# Turkish language

| Turkish |
| --- |
| *Türkçe* |
| Pronunciation | [ˈt̪yɾkˌtʃe] |
| Native to | Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and by immigrant communities in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and other countries of the Turkish diaspora |
| Region | Anatolia, Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Europe |
| Native speakers | L1: 84 million L2: 6.0 million Total: 90 million |
| Language family | Altaic (controversial)
* Turkic
	+ Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz)
		- Western Oghuz
			* **Turkish**
 |
| Writing system | Latin alphabet (Turkish variant) |
| Official status |
| Official language in |  Turkey,  Cyprus,  Northern Cyprus |
| Recognised minority language in |  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Greece  Iraq  Kosovo  North Macedonia  Romania |
| Regulated by | Turkish Language Association |
| Language codes |
| ISO 639-1 | `tr` |
| ISO 639-2 | `tur` |
| ISO 639-3 | `tur` |
| Countries where the Turkish language is official |

**Turkish** (*Türkçe*) is a language that is officially spoken in Turkey and Cyprus. Turkish is the 18th most-spoken language in the world.

Turkish is a Turkic language. Turkish is most closely related to other Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh. Another theory is that it is one of the many Altaic languages, which also include Japanese, Mongolian, and Korean.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed the script to the Latin alphabet from the Arabic alphabet. The Turkish government justified the language reform as making Turkish much easier to learn, which would increase literacy. The literacy rate indeed increased greatly after the reform from around 10.5% in 1927 to over 90% today. Some say that the move was also to distance the country from the Ottoman Empire, whose documents can no longer be read except by a few scholars.

The Latin alphabet was made to reflect the actual sounds of spoken Turkish, rather than simply transcribing the old Ottoman Arabic alphabet into a new form. The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü) have been modified with diacritics for the phonetic requirements of the language. It represents the 20th-century Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. It is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.

## Sample phrases

1. Merhaba = Hello (formal)
2. Selam = Hello
3. Nasılsın? = How are you?
4. Nasılsınız? = How are you? (formal)
5. İyiyim = I'm fine
6. Teşekkür ederim = Thank you (formal)
7. Teşekkürler = Thanks
8. Sağ ol = Thank you
9. Benim adım = My name is
10. Türkçe bilmiyorum. = I don't speak Turkish.
11. İngilizce biliyor musun? = Do you speak English? (informal)
12. İngilizce biliyor musunuz? = Do you speak English? (formal)
13. Tekrarlar mısınız? = Can you repeat?
14. Evet = Yes
15. Hayır = No
16. Belki = Maybe
17. Biraz = A little
18. Acıktım. = I'm hungry.
19. Dur! = Stop!
20. Yapma! = Don't do it!
21. İstemiyorum. = I don't want it.
22. Tabii = Sure
23. Bekledim. = I waited.
24. Bana yardım et! = Help me!
25. Iyi geceler! = Good night!