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Turkish language

Turkic language of the Turkish people / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Turkish (Türkçe [ˈtyɾctʃe] i, Türk dili; also Türkiye Türkçesi 'Turkish of Turkey'[15]) is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 80 to 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia,[16] Greece,[17] Cyprus, other parts of Europe, the Caucasus, and some parts of Central Asia, Iraq, and Syria.

Quick facts: Turkish, Pronunciation, Native to, Regio...
Turkish
Türkçe (noun, adverb)
Türk dili (noun)
PronunciationTürkçe: [ˈtyɾctʃe] i
Türk dili: Turkish pronunciation: [ˈtyɾc ˈdili]
Native toTurkey (official), Northern Cyprus (official), Cyprus (official), Azerbaijan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
RegionAnatolia, Balkans, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Levant, Transcaucasia
EthnicityTurks
SpeakersNative: 82 million (2006)[1]
L2: 5.9 million (2019)[1]
Total: 88 million[1]
Turkic
Early forms
Standard forms
  • Istanbul Turkish
Dialects
Latin (Turkish alphabet)
Turkish Braille
Official status
Official language in
Cyprus
Northern Cyprus
Turkey
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byTurkish Language Association
Language codes
ISO 639-1tr
ISO 639-2tur
ISO 639-3tur
Glottolognucl1301
Linguaspherepart of 44-AAB-a
Map_of_Turkish_Language.svg
  Countries where Turkish is an official language
  Countries where Turkish is recognised as a minority language
  Countries where Turkish is recognised as a minority language and co-official in at least one municipality
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A Turkish speaker from Kosovo

Cyprus has requested the European Union to add Turkish as an official language, as one of the two official languages of Cyprus.[18] Turkish is the 13th most spoken language in the world.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet.

The distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. The language makes usage of honorifics and has a strong T–V distinction which distinguishes varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.