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I'm in Mongolia trying to learn some Mongolian and I've come across their cute word for "litlle", "small": жижиг.

On previous trips through Turkey I recall learning a similar cute word for "little", "small": küçük.

I'm no fanboi of the Altaic Hypothesis but it's pretty accepted here and of course there is lots of contact between Mongolic and Turkic to allow loanwords by some route. Though I would've thought this would be core vocabulary not usually borrowed.

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The first two similar syllables of the Mongolian word pose a difficult problem for those who want to correlate them with the two different syllables of the Turkic word. Actually, the modern Khalkha Mongolian жижиг comes from the Old Mongolian didig, which also has the two first syllables identical, and the Turkish küçük comes from the Proto-Turkic *kičük. So, my answer is: no, they are not related.

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  • It's also reminiscent of Turkish çocuk "child". Dec 9, 2013 at 13:29

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