Turkish language

Turkish (Türkçe) is a language that is officially spoken in Turkey and Cyprus. Turkish is the 18th most-spoken language in the world.

Turkish
Türkçecode: tr is deprecated
Pronunciation	[ˈt̪yɾkˌtʃe]
Native to	Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and by immigrant communities in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and other countries of the Turkish diaspora
Region	Anatolia, Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Europe
Native speakers	L1: 84 million L2: 6.0 million Total: 90 million  (date missing)
Language family	Altaic (controversial) Turkic Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz) Western Oghuz Turkish
Writing system	Latin alphabet (Turkish variant)
Official status
Official language in	Turkey, Cyprus, Northern Cyprus
Recognised minority language in	Bosnia and Herzegovina Greece Iraq Kosovo North Macedonia Romania
Regulated by	Turkish Language Association
Language codes
ISO 639-1	tr
ISO 639-2	tur
ISO 639-3	tur
Countries where the Turkish language is official

Turkish is a Turkic language. Turkish is most closely related to other Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh. Another theory is that it is one of the many Altaic languages, which also include Japanese, Mongolian, and Korean.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed the script to the Latin alphabet from the Arabic alphabet. The Turkish government justified the language reform as making Turkish much easier to learn, which would increase literacy. The literacy rate indeed increased greatly after the reform from around 10.5% in 1927 to over 90% today. Some say that the move was also to distance the country from the Ottoman Empire, whose documents can no longer be read except by a few scholars.

The Latin alphabet was made to reflect the actual sounds of spoken Turkish, rather than simply transcribing the old Ottoman Arabic alphabet into a new form. The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü) have been modified with diacritics for the phonetic requirements of the language. It represents the 20th-century Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. It is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.

Simple phrases

• Merhaba = Hello (formal)
• Selam = Hello
• Nasılsın? = How are you?
• Nasılsınız? = How are you? (formal)
• İyiyim = I'm fine
• Teşekkür ederim = Thank you (formal)
• Teşekkürler = Thanks
• Sağ ol = Thank you
• Benim adım ... = My name is ...
• Türkçe bilmiyorum. = I don't speak Turkish.
• İngilizce biliyor musun? = Do you speak English? (informal)
• İngilizce biliyor musunuz? = Do you speak English? (formal)
• Tekrarlar mısın(ız)? = Can you repeat?
• Evet = Yes
• Hayır = No
• Belki = Maybe
• Biraz = A little
• Acıktım. = I'm hungry.
• Dur! = Stop!
• Yapma! = Don't do it!
• İstemiyorum. = I don't want it.
• Tabii = Sure
• Bekledim. = I waited.
• Bana yardım et! = Help me!

Turkish Language Media

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  The 9th-century Irk Bitig or "Book of Divination"

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  The 15th century Book of Dede Korkut

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  An advertisement by the IKEA branch in Berlin written in the German and Turkish languages.

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  Map of the main subgroups of Turkish dialects across Southeast Europe and the Middle East.

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  System of the eight vowels of Turkish language as a cube

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  Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul.

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  Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)

• Artikel 1 der UN Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte auf Türkisch

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  A Turkish computer keyboard with Q (QWERTY) layout