Talk:Turkmen language

Untitled

Turkmen does not use the Cyrillic alphabet any longer. olivier 10:58, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Latin script

Several questions about the Turkmen Latin script:

1. Does anyone know how well the introduction of Turkmen Latin script goes on there? Is it taught in schools, or is there still a mix of Cyrillic and Latin? Are there any adult people who use it?

Hi, I am native speaker of Turkmen and writer in Turkmen wiki. officially, there is no Turkmen alphabet which is a mixture of cyrillic and latin, however, some sources use cyrillis so that the old people who were educated in Soviet system and do not know current alphabet can understand what they write/explain.

1. In what language are newspapers printed? Street signs? Government documents and passports?

usually, in Turkmen alphabet which is very similar to that of Enlish and Turkish and which is Latin alpabet. Government documents, passports and street signs are also written in Turkmen, however there are some exceptions which are written in Turkmen with russian alphabet or cyrillic Turkmen.

1. Who designed it? It seems very weird in comparison to other Turkic Latin scripts. Where Turkish and Azeri use dotless i, Turkmen uses y, like Polish, and where Turkish uses y it uses y-acute. If the purpose of Latinization was to bring the Turkmen culture closer to Turkish, then it missed the point entirely. It actually looks so stupid, that it makes me think that the Great Serdar Saparmurad Turkmenbashi designed it himself.

There are some speculations or rumours that say current Turkmen alphabet is designed to make it look like Turkish alphabet, I do not know is it true or not. and I very doubt Saparmyrat Turkmenbashy the Great and others who composed the alphabet told something like that when they announced new Turkmen alphabet.

1. What does the exiled Turkmen opposition think about the script? I see that some opposition websites use Cyrillic and some use Turkmenbashi's weird Latin, even though they hate Turkmenbashi. Are there any proposals to make yet another reform that will make Turkmen look like Turkish and Azeri?--Amir E. Aharoni 12:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I do not know what they think, the reason I guess why they use Cyrillic alphabet is as I explained above, there are old people who know cyrillic and do not know current alphabet. the young and younger generation know both, so, in order the old to be able to understand their opposition, they use cyrillic. as far as I know there is no any proposal and I do not think we need a proposal nor we need a reform since our alphabet does not miss/lack anything. Turkmen alphabet was not and is not to look like Turkish or Azeri alphabet. Sir artur (talk) 22:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

---

Everything is in Latin script there, it's illegal to publish or print anything in the Turkmen language using Cyrillic in Turkmenistan. It was designed by a national committee of linguists. The older people have the most trouble adapting, many became functionally illiterate and were forced to learn the new script or lose their jobs. It is taught in all Turkmen Language Schools (more than 95% of schools in the country). The purpose was not to bring Turkmen language close to Turkish, but instead to reinforce a nationalistic sense of Turkmen identity. BP

Measure of Closeness

It is a southern Turkic language, in the Turkmenian group, closely related to Crimean Tatar and Salar, and less closely related to Turkish and Azerbaijani.

What is the metric of closeness used here? I speak Turkish; I took a look at the Turkmen resources at http://www.chaihana.com/lang.html. Not only that the language is pretty close to Istanbul Turkish, I would think that it is pretty much the same thing with Azeri language. This makes me think that Turkmen and Tatar languages should be identical. -AverageTurkishJoe 02:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps take a look in http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90026 --Hello World! 16:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia interlanguage link title is wrong

Now the link title on the left side shows up as

تركمن / Туркмен

There are at least 2 things not OK:

1. The Cyrillic spelling should be Түркмен with the special letter ү for ü (this spelling is given in the article).
2. The main script for Turkmen is Latin now, so it should be there in the link title.

Where to report this issue? (Also posted to Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links#Where to report a problem with interlang. link title (Turkmen)?.) --Imz 23:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Names?

Why do Turkmen names sound so Slavic? The Russianized name of the new acting president looks suspiciously similar to his Turkmen name. Does Turkmen use the same sort of suffix system for names as many Slavic languages do? —pfahlstrom 22:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a result of the Soviet era. They were under a "Slavization" project. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.179.207.202 (talk) 15:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(as it was explained to me by one of my instructors): several generations ago, there were no last names - The "Slavization" referred to above seems to mean - giving all of the Turkmen a patronymic (middle name based on father's first name) - until recently, the son of Gurban would have been "Gurbanowiç/Gurbanovich" (son of Gurban), the true Turkmen version is "Gurbanyň ogly". The last names were also developed from the father's first name - in Russian fashion. So, if the father referred to above had a son, and named him "Gurban", the full name (in "Russian" Turkmen) would be: Gurban Gurbanowiç Gurbanow. It's also worth noting that when the Government of Turkmenistan started issuing the new passports a couple years ago, they arbitrarily changed the spelling of peoples' names on the "international spelling" page - in the old passport, our hypothetical son's name would have been Kurban Kurbanovich Kurbanov - the "K" in a new passport would be rendered as a "G", and the "V" as a "W" - it's more Turkmen that way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leafwr (talk • contribs) 14:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Initial caps

Twice today I've reverted reversions of the Turkmen name for the Turkmen language from the Turkmen correct usage, which is not to capitalize language names, back to the original English usage. I pointed out the proper usage as demonstrated on the Turkmen version of the page, and someone else pointed out the Korean version in comparison. I wasn't talking about the way the name was written at the top of the Turkmen version, in the initial exposition on the language—which tells us nothing about Turkmen capitalization of language names, because it's the first word in each sentence where it's used, so its capitalized for that reason. I was talking about forms of the word (Turkmen has agglutination, so most uses of the word have suffixes at the end) that appear within sentences later in the body of the Turkmen page. These uses are not capitalized. —Largo Plazo 14:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstood. I meant that you should take a look at the articles on the Korean and Russian languages in the Turkmen Wikipedia. Have a look. And the problem is, even if it is not capitalized in the middle of the sentence, it still doesn't make sense: We are talking about after a colon, which in the English language means that the word after will be capitalized. That's all. I am still waiting for another argument before I revert again. Baristarim 15:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think replicating other people's mistakes, no matter how pervasive they are, is the appropriate strategy for maintaining Wikipedia. Also, you're incorrect about the rule about caps after colons. The letter after a colon is capitalized only if it would have been a cap in the absence of the colon and the part of the sentence that precedes it—for example, if what the colon introduces is a whole sentence. In that case, the letter after the colon is capitalized because it's sentence-initial, not because it comes after a colon.

The following text is one sentence:

Turkmen (Latin script: türkmen, Cyrillic: түркмен, ISO 639-1: tk, ISO 639-2: tuk) is the name of the national language of Turkmenistan.

The words "türkmen" and "түркмен" aren't sentences here, they're just values in the parenthetical list of name/value pairs. Since they aren't sentence-initial, they shouldn't be capitalized on that account, and since they're meant to demonstrate normal Turkmen orthography, and Turkmen doesn't capitalize language names, they don't call for capitalization on that account. —Largo Plazo 15:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? Because I saw many capitalizations in the Turkmen Wikipedia, that's why I gave the examples of the entries for the Korean and Russian languages of Turkmen Wikipedia. Baristarim 15:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The three instances of the word for "Turkmen" in the article on the Turkmen language in Turkmen Wikipedia that aren't at the beginning of a sentence are türkmen, türkmenleriň, and türkmeniň. Yes, I'm sure I see no capital letters in them.—Largo Plazo 20:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Okkkay... Listen, you still didn't get it. That article is particularly badly written, I meant in general and in other articles. I understand Turkmen, I took a look at other articles and most articles use caps for the first letter of countries and languages in them. This is the official website of the government of Turkmenistan [1] and I can see "Туркменистана" capitalized. I will revert soon, this is still not making sense at all. In many articles in the Turkmen Wikipedia language names are capped ni the middle of the sentences, especially after colons. Are you making serious research before making these claims?? Baristarim 07:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

If I'm still not getting it, it's because you haven't been communicating it clearly (such as by telling me to look at the Turkmen page again, which I did and found that it demonstrated, as I showed you, what I'd been saying, not what you'd been saying, so it isn't clear to me what you expected me to find there in support of your claim) and because you've been supporting your claim with irrelevancies like what was done on the Korean and Russian versions of the page (as though what one unknown Korean or Russian knows about Turkmen is authoritative). You haven't provided any information that is clear and also conclusive. Maybe you know the rule because you have learned the rules of formal Turkmen writing. But you didn't say that. Instead you gave the impression that you were inferring it from the usage found on some other Wikipedia pages.

The name of the country is a separate issue. To the best of my knowledge, all languages that have capitalization capitalize country names, whether or not they capitalize the names of nationalities or the names of language. In every Romance language, for example, country names are capitalized, while adjectives of nationality and names of languages are not. So telling me that "Туркменистана" is capitalized on the Turkmen government website is both stating the obvious and irrelevant to Turkmen treatment of names of languages.

If you tell me that language names in "many" articles in Turkmen Wikipedia are capitalized, that implies that in many, perhaps even most, they aren't. So that doesn't settle the question—though it does show that I was hasty in treating the Turkmen Wikipedia article on Turkmen as authoritative. If you tell me that those capitalizations occur "especially" after colons, it tells me nothing since you didn't mention whether those colons are introducing complete sentences, and because some of the writers may have the same misunderstanding as you did.

The bottom line is that even if Turkmen does capitalize language names, the evidence you'd presented before now has been either irrelevant or inconclusive. Since you understand Turkmen, did you study the rules of writing it? If so, and if you know factually from your studies or your reading that language names are capitalized, I would have believed you right off if you'd simply said so. That would have had much more value than citing everything you've noted about what's on this or that Wikipedia page written in language X by random unknown people whose usage among themselves is inconsistent! —Largo Plazo 12:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

ñ & ÿ / ň & ý

In a book about Turkic languages (not old and edited by Routledge, I have not the ISBN right here now, I'll provide it asap) I have found the spellings "ñ" and "ÿ" instead "ň" and "ý". Are they incorrect or obsolete? Or are "ň" and "ý" the "easier computer options"? Thanks. --81.149.117.81 (talk) 14:04, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the previous question from a cybercafe and I did not log on because I was in a hurry. The book is titled "Dictionary of the Turkic Languages", by Kurtuluş Öztopçu et al, ISBN 0-415-16047-2. It was first published in 1996 and reprinted in 1999 but the copy I have is from 2006 (I took it from Ilford Public Library and it says it was transferred to digital printing in 2006) which means it should/could have been corrected if the spelling in Turkmen were wrong or had become out of date. According to the book "Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Uzbek are given in both their official Cyrillic and Latin scripts" (page x) but not a single "ý" or "ň" can be seen in the many Turkmen entries of the book. In page ix it can be read "Responsibility for the content and editing of the individual languages was undertaken as follows: [...] Turkmen: Youssef Azemoun, Turkmen expert.". I would appreciate if anybody could tell me how official are the spellings ñ & ÿ versus ň & ý. Thanks--Piolinfax (talk) 12:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

(I live in Ashgabat, so I guess I'm the source): Although you ñ & ÿ from time to time, the official letters are ň & ý. It's also not uncommon to still see a $ in place of the correct letter Ş or something that looks a bit like the symbol for Japanese Yen instead of ý as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leafwr (talk • contribs) 14:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Merge

I believe this is the same language as South Azeri so I have proposed a merger. Izzedine (talk) 12:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

No. This not the same language as Turkmen. Confer any book on the Turkic languages and this will be confirmed. Both languages are identified separately in ISO 639-3 and South Azeri is actually part of the Azerbaijani macrolanguage, which does not include Turkmen. (Taivo (talk) 14:28, 29 September 2009 (UTC))

I am going to remove the request for merger tag here. It is completely unwarranted on the basis of reliable linguistics. (Taivo (talk) 14:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC))

Ah yes, my mistake, this is Turkmenistan Turkmen, which is different to the language of the Iraqi and Syrian Turkmen - which is South Azeri. Izzedine (talk) 08:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

They might be different, but how different? I think a section about the differences (and similarities) between South Azeri (Iraq Turks) and Turkumani (Turkmenistan Turks) language should be made.--Aa2-2004 (talk) 13:27, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Y

Is the sound represented by the letter y really ɯ? It sounds more like ɨ to me. — amateur (talk) 22:14, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Cases

-DAn for "instrumental" sounds a bit odd, so I've tagged it. This should probably be ablative. This is the typical Turkic thing and is what is in Routledge's The Turkic Languages. Also, calling "ýok" a verb is an unusual choice. Categorising its part-of-speech is hard, so it might just be better to call it a "word". - Francis Tyers · 13:53, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Population

The Swedish encyclopedia is really off our other figures here. Any idea what's going on? — kwami (talk) 02:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

(Someone on WP falsified the NE entry, that's all. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 24 August 2015 (UTC))

Truhkmen

When I saw this as the name of the "Russian dialect" of Turkmen (whatever that's supposed to mean - the same thing written in Cyrillic?), I clicked on the link to find out more - which simply brought me back to the start of the very same article. In other words, this is a completely pointless link - you can keep on going round in circles for ever, without learning anything new!188.230.248.85 (talk) 16:12, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

"Truhkmen " ..thos word has no meaning — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.114.173.151 (talk) 01:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

please -aý -äý

Please haýyş edýärin diýmek Beghan Mammedov (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

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comparative linguistics

Hello! Information with linguist Oleg Mudrak in the English Wikipedia was first introduced by me in August 2019 in the article "Azerbaijani language". The fact is that then I did not take into account the place of publication. The site says that this is a transcript of a lecture by Oleg Mudrak, read on April 16, 2009 at the Bilingua literary cafe club within the framework of the Polit.ru Public Lectures project. Please provide similar information published in a scientific source. If the data is valid, this should not be a problem. Why hasn't Oleg Mudrak made a scientific article with this information for more than 10 years, didn't publish it in a scientific publishing house? Or published it? .. In this case, it is necessary to find and add, but in this form it raises doubts. Look also WP:FRINGE. A well-known scientific fact is not difficult to find in an academic source... V.N.Ali (talk) 15:01, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Source provided for Turkmen speaker population is not accurate

The source you provided for the Turkmen speaker population is not accurate especially considering how Ethnic Turkmen only number 5 million people In Turkmenistan according to Ethnologue and the sources provided on the main article page for Turkmens. Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 17:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)