Turkic · ISO 639-3 tuk · tk
Turkmen Language türkmençe
Turkmen is a Turkic language spoken by about 16 million people in 3 countries. It is an official language of Turkmenistan. It is written in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.
Where Turkmen is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Turkmen
Language family
- Turkic
- Common Turkic
- Oghuz
- Nuclear Oghuz
- East Oghuz
- Turkmen
Writing system
Latin and Cyrillic scripts
Related languages
About the Turkmen language
Turkmen (türkmençe) is spoken by about 16 million people, which makes it the 85th most spoken language in the world — just behind Sinhala (16 million) and ahead of Modern Greek (1453-) (15 million). It belongs to the Turkic language family and, more precisely, to the East Oghuz group within the Oghuz branch.
Where is Turkmen spoken?
Turkmen is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in Turkmenistan (4.0 million), Iran (2.5 million) and Afghanistan (682,067). More than half of the population speaks it in Turkmenistan — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Turkmen: Turkmenistan 70% (4.0 million), Iran 2.8% (2.5 million) and Afghanistan 1.7% (682,067).
Turkmen is an official language in 1 country: Turkmenistan. It also has regional official status in Afghanistan.
Writing system and status
Turkmen is written in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Turkish, South Azerbaijani, North Azerbaijani, Qashqa'i and Azerbaijani.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 tk, ISO 639-3 tuk.
Frequently asked questions about Turkmen
How many people speak Turkmen?
Where is Turkmen spoken?
In which countries is Turkmen an official language?
What language family does Turkmen belong to?
What is Turkmen called in Turkmen?
Is Turkmen an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.