Turkmen 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, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and ...
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 only started to appear in writing at
the beginning of the 20th century,when it was written
with the Arabic script. Between 1928 and 1940 it was
written with the Latin alphabet, and from 1940 it was
written with the Cyrillic alphabet.Since Turkmenistan
declared independence in 91, Turkmen has been written
with a version of the Latin alphabet based on Turkish.