Turkmen (, , ,
or , , , ),
sometimes referred to as "Turkmen Turkic" or "Turkmen Turkish", is a
Turkic language
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
spoken by the
Turkmens of
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
, mainly of
Turkmenistan,
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, and
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
. It has an estimated 5 million native speakers in Turkmenistan, a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, 1.5 million people in northwestern
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and 155,000 in
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
.
Turkmen has official status in
Turkmenistan, but it does not have official status in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, or
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
, where big communities of ethnic Turkmens live. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked co ...
and
Tajikistan
Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...
and by diaspora communities, primarily in
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
and
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
.
Turkmen is a member of the
Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. The
standardized form of Turkmen (spoken in Turkmenistan) is based on the
Teke
Teke or Tekke can refer to:
People
* Teke (Turkmen tribe) or Tekke, a tribe of southern Turkmenistan
* Teke people or Bateke, a Central African ethnic group
* Fatih Tekke (born 1977), Turkish footballer
* Kent Tekulve (born 1947), American baseba ...
dialect, while
Iranian Turkmen use mostly the
Yomud
The Yomut or Yomud is a Turkmen tribe that lives in Western and Central Asia, including Gorgan, Iran; Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan; the eastern Caspian shores; Khiva, Uzbekistan; and Dashoguz, Turkmenistan.
The Yomut carpet is a type of rug ...
dialect, and
Afghan Turkmen use
Ersary variety. Turkmen is closely related to
Azerbaijani,
Crimean Tatar,
Gagauz,
Qashqai, and
Turkish, sharing varying degrees of
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with each of those languages.
However, the closest language 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 language spoken mainly in
Khorezm along the Turkmenistan border.
Elsewhere in Iran, the Turkmen language comes second after the Azerbaijani language in terms of the number of speakers of Turkic languages of Iran.
Iraqi and
Syrian "Turkmen" speak dialects that form a
continuum between
Turkish and
Azerbaijani, in both cases heavily influenced by
Arabic. These varieties are not Turkmen in the sense of this article.
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
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
.
Classification
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
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
. However, the closest language of Turkmen is considered
Khorasani Turkic with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages and Khorazm, spoken mainly in northwestern Uzbekistan.
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
Teke or Tekke can refer to:
People
* Teke (Turkmen tribe) or Tekke, a tribe of southern Turkmenistan
* Teke people or Bateke, a Central African ethnic group
* Fatih Tekke (born 1977), Turkish footballer
* Kent Tekulve (born 1947), American baseba ...
(Tekke) dialect. The other dialects are Nohurly, , , Hasarly, Nerezim, ,
Salyr, Saryk, and . The Teke dialect is sometimes (especially in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
) referred to as "Chagatai", but like all Turkmen dialects it reflects only a limited influence from classical
Chagatai.
Comparison with other Turkic languages
Turkmen has dental fricatives and unlike other Oghuz Turkic languages, where these sounds are pronounced as and . The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is
Bashkir. However, in Bashkir and are two independent phonemes, distinct from and , whereas in Turkmen
�and
�are the two main
realizations of the common Turkic and . In other words, there are no and phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir, which has both and and and .
Turkmen vs. Azerbaijani
The 1st person personal pronoun is “men” in Turkmen, just as in
Azerbaijani, whereas it is “ben” in Turkish. The same is true for demonstrative pronouns “bu”, where sound “b” is replaced with sound “m”. For example: . In Turkmen, “bu” undergoes some changes just as in: .
Here are some words with a different pronunciation in Turkmen and Azerbaijani that mean the same in both languages:
Turkmen vs. Turkish
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
was first to recognize Turkmenistan's independence on 27 October 1991, following the
Dissolution of the Soviet Union and to open its Embassy in
Ashgabat on 29 February 1992. Sharing a common history, religion, language and culture, the two states have balanced special relations based on mutual respect and the principle of “One Nation, Two States”.
Turkmen language is very close to Turkish with regard to linguistic properties. However, there are a couple of differences due to regional and historical reasons. Most morphophonetic rules are common in Turkmen and Turkish languages. For instance, both languages show vowel harmony and consonant mutation rules, and have similar suffixes with very close
semantics.
[Ahmet Cuneyd Tantug. ''A MT System from Turkmen to Turkish Employing Finite State and Statistical Methods''. Istanbul Technical University. 2008. p.2]
Here are some words from
the Swadesh list in Turkmen and Turkish that mean the same in both languages:
Phonology
Writing system
Turkmen written language was formed in the 13–14th centuries.
[Languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation and neighboring states (in Russian), Vol.3; 2005. Nauka (Science). p. 138] During this period, the
Arabic alphabet was used extensively for writing. Already in the 18th century, there was a
rich literature 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.
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 the Turkmens of the
USSR was reformed twice, in 1922 and 1925. In the course of the reforms, letters with
diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
were introduced to denote Turkic phonemes; and letters were abolished for sounds that are absent in the Turkmen language.
[Chariyarov B. ''Issues of improvement of the alphabets of Turkic languages of USSR''. 1972. Nauka (Science) pp. 149–156]
The Turkmens of Afghanistan and Iran continue to use Arabic script.
In January 1925, on the pages of the republican newspaper , the question of switching to a new,
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...
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
Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to:
Peoples Historical ethnonym
* Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages
Ethnic groups
* Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish des ...
developed a draft of a new alphabet. On January 3, 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 July 1, 1940, and on the beginning of teaching the new alphabet in schools from September 1 of the same year.
After the
Dissolution of the Soviet Union, in January 1993, a meeting was held at the
Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan
The Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan () is a state body in Turkmenistan founded in 1951, which is responsible for the implementation of Turkmen scientific and technical policy. The academy was closed under president Saparmurat Niyazov and reope ...
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 April 12, 1993, the
Mejlis of Turkmenistan approved a presidential decree on the new alphabet.
Grammar
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, "from the villages" can be analysed as "village", -lar (plural suffix), -dan (ablative case, meaning "from"); "I am taking" as ''al'' "take", (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 is "from the villages" but, the ablative case of "dogs" is "from the dogs".
Literature
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
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West Asia, West, Central Asia, Central, East Asia, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose memb ...
that spoke the Oghuz branch of the
Turkic language family
Turkic may refer to:
* anything related to the country of Turkey
* Turkic languages, a language family of at least thirty-five documented languages
** Turkic alphabets (disambiguation)
** Turkish language, the most widely spoken Turkic language
* ...
.
The earliest development of the Turkmen literature is closely associated with the literature of the Oghuz Turks.
Turkmens have joint claims to a great number of literary works written in Old Oghuz and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
(by
Seljuks
The Seljuk dynasty, or Seljukids ( ; fa, سلجوقیان ''Saljuqian'', alternatively spelled as Seljuqs or Saljuqs), also known as Seljuk Turks, Seljuk Turkomans "The defeat in August 1071 of the Byzantine emperor Romanos Diogenes
by the Turk ...
in 11-12th centuries) languages with other people of the Oghuz Turkic origin, mainly of
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...
and
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
. These works include, but are not limited to the
Book of Dede Korkut, Gorogly,
Layla and Majnun,
Yusuf Zulaikha and others.
There is general consensus, however, that distinctively modern Turkmen literature originated in the 18th century with the
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
of
Magtymguly Pyragy, who is considered the father of the Turkmen literature. Other prominent Turkmen poets of that era are (Magtymguly's father), Nurmuhammet Andalyp, , , and Gurbanally Magrupy.
Vocabulary
Numbers
Note: Numbers are formed identically to other Turkic languages, such as Turkish. So, eleven (11) is "on bir" (). Two thousand seventeen (2017) is (two-thousand-ten-seven).
Colors
Basic expressions
Example
The following is
Magtymguly's (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.
Turkmen in Iran
Turkmens in Iran speak a dialect of Turkmen in the province of
Golestan. It is mutually intelligible with the Turkmen dialects in Afghanistan, and are written in the
Nastaliq script.
Notes
Further reading
*
References
Bibliography
*Garrett, Jon, Meena Pallipamu, and Greg Lastowka (1996). "Turkmen Grammar". www.chaihana.com.
External links
Turkmen grammar and orthography rules (Turkmen)(''in Turkmen'')
Turkmen – English Dictionary with searchable reverse dictionaryTurkmen – English / English – Turkmen Dictionary (a)
Turkmen – English / English – Turkmen Dictionary (b)
Turkmen – English Dictionary
* ttp://www.omniglot.com/writing/turkmen.htm Omniglot page on Turkmen
Turkmen language online transliteration
Ajapsozluk.com Ever-growing dictionary of Turkmen language
Turkmen<>Turkish dictionary
(Pamukkale University)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turkmen Language
Turkic languages
Agglutinative languages
Languages of Turkmenistan
Turkic languages of Afghanistan
Languages of Iran
Languages of Pakistan
Languages of Russia
Oghuz languages