A relaxing, dreamy track by Karina Todosheva helps us explore the Southern Altai‘s similarity to Turkish in our project Turkic Lyrics. Coming from the homeland of Turkic people, this beautiful song helps reflect on the beauty of our languages.

The production, blending acoustic guitar with soaring vocals, creates an enchanting, nocturnal atmosphere.

The languages may not seem similar at first glance, but a closer look reveals striking similarities and parallels, especially when transcribed using the common Turkic alphabet.

• These words are practically the same:
  јортым / y̌ortım – tr. yorttum
  сыгын / sığın – tr. sığın
  салкыны / salkını – tr. salkını
  јаaдат / y̌aadat – јаaдат
  
• There are some pronunciation differences which make affixes look dissimilar. We leave it to experts which came first, but the Altai forms appear fuller:
  кӱстиҥ / küstiñ: -tiñ – Tr -ün: güzün
  айдыҥ / aydıñ: -dıñ – Tr. -ın: ayın
  тайгага / taygaga: -ga – Tr -ya: taygaya (the Turkish y is just a liquid sound while Altai has an obstructed vowel, which due to its position is lenient)
  
• Altai does not have an overwhelming use of Arabic and Persian loanwords like the Turkish language does. So in ӧйинде / ӧyinde we have the Proto-Turkic *öd → Old Turkic 𐰇𐰓 (“time”), which Turkish replaced by vakit or zaman.
  
• However there are some words that Altai shares with Mongolian, like кӱреҥ / küreñ “brown” or салкын / salkın “cool wind”. However as noted by one of our viewers. It is not clear cut whether this words were borrowed from Mongolian or from Persian (yes, they also appear in Persian) or the other way round. In the video the Turkish counterpart hadn’t been identified. But later found out the word salkın “cool” has only slightly diverged in meaning.

Overall, Altai bears striking similarities to Turkish. Its vocabulary is slightly more divergent, while the pronunciation requires only a small effort to get accustomed to.

Please leave a comment if you too have interesting observation or fascinated by the song just like us.

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