| |||||||||
Turkic people living in Central Asia developed various alphabets in early ages.
The earliest known alphabet is the Kokturk (Kok Turki, Gokturk) alphabet developed by Kokturks, a Turkic tribespeople that had established a broad Central Asian empire and reached its zenith between the 6th and the 8th century AD. The first samples of this alphabet can be found on stone inscriptions (the best known are the Orkhon inscriptions) and dated to the early 8th century AD. Kokturk alphabet had 38 letters and only 4 of them were vowels. Although the shapes of the letters were somewhat similar to those of the Runic alphabet, the sounds were entirely different.