Turkish Language

Turkish is the official language of Turkey and one of the official languages of Cyprus. It is a Turkic language and belongs to the Ural-Altay linguistic family, which has originated in the highlands around the Altay Mountains of Central Asia centuries ago. The Nomadic tribes that came to the Anatolian region from the Altai Mountains originally brought the language with themselves.

Gradually, the Turkish language started to spread through more and vaster territories. During the times of the Ottoman Empire, for instance, the Turkish language even reached the gates of Vienna and expanded to Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa. This clash of cultures inevitably left some traces in the Turkish language, examples for which are the minor changes in grammar and vocabulary that resulted from the Arabic, Persian and European influence. Another major change came with Kemal Ataturk’s linguistic reforms. In 1928 he adopted a Latin based alphabet that replaced the old Arabic script. Now the Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, 8 of which are vowels and 21 are consonants. Currently, more than 90 percent of the population of the country speaks Turkish but there also some 70 other languages and dialects that are also spoken, including various dialects of Caucasian and Kurdish as well as Arabic, Greek, and Armenian. Most of the Kurdish minority speaks Kurdish which also has some common words with Turkish Language. Arabic is spoken mostly in the Southeastern provinces. Lately, English is also becoming a very popular foreign language.