Mongolian Loanwords in Anatolian Dialects
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
Lexical exchanges between Mongolic and Turkic languages occurred predominantly in two major phases:
- Pre-13th century
- Post-13th century
There are also views that extend these exchanges to three stages.
Mongolian words began to appear in the language of the Oghuz, or “Western Turks,” from the late 13th century, coinciding with the earliest Oghuz texts. This is undoubtedly due to Anatolia remaining under Ilkhanid rule for nearly 100 years. During this period, the distribution of Mongolian words entering Anatolian dialects falls into two categories. One consists of Mongolian-specific cultural words, such as ağa ‘elder brother’, serin ‘cool’, and kaburga ‘rib’, which are now widespread throughout Anatolia. The second category involves regional words found in a narrower area, especially in cities neighboring Sivas – Kayseri – Kırşehir (Tokat, Amasya, Çorum), such as toxtax ‘calm, tranquil’, etc. In addition to these, there is a third group of words that are difficult to distinguish: immigrant words. These words are mostly found in compilations from Caucasian and Crimean immigrants in Istanbul and its surroundings, as well as in villages in Eskişehir and Konya.
Throughout this paper, the distribution of Mongolic loanwords in Anatolia will be examined in a way that resembles the construction of a linguistic map.
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