Turkmen language

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Turkmen language

Turkmen (Latin script

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
: türkmen, Cyrillic: ???????, ISO 639

ISO 639

ISO 639 is the set of International Organization for Standardization that lists short language code for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002....
-1: tk, ISO 639-2: tuk) is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a Turkic peoples country in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic ....
. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 6,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
(2,000,000), Iraq

Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
(2,000,000), Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is an Arab-majority country in Southwest Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the southwest, Jordan to the south, Iraq to the east, and Turkey to the north....
(500,000), Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia....
(500,000), and Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
(1,000,000).

Classification, related languages and dialects
Turkmen is in the Turkic family; and further grouped in the larger Altaic

Altaic languages

Altaic is a disputed language family that is generally held by its proponents to include the Turkic languages, Mongolic languages, Tungusic languages, Korean language, and Japonic languages language families ....
language family.

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Encyclopedia

Turkmen (Latin script

Latin alphabet

ISO 639

Turkmenistan

Iran

Iraq

Syria

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia....
(500,000), and Turkey

Turkey

Classification, related languages and dialects

Turkmen is in the Turkic family; and further grouped in the larger Altaic

Altaic languages

Oghuz languages

The Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic languages, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkan peninsula to China....
language family, more specifically the East Oghuz group. This group also includes Khorasani Turkic. Turkmen is closely related to Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
and Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani language

Azerbaijani is a language belonging to the Turkic languages language family, spoken in southwestern Asia, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran....
, and it is often considered mutually intelligible

Mutual intelligibility

In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort....
.

Turkmen has vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
, is agglutinative, and has no grammatical gender or irregular verbs. Word order is Subject Object Verb

Subject Object Verb

In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb is the type of languages in which the subject , object , and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order....
.

Written Turkmen today is based on the Yomud dialect. Other dialects are Nohurly, Änewli, Hasarly, Nerezim, Teke (Tekke), Göklen, Salyr, Saryk, Ärsary and Çowdur. The Teke dialect is sometimes (especially in Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia....
) referred to as "Chagatai", but like all Turkmen dialects it reflects only a limited influence from classical Chagatai

Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century....
.

Writing system

Officially, Turkmen currently is rendered in the “Täze Elipbiý”, or “New Alphabet”, which is based on the Latin alphabet. However, the old "Soviet" Cyrillic alphabet is still in wide use. Many political parties in opposition to the authoritarian rule of President Niyazov continued to use the Cyrillic alphabet on websites and publications, most likely to distance themselves from the alphabet that Niyazov created.

Before 1929, Turkmen was written in a modified Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
. In 1929–1938 a Latin alphabet replaced it, and then the Cyrillic alphabet was used from 1938 to 1991. In 1991, the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow. It originally contained some rather unusual letters, such as the pound, dollar, yen, and cent signs, but these were later replaced by more orthodox letter symbols. In 2002, the days of the week and the months were renamed

Renaming of Turkmen months and days of week, 2002

On August 10, 2002, the government of Turkmenistan adopted a law to rename all the months and most of the days of week. The names were chosen according to Turkmen national symbols, as described in Ruhnama, a book written by Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan's first President for Life....
according to the ideology of Ruhnama

Ruhnama

Ruhnama is a book written by Saparmurat Niyazov, late president for life of Turkmenistan, combining spiritual/moral guidance, autobiography, and historical revisionism history, much of it of dubious or disputed factuality and accuracy....
. In July 2008 this decision was reverted.

Sounds

The following phonemes are present in the Turkmen language:

Vowels

Turkmen contains both short and long vowels. Doubling the duration of sound for a short vowel is generally how its long vowel counterpart is pronounced. Turkmen employs vowel harmony, a principle that is common in fellow Turkic languages. Vowels and their sounds are as follows:

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....		Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel....
Open Open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth....			¹

For purposes of vowel harmony (see below), the central vowel is considered back.

Consonants

Turkmen consonant phonemes (shown in Turkmen alphabet):

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental/ alveolar Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....	Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate).... / uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants....
plosive	? ?	? ?			? ?
nasal	?	?			?
trill		?
fricative	? ?	? ?	? ?		h ?
affricate			? ?
approximant		?		?

Grammar

Vowel harmony

Like other Turkic languages, Turkmen is characterized by vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
. In general, words of native origin consist either entirely of front vowels (inçe çekimli sesler) or entirely of back vowels (ýogyn çekimli sesler). Prefixes and suffixes reflect this harmony, taking different forms depending on the word to which they are attached.

The infinitive form of a verb determines whether it will follow a front vowel harmony or back vowel harmony. Words of foreign origin, mainly Russian, Persian, or Arabic, do not follow vowel harmony.

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated

Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical tense, Grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, or other grammatical category....
for singular and plural number and first, second, and third persons. There are 11 verb tenses: present comprehensive (long and short form), present perfect (regular and negative), future certain, future indefinite, conditional, past definite, obligatory, imperative, and intentional. The presence of so many tenses may intimidate speakers of languages with a smaller set of tenses, but due to the consistent logic of Turkmen's conjugation, their use is not as daunting as it may appear.

There are two types of verbs in Turkmen, distinguished by their infinitive forms: those ending in the suffix "-mak" and those ending in "-mek". -Mak verbs follow back vowel harmony, whereas -mek verbs follow front vowel harmony.

Grammatical cases

The Turkmen language has several cases

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
: nominative, possessive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. Pronouns are declined

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
as follows:

Pronoun cases
Nominative	men / I	sen / you (sing. Inf.)	ol / he/she/it	biz / we	siz / you (pl. or for.)	olar / they
Possessive	menin / my	senin / your	onun / his/her/its	bizin / our	sizin / your	olaryn / their
Dative	mana / to me	sana / to you	ona / to him/her/it	bize / to us	size / to you	olara / to them
Accusative	meni / me	seni / you	ony / him/her/it	bizi / us	sizi / you	olary / them
Locative	mende / upon me	sende / upon you	onda / upon him/her/it	bizde / upon us	sizde / upon you	olarda / upon them
Instrumental	menden / from me	senden / from you	ondan / from him/her/it	bizden / from us	sizden / from you	olardan / from them

Suffixes

Suffixes, or "gosylmalar", form a very important part of Turkmen. They can mark possession, or change a verb.

To make a verb passive: -yl/-il; -ul/-ül; -l
To make a verb reflexive: -yn/-in; -un/-ün; -n
To make a verb reciprocal: -ys/-is; -us/-üs; -s
To make a verb causative: -dyr/-dir; -dur/-dür; -yr/-ir; -ur/-ür; -uz/-üz; -ar/-er; -der/-dar; -t

Suffixes reflect vowel harmony.

Literature

The leading Turkmen poet is Magtymguly Pyragy

Magtymguly Pyragy

Magtymguly Pyragy was a Turkmen people spiritual leader and philosophical poet who made significant efforts to secure independence and Wiktionary:autonomy for his people in the 18th century....
, who wrote in the eighteenth century. His language represents a transitional stage between Chagatai

Chagatai language

The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century....
and spoken Turkmen.

External links

entry in the Ethnologue
Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christianity linguistics service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles, in their native language....