifts, such as e↔i and b↔m, g↔k, ş↔s, z↔s, and occasionally ı↔i. The alphabet uses the Orkhon (Old Turkic) script, and some words can begin with a borrowed p, though most words are native Turkic. Vowels can be long, and the vocabulary is largely Turkic, but includes borrowings from Sogdian, Middle Chinese, Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan.

Estimates say about 20% of Orkhon Turkic vocabulary comes from neighboring languages, with Chinese loanwords being particularly common. Sogdian influence grows later, during the Old Uyghur period, especially after the Uyghurs adopted Manichaeism.

In short, Orkhon Turkic is the ancient Turkic language of early empires, preserved in inscriptions on the Orkhon and Yenisei rivers, and it shows a mix of Turkic core vocabulary with several foreign loanwords.