Turkish language

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. {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300"\n! colspan="2" bgcolor=yellowgreen style="font-size:120%"|Turkish (Türkçe)\n|-\n| valign="top"|Spoken in:\n|Turkey\n|-\n| valign="top"|Region:\n| -\n|-\n| valign="top"|Total speakers:\n|85 Million\n|-\n| valign="top"|Ranking:\n|10\n|-\n| valign="top"|Genetic
classification:\n|Altaic (disputed)
\n Turkic
\n  Southern
\n   Turkish
\n    Turkish\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor=yellowgreen|Official status\n|-\n| valign="top"|Official language of:\n| valign="top"|Turkey, Cyprus\n|-\n| valign="top"|Regulated by:\n| valign="top"| -\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor=yellowgreen|Language codes\n|-\n|ISO 639-1||tr\n|-\n|ISO 639-2||tur, ota\n|-\n|SIL||TRK\n|}

Classification

\nTurkish is a member of the Turkic family of languages, which includes Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Gagauz, and Khorosani Turkish in addition to Turkish. The Turkish family is a subgroup of the Southern Turkic languages, which some linguistics believe to be member of the disputed Altaic language family.

Geographic distribution

\nTurkish 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

\nTurkish is the official language of Turkey and of Cyprus.

Dialects

\nDialects 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

\nOne 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

\nTurkish, 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

\nUntil 1928, Turkish was written using a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (see Ottoman Turkish). In 1928, Kemal Atatürk, as a part of his efforts to modernize Turkey, illegalized the Arabic alphabet, replacing it with a modified version of the Latin alphabet. See Turkish alphabet.

Examples

\n\n

English	Turkish\n
yes	evet\n
no	hayır\n
hello	merhaba\n
thanks	teşekkür ederim\n
please	lütfen\n
excuse me	affedersiniz\n
goodbye	hoşça kalın\n

\n

External links

\n*Ethnologue report for Turkish\n*onlineturkish.com\n*Free online Turkish course written in German \n*Online Turkish-English/English-Turkish dictionary\n*Turkish - English Dictionary\n*Omniglot: Turkish\n*A comprehensive and accurate Turkish-(English/French/Italian/and various other languages) dictionary \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Category:Turkic languages