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The language of Turkey is Turkish, although as we will see, it is not the only language spoken in this country.
In any case, if you want to manage minimally in the local language during your trip, it will be useful to read this page where we tell you the keys of this language and teach you how to speak it. some practical terms and phrases to use with local citizens who do not speak your language.
As we said in the page dedicated to Societypage, Turkish is the language of Turkey and, at the same time, a true sign of identity for the state.
It is the only one recognized as official for all the inhabitants of the country, although the Treaty of Lausanne (ratified by Turkey in 1923, which established the current borders of the country) also mentions the languages of the three recognized minorities: Greek, Armenian and Hebrew.
Turkish is so important for Turkey’s identity that since the 1920s, under the impulse of Mustafa Kemala Atatürk, it was conceived as an instrument to create a Turkish homeland. instrument to create the budding Turkish homeland the budding Turkish homeland, which later crystallized into the Turkish Republic.
In fact, it was in this period that Modern Turkish adopted its current alphabet. current alphabet and gave it the definitive form it is known today.
For this purpose, the Turkish Language Academy (Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK) and extensive research was carried out to discard words considered foreign, mainly from Arabic and Persian, and replace them with words of Turkish origin.
Turkish is a language belonging to the Turkic language family. family of Turkic languagesThe languages of this subgroup are those of the southwestern subgroup: those located in the territories of Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, Central Asia and Siberia.
There are languages very closely related to modern Turkish, especially the Ottoman Turkishwhich was the official language of the Ottoman Empire (with numerous borrowings from Arabic and Persian) and can be considered, roughlythe language before Atatürk’s reform.
In addition, there are other languages with similar traits due to their common origins, such as Turkmen Turkmen (language of Turkmenistan) or Azerbaijani (language of Azerbaijan), which allows speakers of both languages to reach a certain degree of understanding when speaking to each other.
Finally, it should be said that Turkish is not only the language of Turkey, but also in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Y debido a la gran emigración de turcos en el pasado, hay importantes comunidades de turcoparlantes en other countries in the worldespecially in Germany, where it is estimated that there are almost 4 million people who speak this language due to the massive emigration decades ago, although not all of them have a maximum level of fluency due to the assimilation and integration of these people in their host societies.
If we add speakers from other territories of the Ottoman Empire, such as Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania or Cyprus, there are an estimated 90 million Turkish speakers in the world. 90 million Turkic speakers in the world, making it the 16th mostThis makes it the 16th most widely spoken language on the planet, according to linguists’ estimates.
Whether you speak Turkish or not, it is enough to observe and listen a little to notice some interesting features of the Turkish language.
The first and most obvious is its alphabet, which is basically the Latin alphabet, although with some small variations.hence it is known as the Turkish alphabet.
This alphabet replaced the Arabic alphabet in 1928, at the height of Atatürk’s linguistic revolution.
It has 29 letters, with 21 consonants and 8 vowels.
Las principales diferencias en cuanto a letras en comparación con la mayoría de lenguas de alfabeto latino son:
As a curiosity of Turkish, it can also be said that it is an agglutinative language. agglutinative languagethat is to say, it is basically formed by means of affixes (normally suffixes) added to the root of the word.
This makes it possible to express numerous ideas with few words.
In addition, in Turkish no grammatical gender.
También resulta llamativo la estructura de sus oraciones, con el verb almost always at the end.
Without pretending to be a crash course in Turkish, here are some words and phrases that you could use during your trip to this country.
You could use them for small purchases or to answer simple questions that require a simple and quick response.
It will also help you to understand, even vaguely, the meaning of the sentence of someone who is questioning you.
Rental: kira
Although Turkish is the only language in Turkey considered official at all levels, other languages are also present in the country. other languages are also present in this country, with greater or lesser protectionand with a very varied number of speakers.
Turkey’s second language in quantitative terms is Kurdish, to be more specific, Kurmanyi. kurmanyiwhich is the variant spoken by this ethnic group in the southeast of the country. southeast of the country (also known as Northern Kurdish, to differentiate it from other Kurdish variants spoken further south in other countries).
For the Kurds, this language also has a strong identitarian character and its promotion and teaching at school or in the media has always been an important claim of the PKK and other nationalist groups.
As mentioned above, the only three languages other than Turkish that have a certain degree of official recognition are Armenian, Greek and Hebrew, due to their explicit mention in the Treaty of Lausanne. explicit mention in the Treaty of Lausanne..
Pero su número de hablantes es muy reducido, acorde con la población de dichas minorías en el país, reduciéndose a several tens of thousands of people.
Of the three languages mentioned in the Treaty of Lausanne, the most numerous and perhaps the most interesting is the third: the language of the Jews.
But in reality, it is fairer to speak of Jewish languages, since both Ashkenazic and Judeo-Spanish are spoken in Turkey, different from Hebrew, which is the language ‘resurrected’ by the Zionist movement for the State of Israel, based on the biblical language, which according to Jewish tradition, was the language chosen by Yahweh to transmit his message to mankind.
The Ashkenazicspoken by a minority of several thousand people, it is also called Yiddish and combines terms from various German dialects along with some of Slavic and Hebrew origin.
On the other hand, the significant immigration of Spanish Sephardim since 1492 has meant that their language, Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, has been Judeo-Spanish or LadinoThe Turkish language is also widely spread among Turkish Jews, especially in Istanbul, where newspapers and other publications are published in this language.
The most symbolic example of all is The Amaneserwith a monthly circulation and an approximate readership of 2,000.
As indicated on the Society pagepage, other ethnic groups coexist in Turkey, beyond the aforementioned Kurds, Armenians, Greeks and Jews.
And each of them has its own language of communication.
Because of their uniqueness, the following can be mentioned:
For tourism purposes, you will no doubt be interested to know what other international languages are spoken in Turkey.
The most universal of all is EnglishBut unfortunately, the citizens of this country do not stand out for their proficiency: if we look at the 2023 PISA report, Turkey ranks 66th in the world, in the “low level” classification.low level“.
Although this report only evaluates the knowledge of pre-university students, it serves as a sample of the difficulties you will have in this country to speak English.
Of course, in the tourism field there is a greater knowledge, for example in hotel reception, but other professionals you will have to deal with (cab drivers, waiters, etc.) are not usually fluent in English, although there is a tendency to improve.
You will find less knowledge and diffusion in other western languages, such as French or Spanish.
German is not a common language in Turkey either, but you may find some surprising exceptions if you come across a returned emigrant from this European country or from Austria, where thousands of Turks come every year in search of work.
And given the traveling nature of these citizens, it is possible that a lot of tourist information is also translated into this language.
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