ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Middle Turkic languages

Turkic languages are a group of languages that are spoken by people in countries like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Middle Turkic languages are a type of Turkic language that was spoken a long time ago, around 1000 years ago.

Imagine you have a bunch of friends who all speak different languages, but they can understand each other because they have some things in common, like their ways of talking or their grammar rules. Turkic languages are like that. People who speak Turkic languages can understand each other because they share some features, like similar words or grammar rules.

Middle Turkic languages were spoken in areas like Persia and Central Asia a long time ago, around the time when people were writing stories like the "One Thousand and One Nights" and the "Epic of Gilgamesh". Some of these languages were written in old scripts that look very different from the letters we use today.

Today, people do not usually speak Middle Turkic languages anymore, but they have left some traces in the languages that are spoken in those regions today. So, even though these languages are not used anymore, they have helped shape the way people speak in those areas.