Turkmen

Which dialect became written Turkmen

Written Turkmen is based on the Teke, or Tekke, dialect. The others include Ýomud, Gökleň, Salyr, Saryk, Ärsary and Çowdur. Turkmen in Iran mostly speak Yomud and those in Afghanistan speak the Ersary variety. In Afghanistan the Teke dialect is sometimes called Chagatai, though like every Turkmen dialect it shows only a little influence from classical Chagatai.

How often Turkmen has changed alphabet

The written language took shape in the 13th and 14th centuries in Arabic script. Printing came late: the first Turkmen primer appeared in 1913 and the first newspaper in 1914. Soviet reformers adapted the Arabic alphabet in 1922 and again in 1925, then the Turkmen SSR approved a Latin alphabet on 3 January 1928. Cyrillic replaced it in state institutions from 1 July 1940. On 12 April 1993 the parliament of independent Turkmenistan, the Mejlis, approved a decree on a new Latin alphabet.

Turkmen in Afghanistan and Iran kept the Arabic script throughout.

What Turkmen sounds like beside Turkish

Where the other Oghuz languages have s and z, Turkmen usually pronounces the dental fricatives [θ] and [ð], and it has no separate /s/ and /z/ sounds at all; Bashkir is the only other Turkic language with something similar. Vowel length distinguishes words. The grammar is agglutinative with vowel harmony and no grammatical gender, so obalardan, 'from the villages', is oba 'village', -lar for the plural and -dan for 'from'.

What status Turkmen holds in Afghanistan

Turkmen has no national status in Afghanistan. The 2004 constitution makes it official in the areas where most people speak it, a status the government in power since 2021 says it has kept. An estimate for 2020 put Turkmen speakers at 3% of Afghanistan's population.