Turkmen

Turkmen (түркмен) belongs to the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. It is included in the southern group of the Turkic branch along with Turkish and Azerbaijani. There are 3.4 million speakers of Turkmen in Turkmenistan, a former constituent republic of the USSR. In addition, there are 0.5 million speakers of Turkmen in Afghanistan and 2 million speakers in Iran. There are also small communities of Turkmen speakers in Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan (Ethnologue)..

Groups of Turkic-speaking people migrated to southwestern areas of Central Asia during the 5th-6th centuries AD. The largest migration occurred in the 10th century when Oghuz tribes migrated from Mongolia to the area between the Ural mountains and the Aral sea. Despite some strong regional divisions, these tribes eventually became a single people. The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1924. After the disintegration of the SovietUnion, it became the newly independent Republic of Turkmenistan in 1990.

 

Status

Over 90% of the population of Turkmenistan consider Turkmen to be their mother tongue, while 50% report that they are bilingual in Turkmen and Russian. Turkmen,became the national language of the newly independent Republic of Turkmenistan in 1990. Along with Russian, it is used in government administration and in all official situations. It is the medium of instruction in most elementary and secondary schools. There have been attempts to use Turkmen as a medium of instruction in institutions of higher learning as well. Turkmen is also used in radio and television broadcasts. There are a number of newspapers, magazines, and books in the language. Recently, English has been added to the curriculum, and is now listed as the third state language of Turkmenistan.

 

Dialects

Since Turkmen is spoken in several countries, it consists of a number of varieties differing from each other in a pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Ethnologue lists the following dialects: Nokhurli, Anauli, Khasarli, Nerezim, Yomud, Teke (Tekke), Goklen, Salyr, Saryq, Esari, Cawdur.

 

Structure

Sound system

The sound system of Turkmen shares several important features with the sound systems of other Turkic languages. As all other Turkic languages, Turkmen is characterized by vowel harmony, a type of phonological process that involves constraints on which vowels may be found near each other. Vowels in Turkmen words must harmonize with one another in terms of front versus back, and rounded versus unrounded. , Suffixes added to stems must harmonize with the vowels of the stems, e.g., the plural marker has the form –ler when added to kadi, and the form –lar when added to mugallym.

 

Vowels

Turkmen has nine vowels. They can be either short or long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning.

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i	y	ɨ	u
Close-mid	e	ø		o
Near-open	æ
Open			a

• /y/ = second vowel in statue
• /ø/ has no equivalent in English
• /æ/ = a in cat
• /ɨ/ similar to e in roses

 

Consonants

Turkmen has 23 consonants, plus two that are used only in borrowed words.

 

Consonants

Turkmen has a large inventory of consonants. There are no consonant clusters at the beginning or end of words.

		Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental/Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	voiceless	p		t			k
	voiced	b		d			g
Fricatives	voiceless		f	s	ʃ		x	ʁ	h
	voiced		v	z	ʒ
Affricates					tʃ
Nasals		m		n	dʒ		ŋ
Tap (flap)				r
Laterals				l
Semi-vowels						j

• /ʃ/ = sh in shop
• /ʒ/ = s in vision
• /x/ has no equivalent in English; similar to ch in Scottish Loch
• /ʁ/ has no equivalent in English
• /tʃ/ = ch in chop
• /dʒ/ = j in job
• /ŋ/ = ng in song
• /j/ = y in yet

 

Grammar

Like all Turkic languages, Turkmen is agglutinative, i.e., grammatical relations are indicated by the addition of suffixes to stems. There are no prefixes. There is a one-to-one relationship between suffix and meaning, so suffixes are strung together one after another, resulting on occasion in long words. There are various rules for their ordering. Turkmen uses postpositions rather than prepositions to signal certain grammatical relationships.

 

Noun phrase

Turkmen nouns have these features:

• There is no grammatical gender.
• There are two numbers: singular and plural.
• There are 6 cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative. Cases are marked by inflectional suffixes and are governed by verbs and postpositions.
• There are no articles.

 

Verb phrase

Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. Verbs have the following grammatical categories:

• two numbers: singular and plural;
• three persons: 1st, 2, 3rd;
• five moods: indicative, dubitative, imperative, conditional, subjunctive;
• two voices: active and passive;
• three tenses: present, past, future;
• evidentiality which indicates whether evidence exists for a given statement. Turkmen contrasts direct information (reported directly) and indirect information (reported indirectly).

 

Word order

As in other Turkic languages, Turkmen sentences have a Subject-Object-Verb word. Other word orders are also possible, depending on discourse-oriented considerations such as emphasis.

 

Vocabulary

Turkmen’s basic lexical stock is Turkic in origin. The language has also borrowed words from Arabic (salam ‘peace’), Persian (kerwen ‘caravan‘), and Russian (shchi ‘beet soup’). Below are a few common Turkmen words and phrases in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

Hello	Salam, салам
Good bye	Xosh galyn, хош галын
OK, fine	Bolyar, боляр.
Yes	Xava, хава
No	Ek, ек.
Man	Adam, адам
Woman	Ayal, аял

 

Below are Turkmen numerals 1-10 in Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Latin	bir	iki	üch	dört	besh	alti	yedi	sekiz	dokuz	on
Cyrillic	бир	ики	уч	дёрт	беш	алты	жеди	секиз	докуз	он

 

Writing

Turkmen literary tradition dates back to the 14th century AD. Classical literature flourished in the 18th-19th centuries. After the October Revolution of 1917, a literary language based on spoken Turkmen began to emerge. It was written with the Arabic script until about 1930 when the Latin alphabet modeled on the Turkish orthography was developed. However, in 1940, as part of a russification campaign, it was replaced by an adapted version of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is written with the Arabic and Cyrillic scripts in Afghanistan, and with the Arabic script in Iran.

Since the establishment of an independent Turkmenistan in 1991, Turkmen has been written with a version of the Latin alphabet based on Turkish. It consists of 30 letters which are given below. Some letters (given in parentheses below) are used only in borrowed words.

Cyrillic alphabet for Turkmen
А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	E e	Ë ë	Ж ж	З з	И и	Й й	К к	Л л	М м
Н н	Ң ң	О о	Ө ө	П п	Р р	С с	Т т	У у	Y y	Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч
Ш ш	Ц ц	(Щ щ)	(ъ)	Ы ы	(ь)	Э э	Ә ә	Ю ю	Я я

 

Latin alphabet for Turkmen (Türkmen elipbiýi)
А а	B b	Ç ç	D d	E e		Ä ä	F f	G g	H h	I i	J j	Ž ž	K k	L l
M m	Ň ň	N n	O o	Ö ö	P p	R r	S s	Ş ş	T t	Ü ü	U u	W w	Ý ý	Z z

 

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Turkmen in Cyrillic and Latin scripts. .

1-нҗи МАДДА Хемме адамлар өз мертебеси ве хукуклары боюнча дең ягдайда дүнйә инйәрлер. Олара аң хем выждан берлендир ве олар бир-бирлери билен доганлык рухундакы гарайышда болмалыдырлар.

Hemme adamlar öz mertebesi we hukuklary boýunça deň ýagdaýda dünýä inyärler. Olara aň hem wyždan berlendir we olar bir-birleri bilen doganlyk ruhundaky garaýyşda bolmalydyrlar.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

 

Difficulty