Turkmen language

Turkmen ( ISO 639-1: tk, ISO 639-2: tuk) is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan. Turkmen is spoken by approximately 3,430,000 people in Turkmenistan, and by an additional approximately 3,000,000 people in other countries, including Iran (2,000,000), Afghanistan (500,000), and Turkey (1,000).

Turkmen is in the Turkic group of the Altaic language family. It is a southern Turkic language, in the Turkmenian group, closely related to Crimean Turkish and Salar, and less closely related to Turkish and Azeri (Azerbaijani).

Turkmen is written using the Cyrillic alphabet or the Arabic alphabet.

Source: Ethnologue, SIL code: TCK