- 185 - Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 7 Sayı: 32 Volume: 7 Issue: 32 www.sosyalarastirmalar.com Issn: 1307-9581 ON THE COMMON WORDS IN MONGOLIAN AND THE TURKISH DIALECTS IN TURKEY Feyza TOKAT * Abstract Many studies have been done on the similarities and differences between Turkish and Mongolian, to this day. The studies on the common words between Turkish and Mongolian have focused on Old Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, standard Turkish of Turkey and the Turkish dialects in Turkey. However, cognates of the Turkish language cannot be explained by only based on the standard Turkish of Turkey and historical Turkish. The dialects of a language also contain many words that are not found in the standard language or words whose meaning and form are different from the standard language. As the dialects of a language continue to maintain some features not used in standard language, they can reflect the connection with related languages better than the standard language. Therefore, to make inferences about a language and to achieve some conclusions, considering the dialects may help to achieve relatively more accurate and comprehensive results. In this study, 176 words that are living in Turkish dialects in Turkey and are also common with Mongolian are identified and variants of these words in Turkish dialects in Turkey are given. Thus, it is observed that many words common with Mongolian but not included in standard Turkish of Turkey are still in use in Turkish dialects in Turkey with almost the same meaning, morphology and phonetics. Keywords: Turkish Dialects in Turkey, Mongolian, Ural-Altaic Language Family, Common Words. 1. Introduction The relations between languages and establishment of language families are cumbersome fields of study. From the Altaic language hypothesis point of view, Turkish and Mongolian are classified in the same family (Pereltsvaig, 2012). Also, linguists that participate in the Ural-Altaic genetic grouping approach had considered these languages in the same group. According to Doerfer (1981), parallels in forms and similarities in meanings between Tungus on the one hand and Turkic and Mongolian on the other are always interpreted as pointing to borrowings from Turkic into Mongolian and then from Mongolian into Tungus (Campbell and Poser, 2008). On the loan words of Turkish and Mongolian languages and on the similarities and differences between them various studies had been carried out. Ramstedt (1912) deeply analyzes the Altaic language family and came to the conclusion that Turkish and Mongolian are cognates and have word exchanges for centuries. Tekin (1969, 1976) listed his findings about some phonetic equivalences and stated them as strong evidences of the Altaic language family hypothesis. Nemeth (1912) discusses Turkish and Mongolian language influences and denoted that a set of questions about the linguistic history have to be solved in order to allow us to make judgments about the influence ratio of the two language groups. Gulensoy (1988) stated that * Yrd. Doç. Dr., Pamukkale Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Türkçe Eğitimi Bölümü.