Turkish languages
Turkish is a Turkic language, spoken by about 70 million speakers in Turkey and over 85 million speakers world-wide. The Turkish name for the language is Türkçe.
Classification
Turkish is a member of the Turkish family of languages, which includes Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Gagauz, and Khorasani Turkish in addition to Turkish. The Turkish family is a subgroup of the Southern Turkic languages, themselves a subgroup of the Turkic languages, which some linguistics believe to be member of the disputed Altaic language family.
Geographic distribution
Turkish is spoken in Turkey and 35 other countries. The Turkish used in countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the Republic of Macedonia, Romania and Uzbekistan is also called Osmanli.
Official status
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus.
Dialects
Dialects of Turkish include Danubian, Eskişehir (spoken in Eskişehir Province), Razgrad, Dinler, Rumelian, Karamanli (spoken in Karaman Province), Edirne (spoken in Edirne), Gaziantep (spoken in Gaziantep Province), Urfa (spoken in Şanlıurfa Province).
Sounds
One of the characteristic features of Turkish is the vowel harmony (if the first vowel of a Turkish word is a front vowel, the second and other vowels of the same word are usually the same vowel or another front vowel; e.g. Erdem). See also the Ğ (soft g).
Grammar
Turkish, like Finnish and Hungarian, is an agglutinative language. It is known for having an abundance of suffixes and very few prefixes. Word order in Turkish is Subject Object Verb similar to Japanese and Latin, but unlike English.
Writing system
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet, which was introduced in 1928 by Kemal Atatürk as part of his efforts to modernize Turkey. Until 1928, Turkish was written using a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (see Ottoman Turkish), but use of the Arabic alphabet was outlawed after the Latin alphabet was introduced. See Turkish alphabet.
Examples
| English | Turkish
|
| yes | evet
|
| no | hayır
|
| hello | merhaba
|
| thanks | teşekkür ederim
|
| please | lütfen
|
| excuse me | affedersiniz
|
| good night | iyi geceler
|
| goodbye | hoşça kalın
|
