GRGR(16): Dzaqyp

[James Kyllo]

>Also -- are Kazakh and Kyrgyz Turkic language? Is Turkic an
>Indo-European language group or something else?

All the following from Andrew Dalby's "Dictionary Of Languages":

KAZAKH

One of the Turkic languages, Kazakh is spoken by a very widespred,
traditionally nomadic people of the  Central Asian steppe...  If a single
origin is to be assigned to the Kazakh and their language, they should
perhaps be considered as a more widely ranging offshoot of the already
nomadic Kyrgyz...  Kazakh is a language with a long tradition of oral epic.
The first published Kazakh language poetry was that of the Zar Zeman "Time
Of Trouble" poets in the 1840s ...  Educated in the Islamic schools, they
naturally wrote Kazakh in Arabic script - and incited revolt against Russia.
One eventual response was the devising of a Cyrillic writing system for
Kazakh ... In 1927 ... the Latin alphabet was imposed and Arabic was
outlawed.  As Soviet policy unrolled, Cyrillic script returned, to replace
Latin, in 1940... centralisation of language policy faltered in the last
decades of the old Soviet Union

KYRGYZ

...one of the Turkic Languages... Written Kyrgyz literature, at first in
Arabic script, began to appear only around 1910.  With changes in Soviet
policy, a Latin alphabet introduced in 1928, was abandoned in favour of
Cyrillic in 1940.


TURKIC LANGUAGES

... [members] of the Altaic family... Turkic languages ... are now spoken
across a wide swathe of Russia and central Asia ... as a result of a series
of epic migrations and conquests ... today [they] are spoken chiefly by
Muslims.


best

James