Turkmen

Where it’s spoken

Turkmen is the official state language of Turkmenistan, where about 5 million speakers live. Significant Turkmen-speaking populations live in Iran (the Turkmen Sahra region of Golestan Province), Afghanistan, and a smaller community in Iraq. Turkmen is part of the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, alongside Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Gagauz.

What it sounds like

Turkmen has vowel harmony like most Turkic languages, with eight short and eight long vowels (length is phonemic — distinguishing many words). It has dental fricatives s and z pronounced as th sounds (a Turkic anomaly shared with Bashkir). Stress generally falls on the final syllable.

How it’s written

Turkmen has used Arabic script (until 1928), Latin (1928–1940), Cyrillic (1940–1993), and a new Latin alphabet (since 1993). The current Latin script has 30 letters and is fully implemented in education and media. Iranian Turkmens use a modified Perso-Arabic script.

History

Turkmen descends from the Oghuz Turkic of the medieval Seljuk Empire. The 18th-century poet Magtymguly Pyragy is considered the father of modern Turkmen literature. Independence in 1991 brought the language strong state promotion.