NonTurkic

NonTurkic is a descriptive term in linguistics and ethnography used for languages, peoples, and cultures that are not part of the Turkic language family or its associated ethnolinguistic group. It is not a single ethnicity or culture but a broad category used to contrast Turkic languages with all other language families and regional groups.

Turkic languages form a widely recognized language family that includes Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tuvan, Yakut and others. By contrast, nonTurkic encompasses the vast majority of languages spoken worldwide: Indo-European languages such as Russian, Hindi, Persian, and Spanish; Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian; Sino-Tibetan languages such as Chinese and Burmese; Afroasiatic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew; Dravidian languages such as Tamil; Mongolic languages; Koreanic and Japonic languages; and many others.

Geographically, Turkic languages are concentrated across a belt from Turkey through Central Asia to parts of Siberia; nonTurkic languages are spoken across Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.

Note: The term nonTurkic is descriptive rather than prescriptive and carries no implication of shared culture or political unity. It is often used in linguistic studies of contact, history, and classification.

See also: Turkic languages, language families, ethnolinguistic classification.