Thread by @kamilkazani

Interesting dialogue between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan presidents. They don't conversate in Russian, but in their native tongues. Both languages are Turkic, but belong to different language sub-groups: Azeri is Oghuz, Kazakh is Kipchak. Therefore, pronunciation is very different

Oghuz speaking area stretches from Khwarazm in Uzbekistan to Eastern Thrace. Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen have the most speakers. Oghuz languages have harsh pronunciation, much harsher than Kipchak ones

Kipchak speaking zone is stretching from Kyrgyzstan in the southeast to the Tatarstan in the northwest, plus plenty enclaves in the Caucasus. Kipchak accent is much softer. From my perspective Anatolian Turkish sounds as if Russian who doesn't know Tatar was trying to speak Tatar

Another prominent group is Karluk. It has only two big languages: Uzbek and Uyghur. Anecdotally, some of my Uzbek acquaintances found Uyghur far more understandable than some of the "dialects" (=separate languages ofc) at their home country

While Oghuz, Kipchak and Karluk languages are kinda mutually understandable (though mutually funny sounding), Chuvash language is not. Tatars can understand Kazakhs, and even Anatolian Turks if they speak slowly enough. We cannot understand Chuvashs

Chuvash language is so isolated because it is the last remnant of Old Bulgaria. With its destruction, one group migrated to Danube, another to Volga. Danube Bulgars switched to Slavic (=Bulgaria), Volga Bulgars to Kipchak (=Tatars) by around 1400. Only Chuvashs did not

Apart from the Oghuz, Kipchak, Karluk and Oghur (=Chuvash) languages, there are also languages of Siberia. They are more distant from the rest though as they do not share Islamic heritage and Farsi/Arab vocabulary like others

Most Turkic cultures are very Persianate. That's why they belong to the "Stan" zone, adopting this Farsi work for a country in their official naming. There is only one nation keeping the ancient Turkic name for the country. It's Mari El. Interestingly enough, they're Finno-Ugric

Mari may be the last authentic pagans in Europe, still worshipping in the sacred woods and sacrificing geese to their gods. Their history is poorly known and generally misunderstood

Now Mari people are clustered in the ethnic republic Mari El and also have large enclaves in what is now Bashkortostan, where they escaped from the Russian conquest in the 16th c. Around the year 1500 though they were probably far more numerous

Most probably Finno-Ugrics comprised the bulk of Kazan Khanate population, being only partially touched by the Turkic and Islamic culture. Their mass conversion to Islam happened later. At least its well-documented part starts around the 18th c, long after the Russian conquest

That's a poorly known and somewhat counterintuitive story. Mass Islamization of the Middle Volga happened not under the Muslim power as one could expect, but centuries later, when Islam was a second class and persecuted religion of the Muscovite Tsardom and the Russian Empire

I'll go into details in a next thread on how Volga became Muslim. The end