Kipchak languages in the context of "Proto-Turkic language"

Kyrgyz is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia. Kyrgyz is the official language of Kyrgyzstan and a significant minority language in the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China and in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan. There is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Altay. A dialect of Kyrgyz known as Pamiri Kyrgyz is spoken in north-eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Kyrgyz is also spoken by many ethnic Kyrgyz through the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Turkey, parts of northern Pakistan, and Russia.

Kyrgyz was originally written in Göktürk script, gradually replaced by the Perso-Arabic alphabet (in use until 1928 in the USSR, still in use in China). Between 1928 and 1940, a Latin-script alphabet, the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, was used. In 1940, Soviet authorities replaced the Latin script with the Cyrillic alphabet for all Turkic languages on its territory. When Kyrgyzstan became independent following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, a plan to adopt the Latin alphabet became popular. Although the plan has not been implemented, it remains in occasional discussion.

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.

The Nogais (/noʊˈɡaɪ/ noh-GY) are a Turkic people who speak a language from Kipchak branch of Turkic languages and live in Eastern Europe, North Caucasus, Volga region, Central Asia and Turkey. Most are found in Northern Dagestan and Stavropol Krai, as well as in Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya and Astrakhan Oblast; some also live in Dobruja (Romania and Bulgaria), Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and a small Nogai diaspora is found in Syria and Jordan. They speak the Nogai language and are descendants of various Mongolic and Turkic tribes who formed the Nogai Horde. There are nine main groups of Nogais: the Ak Nogai, the Karagash, the Koban-Nogai, the Kundraw-Nogai, the Achikulak-Nogai, the Qara-Nogai, the Utars, Bug-Nogai, and the Yurt-Nogai.

Cuman or Kuman (also called Kipchak, Qypchaq or Polovtsian, self referred to as Tatar (tatar til) in Codex Cumanicus) was a West Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans (Polovtsy, Folban, Vallany, Kun) and Kipchaks; the language was similar to today's various languages of the West Kipchak branch. Cuman is documented in medieval works, including the Codex Cumanicus, and in early modern manuscripts, like the notebook of Benedictine monk Johannes ex Grafing. It was a literary language in Central and Eastern Europe that left a rich literary inheritance. The language became the main language (lingua franca) of the Golden Horde.

Tatar (/ˈtɑːtər/ TAH-tər; Tatar: татар теле, romanized: tatar tele or татарча, romanized: tatarça) is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars mainly located in modern Republic of Tatarstan, wider Volga-Ural region, as well as many other regions of Russia. Tatar belongs to the same branch of Turkic languages such as Bashkort, Kazakh, Nogai and Kyrgyz.

The two main dialects of Tatar are the Central Dialect (urta / qazan; most common), and the Western Dialect (könbatış / mişər). The literary Tatar language is based on the Central Dialect and on a local variant of Türki. Tatar should not be confused with Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar, which are different languages, although also part of the Kipchak language group.

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.

Kazakh is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by the Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of Kazakhstan, and has official status in the Altai Republic of Russia. It is also a minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China, and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of western Mongolia. The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union (some 472,000 in Russia according to the 2010 Russian census), Germany, and Turkey.

Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is an agglutinative language and employs vowel harmony. Kazakh builds words by adding suffixes one after another to the word stem, with each suffix expressing only one unique meaning and following a fixed sequence. Ethnologue recognizes three mutually intelligible dialect groups: Northeastern Kazakh—the most widely spoken variety, which also serves as the basis for the official language—Southern Kazakh, and Western Kazakh. The language shares a degree of mutual intelligibility with the closely related Karakalpak language while its Western dialects maintain limited mutual intelligibility with the Altai languages.

Bashkir (UK: /bæʃˈkɪər/ bash-KEER, US: /bɑːʃˈkɪər/ bahsh-KEER) or Bashkort (Bashkir: башҡорт теле, romanized: başqort tele, [bɑʂˈqʊ̞rt tɪ̞ˈlɪ̞] ) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan. It is spoken by approximately 1.6 million native speakers in Russia, as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia, and other neighboring post-Soviet states, and among the Bashkir diaspora. It has three dialect groups: Southern, Eastern, and Northwestern.