Can Kazakh and Tatar speakers understand each other and Turkic languages such as Turkmen, Uyghur, Turkish, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Kyrgyz, and others? In this episode we showcase some of the similarities and test the degree of mutual intelligibility between Kazakh and Tatar. Instead of a list of words and sentences, Leysan (Tatar speaker) and Tamerlane (Kazakh speaker) will each read paragraphs in their respective languages to see how well they can understand one another.

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The Tatar language (татар теле) is primarily spoken by the Volga Tatars in Tatarstan, which is a federal republic of the Russian Federation. The language is closely related to Crimean Tatar, as well as Siberian Tatar, but it is different and should not be confused as being the same. Tatar has official status in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, and officially uses the Cyrillic script with some additional letters. Although attempts have been made to change the official Tatar script to Latin, Russian federal law has overrode those attempts, making Cyrillic the sole official script in Tatarstan. However, the Latin script, as well as the Arabic script, are both unofficially used and throughout history, Tatar has been written in Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts, with the Arabic script being the most popular one prior to 1928. Under the Soviet Union, Tatar was written in the Latin script for a short period of time, until the Cyrillic script was ultimately adopted in all parts of the Soviet Union, and that is the script still used to write Tatar today.

The Kazakh language (qazaqşa) belongs to the Kipchak branch of Turkic languages with official status in Kazakhstan and a minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of Mongolia.

The Turkic languages consist of over 35 different documented languages, originating from East Asia. Turkish has the highest number of native speakers out of all Turkic language. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the various Oghuz languages, which include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, Balkan Gagauz Turkish and Oghuz-influenced Crimean Tatar.

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