Turkish language

**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)
1. Selam = Hello
1. Nasılsın? = How are you?
1. Nasılsınız? = How are you? (formal)
1. İyiyim = I'm fine
1. Teşekkür ederim = Thank you (formal)
1. Teşekkürler = Thanks
1. Sağ ol = Thank you
1. Benim adım = My name is
1. Türkçe bilmiyorum. = I don't speak Turkish.
1. İngilizce biliyor musun? = Do you speak English? (informal)
1. İngilizce biliyor musunuz? = Do you speak English? (formal)
1. Tekrarlar mısınız? = Can you repeat?
1. Evet = Yes
1. Hayır = No
1. Belki = Maybe
1. Biraz = A little
1. Acıktım. = I'm hungry.
1. Dur! = Stop!
1. Yapma! = Don't do it!
1. İstemiyorum. = I don't want it.
1. Tabii = Sure
1. Bekledim. = I waited.
1. Bana yardım et! = Help me!
1. Iyi geceler! = Good night!

## Infobox (language)

- **name**: Turkish
- **pronunciation**: [ˈt̪yɾkˌtʃe]
- **familycolor**: Altaic
- **states**: 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
- **speakers**: First language, L1: 84 million
Second language, L2: 6.0 million
Total: 90 million
- **region**: Anatolia, Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Europe
- **fam1**: Altaic languages, Altaic (Altaic language#Controversy, controversial)
- **fam2**: Turkic languages, Turkic
- **fam3**: Oghuz languages, Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz)
- **fam4**: Western Oghuz
- **script**: Latin alphabet (Turkish alphabet, Turkish variant)
- **nation**: ,
,

- **agency**: Turkish Language Association
- **iso1**: tr
- **iso2**: tur
- **iso3**: tur
- **map**: Map of Turkish Language.svg
- **mapcaption**: Countries where the Turkish language is official
- **minority**: