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Chagatai

extinct Turkic language of Central Asia

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Chagatai was an extinct Turkic language that was spoken across Central Asia and served as a lingua franca for trade and administration in the region for several centuries. It matters historically because it played a crucial role in facilitating communication and cultural exchange across Central Asian empires and trade routes before it eventually fell out of use.

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Chagatai (چغتای, Čaġatāy), also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (Čaġatāy türkīsi), was a Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century when it went extinct. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan (i.e. parts of modern-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), Eastern Turkestan (where a dialect, known as Kaşğar tılı, developed), Crimea, the Volga region (such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), etc.

Chagatai is the direct ancestor of the Uzbek and Uyghur languages. Kazakh and Turkmen, which are not within the Karluk branch but are in the Kipchak and Oghuz branches of the Turkic languages respectively, were nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.