Turkmen (, , , or , , , ), sometimes referred to as Turkmen Turkic or Turkmen Turkish, is a Turkic language spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 5 million native speakers in Turkmenistan (where it is the official language), and a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern Iran and 1.5 million people in northwestern Afghanistan, where it has no official status. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and by diaspora communities, primarily in Turkey and Russia.
Turkmen is a member of the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages. It is closely related to Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Qashqai, and Turkish, sharing varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with each of those languages. However, the closest language of Turkmen is considered Khorasani Turkic, spoken in northeastern regions of Iran and with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages, as well as Khorazm, the Oghuz dialect of Uzbek language spoken mainly in Khorezm along the Turkmenistan border. Elsewhere in Iran, the Turkmen language comes second after the Azerbaijani language in terms of the number of speakers of Turkic languages of Iran.
The standardized form of Turkmen (spoken in Turkmenistan) is based on the Teke dialect, while Iranian Turkmen use mostly the Yomud dialect, and Afghan Turkmen use the Ersary variety. The Turkmen language, unlike other languages of the Oghuz branch, preserved most of the unique and archaic features of the language spoken by the early Oghuz Turks, including phonemic vowel length.
Iraqi and Syrian "Turkmen" speak dialects that form a continuum between Turkish and Azerbaijani, in both cases heavily influenced by Arabic. These varieties are not Turkmen in the sense of this article.
Classification
Turkmen is a member of the East Oghuz branch of the Turkic family of languages; its closest relatives being Turkish and Azerbaijani, with which it shares a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility. However, the closest language of Turkmen is considered Khorasani Turkic with which it shares the eastern subbranch of Oghuz languages and Khorazm, spoken mainly in northwestern Uzbekistan.
Turkmen has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is subject–object–verb.
Written Turkmen today is based on the Teke (Tekke) dialect. The other dialects are Nohurly, , , Hasarly, Nerezim, , Salyr, Saryk, and . 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.
Comparison with other Turkic languages
Turkmen has dental fricatives and unlike other Oghuz Turkic languages, where these sounds are pronounced as and . The only other Turkic language with a similar feature is Bashkir. However, in Bashkir and are two independent phonemes, distinct from and , whereas in Turkmen [θ] and [ð] are the two main realizations of the common Turkic and . In other words, there are no and phonemes in Turkmen, unlike Bashkir, which has both and and and .
Turkmen vs. Azerbaijani
The 1st person personal pronoun is "men" in Turkmen, just as in Azerbaijani, whereas it is "ben" in Turkish. The same is true for demonstrative pronouns "bu", where sound "b" is replaced with sound "m". For example: . In Turkmen, "bu" undergoes some changes just as in: .
Here are some words with a different pronunciation in Turkmen and Azerbaijani that mean the same in both languages:
Turkmen vs. Turkish
Turkey was first to recognize Turkmenistan's independence on 27 October 1991, following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union and to open its Embassy in Ashgabat on 29 February 1992. Sharing a common history, religion, language and culture, the two states have balanced special relations based on mutual respect and the principle of "One Nation, Two States".
Turkmen language is very close to Turkish with regard to linguistic properties. However, there are a couple of differences due to regional and historical reasons. Most morphophonetic rules are common in Turkmen and Turkish languages. For instance, both languages show vowel harmony and consonant mutation rules, and have similar suffixes with very close semantics.
Here are some words from the Swadesh list in Turkmen and Turkish that mean the same in both languages: