Muhakamat al-Lughatayn is a significant work by Navayî. However, not as many copies of Navayî’s other works have survived to date. This may also be due to the fact that the work is not purely literary. Nevertheless, with printed editions of Muhakamat al-Lughatayn in cities like Paris (1841), Crimea (1842), Istanbul (1897), and Kokand (1916), the work gained widespread recognition, leading to scholarly investigations into it in academia.

In contemporary times, seven complete copies and one incomplete copy, totaling eight manuscripts of Muhakamat al-Lughatayn, are known to exist. Topkapı, Fatih, Paris, Budapest, Hyderabad, Tabriz, and Ankara manuscripts are complete copies, whereas the Konya copy is incomplete. This article was prepared based on the Ankara manuscript.

The Ankara copy of Muhakamat al-Lughatayn is predominantly written in black ink; however, words such as rubai, bayt, qit’a and some section headings are written in red ink. Throughout the text, in both the poetry and prose sections, red ink is frequently noted. Like other copies of this work, the Ankara copy generally lacks the vowel marks in the text. However, one of the remarkable orthographic features of this copy is that in some places the vowel marks of words with important differences in meaning are shown:  levnleri الری ونْ ْ لََ) 5 b/4), birer varaq راریب (5b/7), ‘alemdür .(11b/2 (رد .

The copyist copied the text almost too carefully. However, despite some spelling mistakes and occasional omissions in the copy, either due to the copy the copyist used as a source or due to his/her own mistakes, these are not very frequent. In the Ankara copy, the word etlikni (12b/6) was written instead of öleŋni, the word örtege (20b/3) was written instead of öterge, and the word o kūy was written instead of ol kūy. It is possible to see that some words, word groups, and sentences were written incompletely in the Ankara copy. Sometimes, one or a few words are missing within a sentence; while in rare instances, entire sentences may be omitted. Sometimes the copyist may have intervened in the original text.

The Ankara copy is highly compatibile with other copies of the work. However, it is also noteworthy that in some places, different words are used compared to other copies. Although all copies contain the phrase mes̠̠nevīde bir jemā’at xūb ta’rīfide mundaq deyilipdür kim, in the Ankara copy, bitilipdür ki is written instead of deyilipdür kim. In the section where different forms of drinking are shown, information is given about the verb tamşımaq, while the following sentence is included in the copies: tamşımaḳ ki ġāyet ẕevḳdın bat içme, leẕẕet tapa tapa az az içer. However, in the Ankara copy, bāde içmesi was written instead of bat içme, and the copyist believed that the sentence was complete. The copyist must have understood the meaning of the sentence as “Tamşımaq - drinking wine with great pleasure”.

Although there are some spelling mistakes and missing or incomplete writings in the Ankara copy, there are also successful aspects of the text. These aspects help to understand Muhakamat al-Lughatayn correctly and completely. Because it is known that there are issues regarding the work that have not yet been fully resolved. Newly found copies may be helpful in resolving such issues. One of such situations can be seen in the section where the poet talks about the Fevayidü’l-Kiber. In other copies, there is a sentence like this: …anda uluġlarġa fāyideler zülālın yėtkürüp-mėn ve heveleri şu’leiġa naṣāyiḥ zülālıdın u urup-mėn. Navayî seems to use the word zülāl twice in one sentence. This is a situation that is outside the integrity of the relevant part of the work. In the Ankara copy, delāyilin (21b/4) appears instead of the word zülālın, and this is more suitable for the parallelism and meaning in the sentence.

While giving information about causation in verbs in the Turkish language, Navayî states that the verb is formed by increasing one letter. While in other copies there is the sentence alar lafẓġa bir ḥarf artturġan bile muŋa oxşaş bir żamīrni arturupdurlar, in the Ankara copy it is clearly shown which letter is the letter being talked about: alar lafẓġa “t” ḥarfi arturġan bile muŋa oḫşaş bir żamīrni arturupdurlar (16b/6). This corresponds to the examples in the text and must be the correct format. As a result, while information about word derivation is given with suffixes in the later parts of the work, the poet always indicates with the name of the letter which letter comes to the word: çīm ḥarfi vaṣl ḳılınur; kāf ve re ḥarfi… ilḥāq qılurlar; lām ilḥāq qılurlar; ḳāf ilḥāq qılıp etc. 

Although the copy is a work in Chagatai Turkish, it is sometimes possible to come across Oghuz features, unlike other copies. It is noteworthy that in the manuscript, instead of the Chagatai preposition bile/birle, the preposition ile or its suffixed form +lA is preferred in four examples, which is a characteristic of Oghuz language. The preposition üçün is written as "içün" (17b/4) in one example, in another example the copyist wrote the ablative suffix as +dAn rather than +dIn (başdan ayaġıġa 29b/3). So the copyist probably used the form in his own dialect. Such Oghuz features are not seen in other copies of Muhakamat al-Lughatayn.

It can be said that the Ankara copy of Muhakamat al-Lughatayn was created in 1873 in the Western Turkic (Oghuz) area, most likely in the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Because the Oghuz elements in the copy that cannot be seen in other copies probably reflect the language of the copyist. Tanzimat intellectuals may have had an influence on the creation of this copy, which was copied in the last periods of Tanzimat. Although the Ankara copy of the work does not differ significantly from the others in terms of text, it also makes some contributions to obtaining the most accurate and closest text to the author’s copy.