I have read that the Türkic langues – Uzbek, Türkmen, Uyghric, and Azeri – are mutually understandable, and all bear a strong resemblance to Turkish.

What I’m interested to know are the differences. How do they sound with respect to one another? As in, if an Uzbek were listening to a Türkmen, or vice-versa, how would their similar-but-not-same languages sound in each others’ ears?

This is part of a writing project I have been engaged in for a few years now. It’s an interesting challenge, to write about people who use languages that you don’t speak yourself.

I’m not an expert on Turkic languages but I’ve heard that there is a wide degree of mutual intelligiblity among the Turkic languages from Osmanli Turkish in Turkey to Uigyr in western China. The exceptions are Chuvash (spoken near Moscow) and Yakut (spoken in Siberia) whose speakers are Russian Orthodox Christian instead of Muslim. These two Turkic languages have diverged considerably from Osmanli Turkish and the others. They also don’t have the numerous Perso-Arab loan words which the other Turkic languages share in common.  

From the web page of the Dept. of Turkic languages at a Swedish university, I’ll just add that they count 20 written Turkic languages, in all spoken by more than 120 million people. They confirm Brian’s note on mutual intelligibility, stating roughly "Most Turkic languages are rather similar to each other, so it is comparatively easy to learn several of them."

Hi,
I do speak Turkish . Although I don’t speak Azar language but I can understand their language if I "listen"  very carefully. meaning, I need an extra efford to understand the Azar language.  :) It resembles alot with Turkish.

Desertrose,

Yes, indeed. From dictionaries I have seen the differences between Osmanli and Azeri Turkish are slight: kyz vs gyz for "daughter", günesh and gün@sh for "sun" ; kurt and gurd for "wolf" etc. Both use pishik for "cat". Until recently, the Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union were very mysterious because Russia was a closed society.

Two Turkic languages that are still hard to find information on are Chuvash and Yakut. Chuvash would be unintelligible to an Osmanli speaker;  for instance, it’s word for "road" s’ul is only distantly related to Turkish, Azeri, Uzbek and Uighur yol. The Chuvash word for "horse" lasha is not at all like Osmanli Turkish at but rather resembles Russian loshad’ and Hungarian lo (horse). Yakut is very much different too as seen in words like  ogho "child",  bytahyt "mouse" and daeriaebinae "village" but Osmanli Turkish,  chojuk, fare and koey.

Desertrose,

Yes, indeed. From dictionaries I have seen the differences between Osmanli and Azeri Turkish are slight: kyz vs gyz for "daughter", günesh and gün@sh for "sun" ; kurt and gurd for "wolf" etc. Both use pishik for "cat". Until recently, the Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union were very mysterious because Russia was a closed society.Two Turkic languages that are still hard to find information on are Chuvash and Yakut. Chuvash would be unintelligible to an Osmanli speaker;  for instance, its word for "road" s’ul is only distantly related to Turkish, Azeri, Uzbek and Uighur yol. The Chuvash word for "horse" lasha is not at all like Osmanli Turkish at but rather resembles Russian loshad’ and Hungarian ló (horse). Yakut is also very different as seen in words like ogho "child", bytahyt "mouse" tsaerilaets "war" and daeriaebinae "village" but Osmanli Turkish chojuk, fare, sivash and koey.