Editing Turkic languages (section)

===Early written records===
[[File:Irk bitig 07.jpg|thumb|right|The 9th-century ''[[Irk Bitig]]'' ("Book of Divination") from [[Dunhuang]], written in [[Old Uyghur language]] with the [[Old Turkic script|Orkhon script]], is an important [[Ancient literature|literary source]] for early [[Turkic mythology|Turko]]-[[Mongol mythology|Mongol]] [[mythology]].]]

The first established records of the Turkic languages are the eighth century AD [[Orkhon inscriptions]] by the [[Göktürks]], recording the [[Old Turkic]] language, which were discovered in 1889 in the [[Orkhon Valley]] in Mongolia. The ''Compendium of the Turkic Dialects'' (''[[Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk|Divânü Lügati't-Türk]]''), written during the 11th century AD by [[Mahmud al-Kashgari|Kaşgarlı Mahmud]] of the [[Kara-Khanid Khanate]], constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The ''Compendium'' is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and also includes the first known map of the Turkic speakers' geographical distribution. It mainly pertains to the [[Oghuz languages|Southwestern branch]] of the family.<ref name="Soucek">{{cite book|last=Soucek|first=Svat|title=A History of Inner Asia|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofinneras00souc|url-access=registration|publisher=Cambridge University Press|date=March 2000|isbn=978-0-521-65169-1}}</ref>

The [[Codex Cumanicus]] (12th–13th centuries AD) concerning the [[Kipchak languages|Northwestern branch]] is another early linguistic manual, between the [[Kipchak language]] and [[Latin]], used by the [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic]] [[Missionary|missionaries]] sent to the Western [[Cumans]] inhabiting a region corresponding to present-day [[Hungary]] and [[Romania]]. The earliest records of the language spoken by [[Volga Bulgaria|Volga Bulgars]], debatably the parent or a distant relative of [[Chuvash language]], are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003243809/turkic-languages-lars-johanson-%C3%A9va-csat%C3%B3 |title=The Turkic Languages |year=2021 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781003243809 |editor-last=Johanson |editor-first=Lars |doi=10.4324/9781003243809 |quote="Another Turkic people in the Volga area are the Chuvash, who, like the Tatars, regard themselves as descendants of the Volga Bulghars in the historical and cultural sense. It is clear that Chuvash belongs to the Oghur branch of Turkic, as the language of the Volga Bulghars did, but no direct evidence for diachronic development between the two has been established. As there were several distinct Oghur languages in the Middle Ages, Volga Bulghar could represent one of these and Chuvash another." |editor-last2=Csató |editor-first2=Éva Á}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Agyagási |first=K. |date=2020 |title=A Volga Bulgarian Classifier: A Historical and Areal Linguistic Study |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338899820 |journal=University of Debrecen |language=en |volume=3 |pages=9 |quote="Modern Chuvash is the only descendant language of the Ogur branch. The ancestors of its speakers left the Khazar Empire in the 8th century and migrated to the region at the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, where they founded the Volga Bulgarian Empire in the 10th century. In the central Volga region three Volga Bulgarian dialects developed, and Chuvash is the descendant of the 3rd dialect of Volga Bulgarian (Agyagási 2019: 160–183). Sources refer to it as a separate language beginning with 1508"}}</ref>