Turkish language
| Turkish | |
|---|---|
| Türkçe | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈt̪yɾkˌtʃe] |
| Native to | Albania, Azerbaijan,[1] 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,[2] 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 | over 77 million worldwide |
| Latin alphabet (Turkish variant) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Turkey, Cyprus, Northern Cyprus |
Recognised minority language in | |
| 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) or Anatolian Turkic is a language officially spoken in Turkey and Cyprus. The language is also spoken by several million ethnic Turkish immigrants in Europe.
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 it to the Latin alphabet from Arabic alphabet. The Turkish government justified the move as making Turkish much easier to learn to increase literacy. The literacy rate indeed increased greatly after the reform, from around 10.5% (in 1927)[3] 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 script 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 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.
Simple phrases
[change | change source]- Merhaba = Hello (formal)
- Selam = Hello
- Nasılsın? = How are you?
- İyiyim = I'm fine
- Teşekkür ederim = Thank you (formal)
- Teşekkürler = Thanks
- Sağ ol = Thank you
- Benim adım ... = My name is ...
- Türkçe bilmiyorum. = I don't speak Turkish.
- İngilizce biliyor musunuz? = Do you speak English?
- Tekrarlar mısınız? = Can you repeat?
- Evet = Yes
- Hayır = No
- Belki = Maybe
- Biraz = A little
- Acıktım. = I'm hungry.
- Dur! = Stop!
- Yapma! = Don't do it!
- İstemiyorum. = I don't want it.
- Tabii = Sure
- Bekledim. = I waited.
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Taylor & Francis Group (2003). Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia 2004. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 978-1857431872. Retrieved 2008-03-26.
- ↑ "Syrian Turks". Archived from the original on 2009-04-20. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
- ↑ "Cumhuriyetten sonra kadınların okur yazarlık oranı nedir?"
