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| Turkmen Türkmen dili |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Turkmenistan, Iran,Iraq,Afghanistan, Turkey (Asia) | |
| Total speakers: | ca. 9 million | |
| Language family: | Altaic[1] (controversial) Turkic Oghuz Turkmen |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Turkmenistan | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | tk | |
| ISO 639-2: | tuk | |
| ISO 639-3: | tuk | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Turkmen (Latin script: türkmen, Cyrillic: түркмен, ISO 639-1: tk, ISO 639-2: tuk) is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. It is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 5,500,000 people in other countries, including Iran (2,000,000), Iraq (1,500,000), Afghanistan (500,000), and Turkey (1,000,000).
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Classification, related languages and dialects
Turkmen is in the Turkic family; sometimes grouped in the larger, but disputed Altaic language family. It is a member of the southwestern Turkic language family, more specifically the East Oghuz group. This group also includes Khorasani Turkic. Turkmen is closely related to the Crimean Tatar and Salar languages, and less closely related to Turkish and Azerbaijani, though it is often considered mutually intelligible with many of these languages.
Turkmen has vowel harmony, is agglutinative, and has no grammatical gender or irregular verbs. Word order is Subject Object Verb.
Written Turkmen today is based on the Yomud dialect. Other dialects are Nokhurli, Anauli, Khasarli, Nerezim, Teke (Tekke), Goklen, Salyr, Saryq, Esari and Cawdur. The Teke dialect is sometimes (especially in Afghanistan) referred to as "Chagatai", but like all Turkmen dialects it reflects only a limited influence from classical Chagatai.
Writing system
Officially, Turkmen currently is rendered in the “Täze Elipbiýi”, 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. 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 according to the ideology of Ruhnama.
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 | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i/и /i/ | ü/ү /y/ üý/үй /yː/ | y/ы /ɯ/ | u/у /u/ |
| Mid | e/е /e/ | ö/ө /ø/ | o/о /o/ | |
| Open | ä/ә /æː/ | a/а /a/1 | ||
- For purposes of vowel harmony (see below), the central vowel /a/ is considered back.
Consonants
Turkmen consonant phonemes (shown in Turkmen alphabet):
| Bilabial | Dental/ alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar/ uvular |
Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p b п б [p] [b] |
t d т д [t̪] [d̪] |
k g к г [k]/[q] [g]/ʁ |
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| nasal | m м [m] |
n н [n] |
ň ң ŋ |
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| trill | r р [r] |
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| fricative | f w ф в ɸ β |
s z с з θ ð |
ş ž ш ж ʃ ʒ |
h х [h]/[x] |
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| affricate | ç j ч җ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ |
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| approximant | l л [l] |
ý й [j] |
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Grammar
Vowel harmony
Like other Turkic languages, Turkmen is characterized by vowel harmony. 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 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: nominative, possessive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. Pronouns are declined 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 | meniň / my | seniň / your | onyň / his/her/its | biziň / our | siziň / your | olaryň / their |
| Dative | maňa / to me | saňa / to you | oňa / 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 "goşylmalar", 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: -yş/-iş; -uş/-üş; -ş
- 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, who wrote in the eighteenth century. His language represents a transitional stage between Chagatai and spoken Turkmen.
References
- Garrett, Jon, Meena Pallipamu, and Greg Lastowka (1996). “Turkmen Grammar”. www.chaihana.com.
External links
- Turkmen - English Dictionary
- Turkmen - English Dictionary
- Turkmen entry in the Ethnologue
- Learn turkmen language on Tmchat Forums (Russian)
- Omniglot page on Turkmen
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