Dictionary of Turkic Languages [Paperback]

Kurtulus Oztopcu (Editor), Zhoumagaly Abouv (Editor), Nasir Kambarov (Editor), Youssef Azemoun (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0415160472 | ISBN-13: 978-0415160476 | Edition: New Ed

This multi-language dictionary covers the eight major Turkic languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, and Tatar.
2000 headwords in English are translated into each of the eight Turkic languages. Words are organized both alphabetically and topically. Original script and Latin transliteration are provided for each language. For ease of use, alphabetical indices are also given for the eight languages.
This is an invaluable reference book for both students and learners and for those enaged in international commerce, research, diplomacy and academic and cultural exchange.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kurtulus Oztopcu is Visiting Professor at University of California at Berkeley. Zhoumagaly Abuov is Vice-President of The International Society of Kazakh Language. Nasir Kambarov teaches at the Language Institute of Tashkent. Youssef Azemoun is an expert in Turkmen language and literature.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; New Ed edition (June 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415160472
• ISBN-13: 978-0415160476
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,249,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Turkish
  • #94 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Turkish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great although a little strange, August 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dictionary of Turkic Languages (Paperback)

This is a dictionary organized by English words, with for each word the equivalent in each of the 8 Turkic languages. It's not a complete dictionary because it only has about 2000 words, but that is plenty for many purposes. Then in the back, it has an alphabetical listing of the words for each language (e.g. a listing of all the Azerbaijani words in alphabetical order, a listing of all the Kirghiz words in alphabetical order etc. It is nicely laid out, well printed and easy to use. The entries have very little information and are really just a list of words without any examples or grammatical explanations. Thus it will be most useful for those who already know at least one of these languages or are studying one. If you are interested in Turkic languages, this is the easiest way I know of to see vocabulary comparisons between them quickly. So just browsing in this book is quite interesting. The similarities (and differences) between these languages are fascinating. And if you already know one of these languages and are traveling somewhere where a different one of these languages is used, this book is extremely helpful and is not too large to take along. For many (most?) of these languages, it's hard to find a good dictionary (for instance there is only one Uzbek-English dictionary that I know of and it has a lot of limitations), so this book is a good equivalent. I have the hardback edition and one caution is it uses the Cyrillic script for languages such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek etc (with a phonetic transcription so you dont have to actually know how to read the Cyrillic script), but now these languages are switching over to Latin script. So it would be nice to have the words written in the official Latin script for that language because there are minor variants from one to the other. However this should not pose too many problems because the scripts are all fairly phonetic. This book is recommended to anyone interested in Turkic languages.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Incorrect transliteration tables, July 8, 2003

By 

NerdyElf "galadrielm" (Stillwater, Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dictionary of Turkic Languages (Paperback)

This is an excellent book as an overview of the language. The problem is that the Latin transliterations for the Turkmen and Uzbek alphabets are entirely wrong from the third character to the end. I work in a library, and had consulted this book while cataloging some Uzbek and Kazakh books, when I noticed the error. This is not useful to librarians or anyone studying these languages. If there has been an errata published for the transliteration tables, it needs to be made readily available.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for those interested in linguisitcs!, May 13, 2000

By 

cstraughn "aziulo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dictionary of Turkic Languages (Paperback)

The first time I saw this book was in Turkey, where I saw an earlier edition published by the government. This edition is much more complete, and contains several previously omitted languages. The vocabulary included is pretty mundane, but the book is nevertheless an indispensible tool for those interested in Turkic linguistics. The format is especially friendly in this manner, with rows and columns to enable quick comparisons.