Concept
Bashkir (UKbæʃˈkɪə, USbɑːʃˈkɪər; Башҡортса Bashqortsa, Башҡорт теле Bashqort tele, bɑʂ'qʊ̞ɾt 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. Speakers of Bashkir mostly live in the republic of Bashkortostan (a republic within the Russian Federation). Many speakers also live in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts and other regions of Russia. Minor Bashkir groups also live in Kazakhstan and other countries. Bashkir together with Tatar belongs to the Bulgaric (кыпчакско-булгарская) subgroups of the Kipchak languages. These languages have a similar vocabulary by 94.9%, and the common ancestor is the Volga Turki, which contributed to the renunciation of this pair of languages from other Turkic languages. However, Bashkir differs from Tatar in several important ways: Bashkir has dental fricatives θ and ð in the place of Tatar (and other Turkic) s and z. Bashkir θ and ð, however, cannot begin a word (there are exceptions: ҙур - "zor" (ðoɾ) 'big', and the particle/conjunction ҙа - "za" (ða) or ҙә - "zə" (ðæ)). The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is Turkmen. However, in Bashkir θ and ð are two independent phonemes, distinct from s and z, whereas in Turkmen [θ] and [ð] are the two main realizations of the common Turkic s and z. In other words, there are no s and z phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir which has both s and z and θ and ð. The word-initial and morpheme-initial s is turned into h. An example of both features can be Tatar сүз süz syz and Bashkir һүҙ - höz hɵð, both meaning "word". Common Turkic tʃ (Tatar ɕ) is turned into Bashkir s, e.g., Turkish ağaç aˈatʃ, Tatar агач aghach ɑˈʁɑɕ and Bashkir ағас - ağas ɑˈʁɑs, all meaning "tree".
