The Karluk or Qarluq languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family that developed from the varieties spoken by Karluks. By far the largest languages of this branch are Uzbek and Uyghur.
Many Middle Turkic works were written in these languages. The language of the Kara-Khanid Khanate was known as Turki, Ferghani, Kashgari or Khaqani. The language of the Chagatai Khanate was the Chagatai language.
Chagatai (چغتای, Čaġatāy), also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (Čaġatāy türkīsi), is a Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan (i.e. parts of modern-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), Eastern Turkestan (where a dialect, known as Kaşğar tılı, developed), Crimea, the Volga region (such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), etc. Chagatai is the direct ancestor of the Uzbek and Uyghur languages. Kazakh and Turkmen, which are not within the Karluk branch but are in the Kipchak and Oghuz branches of the Turkic languages respectively, were nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.
Ali-Shir Nava'i was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature.
Uzbek is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language endonymically called Türki or Türkçe, as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.
According to the Joshua Project, Southern Uzbek and Standard Uzbek are spoken as a native language by more than 34 million people around the world, making Uzbek the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish. There are about 36 million Uzbeks around the world, and the reason why the number of speakers of the Uzbek language is greater than that of ethnic Uzbeks themselves is because many other ethnic groups such as Tajiks, Kazakhs, Russians who live in Uzbekistan speak Uzbek as their second language.
Uyghur, formerly known as Turki or Eastern Turki, is a Turkic language of the Karluk branch, with 8 to 13 million native speakers (as of 2021). It is spoken primarily by the Uyghur people, most of whom live in what is now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries. Uyghur is a lingua franca of Xinjiang; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, which includes languages such as Uzbek. Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly, Uyghur processes include vowel reduction and umlauting, especially in northern dialects. In addition to other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been strongly influenced by Arabic and Persian, and more recently by Russian and Mandarin Chinese.
Middle Turkic refers to a phase in the development of the Turkic language family, covering much of the Middle Ages (c. 900–1500 CE). In particular the term is used by linguists to refer to a group of Karluk, Oghuz and Kipchak and related languages spoken during this period in Central Asia, Iran, and other parts of the Middle East controlled by the Seljuk Turks.
Uzbek is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language endonymically called Türki or Türkçe, as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.
According to the Ethnologue, Southern Uzbek and Standard Uzbek are spoken as a native language by more than 34 million people around the world, making Uzbek the second-most widely spoken Turkic language after Turkish. In addition to these native speakers, there are members of many other ethnic groups such as Tajiks, Kazakhs, and Russians who live in Uzbekistan and speak Uzbek as their second language.
The Ili Turks (Chinese: 土尔克人; pinyin: Tǔ'ěrkè rén; lit. 'Turk people') are a Turkic ethnic group native to Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of northern Xinjiang, China. They speak the Ili Turki language, which belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic languages. The oral history of the Ili Turks says that they came from the Ferghana Valley of Uzbekistan. The Chinese government does not recognize the Ili Turks as a distinct ethnic group in censuses.
The Ili Turks are nomadic herders. There are many unique animal husbandry words in their language.