Turkmen language

Turkmen (türkmençe, түркменче, تۆرکمنچه‎, [tʏɾkmøntʃø]^[4] or türkmen dili, түркмен дили, تۆرکمن ديلی‎, [tʏɾkmøn dɪlɪ])^[5] is a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 4.3 million native speakers in Turkmenistan (where it is the official language),^[6] and a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern Iran^[7] and 1.5 million people in northwestern Afghanistan,^[8] where it has no official status. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and by diaspora communities, primarily in Turkey and Russia.^[9][10]

Quick Facts Native to, Ethnicity ...

Turkmen
türkmençe, türkmen dili, түркменче, түркмен дили, تۆرکمن ديلی ,تۆرکمنچه‎
Turkmen in the Latin, Cyrillic, and Perso-Arabic Alphabets
Native to	Turkmenistan, Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan[1][2]
Ethnicity	5.1 million Turkmens in Turkmenistan (2020)[3]
Native speakers	6.1 million (2021)[3]
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Oghuz Eastern Turkmen
Dialects	Trukhmen
Writing system	Latin (Turkmen alphabet, official in Turkmenistan), Perso-Arabic, Cyrillic Turkmen Braille
Official status
Official language in	Turkmenistan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	tk
ISO 639-2	tuk
ISO 639-3	tuk
Glottolog	turk1304
Linguasphere	Part of 44-AAB-a
The distribution of the Turkmen language in Central Asia
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Close

Turkmen is a member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. It is closely related to Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Qashqai, and Turkish, sharing varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with each of those languages.^[11] However, the closest relative of Turkmen is considered Khorasani Turkic, spoken in northeastern regions of Iran and with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages, as well as Khorazm, the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek spoken mainly in Khorezm along the Turkmenistan border.^[12] Elsewhere in Iran, the Turkmen language comes second after the Azerbaijani language in terms of the number of speakers of Turkic languages of Iran.^[13]

The standardized form of Turkmen (spoken in Turkmenistan) is based on the Teke dialect, while Iranian Turkmen use mostly the Yomud dialect, and Afghan Turkmen use the Ersary variety.^[14] The Turkmen language, unlike other languages of the Oghuz branch, preserved most of the unique and archaic features of the language spoken by the early Oghuz Turks, including phonemic vowel length.^[15]

Iraqi and Syrian "Turkmen" speak dialects that form a continuum between Turkish and Azerbaijani, in both cases heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian. These varieties are not Turkmen in the sense of this article.

This section appears to contradict itself on the most closely related language to Turkmen. (January 2024)

Turkmen is a member of the East Oghuz branch of the Turkic family of languages; its closest relatives being Turkish and Azerbaijani, with which it shares a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility. However, the closest language to Turkmen is considered Khorasani Turkic, with which it shares the eastern subbranch of the Oghuz languages, and Khorazm, spoken mainly in northwestern Uzbekistan.^[12]

Turkmen has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is subject–object–verb.

Written Turkmen today is based on the Teke (Tekke) dialect. The other dialects are Nohurly, Ýomud, Änewli, Hasarly, Nerezim, Gökleň, Salyr, Saryk, Ärsary and Çowdur. The Teke dialect is sometimes (especially in Afghanistan) referred to as "Chagatai", but like all Turkmen dialects it reflects only a limited influence from classical Chagatai.

Turkmen has dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ unlike other Oghuz Turkic languages, where these sounds are pronounced as /s/ and /z/. The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is Bashkir. However, in Bashkir /θ/ and /ð/ are two independent phonemes, distinct from /s/ and /z/, whereas in Turkmen [θ] and [ð] are the two main realizations of the common Turkic /s/ and /z/. In other words, there are no /s/ and /z/ phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir, which has /s/, /z/, /θ/ and /ð/.

Turkmen written language was formed in the 13–14th centuries.^[22] During this period, the Arabic alphabet was used extensively for writing. By in the 18th century, there had been a rich literary tradition in the Turkmen language. At the same time, the literacy of the population in their native language remained at low levels; book publishing was extremely limited, and the first primer in the Turkmen language appeared only in 1913, while the first newspaper ("Transcaspian native newspaper") was printed in 1914.^[23]

The Arabic script was not adapted to the phonetic features of the Turkic languages. Thus, it did not have necessary signs to designate specific sounds of the Turkmen language, and at the same time there were many letters to designate Arabic sounds that were not in the Turkmen language.

During the first years after the establishment of the Soviet power, the Arabic alphabet of Turkmen under the USSR was reformed twice, in 1922 and 1925. In the course of the reforms, letters with diacritics were introduced to denote Turkic phonemes; and letters were abolished for sounds that are absent in the Turkmen language.^[24]

The Turkmens of Afghanistan and Iran continue to use Arabic script.^[22]

In January 1925, on the pages of the republican newspaper Türkmenistan, the question of switching to a new, Latin alphabet was raised. After the first All-Union Turkological Congress in Baku (February–March 1926), the State Academic Council under the People's Commissariat of Education of the Turkmen SSR developed a draft of a new alphabet. On 3 January 1928, the revised new Latin alphabet was approved by the Central Executive Committee of the Turkmen SSR.

At the end of the 1930s, the process of the Cyrillization of writing began throughout the USSR. In January 1939, the newspaper "Sowet Türkmenistany" published a letter from teachers in Ashgabat and the Ashgabat region with an initiative to replace the Turkmen (Latin) script with Cyrillic. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR instructed the Research Institute of Language and Literature to draw up a draft of a new alphabet. The teachers of the Ashgabat Pedagogical Institute and print workers also took part in the development of the new writing system. In April 1940, the draft alphabet was published.

In May 1940, the Council of People's Commissars of the Turkmen SSR adopted a resolution on the transition to a new alphabet of all state and public institutions from 1 July 1940, and on the beginning of teaching the new alphabet in schools from 1 September of the same year.^[24]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in January 1993, a meeting was held at the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan on the issue of replacing the Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet, at which a commission was formed to develop the alphabet. In February, a new version of the alphabet was published in the press. On 12 April 1993, the Mejlis of Turkmenistan approved a presidential decree on the new alphabet.^[25]

Turkmen is a highly agglutinative language, in that much of the grammar is expressed by means of suffixes added to nouns and verbs. It is very regular compared with many other languages of non-Turkic group. For example, obalardan "from the villages" can be analysed as oba "village", -lar (plural suffix), -dan (ablative case, meaning "from"); alýaryn "I am taking" as al "take", -ýar (present continuous tense), -yn (1st person singular).

Another characteristic of Turkmen is vowel harmony. Most suffixes have two or four different forms, the choice between which depends on the vowel of the word's root or the preceding suffix: for example, the ablative case of obalar is obalardan "from the villages" but, the ablative case of itler "dogs" is itlerden "from the dogs".

Turkmen literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in Old Oghuz Turkic and Turkmen languages. Turkmens are direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks, who were a western Turkic people that spoke the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.

The earliest development of the Turkmen literature is closely associated with the literature of the Oghuz Turks.^[26] Turkmens have joint claims to a great number of literary works written in Old Oghuz and Persian (by Seljuks in 11-12th centuries) languages with other people of the Oghuz Turkic origin, mainly of Azerbaijan and Turkey. These works include, but are not limited to the Book of Dede Korkut, Zöhre Tahyr, Gorogly, Layla and Majnun, Yusuf Zulaikha and others.^[27]

There is general consensus, however, that distinctively modern Turkmen literature originated in the 18th century with the poetry of Magtymguly Pyragy, who is considered the father of the Turkmen literature.^[28][29] Other prominent Turkmen poets of that era are Döwletmämmet Azady (Magtymguly's father), Mollanepes, Nurmuhammet Andalyp, Mämmetweli Kemine, Abdylla Şabende, Şeýdaýy, Mahmyt Gaýyby and Gurbanally Magrupy.^[30]

The following is Magtymguly's Türkmeniň (of the Turkmen) poem with the text transliterated into Turkmen (Latin) letters, whereas the original language is preserved. Second column is the poem's Turkish translation, third one is the Azerbaijani translation, while the last one is the English translation.

Turkmens in Iran speak a dialect of Turkmen in the province of Golestan.^[33] It is mutually intelligible with the Turkmen dialects in Afghanistan, and is written in the Nastaliq script.^[34]