Turkish Language

About Turkey TURKISH LANGUAGE Turkish is the native tongue of 90 percent of the population in Turkey. Turks had used numerous written tongues since 8th century but the most common alphabets used by the Turks are the Kök Turk, Uygur, Arabic and Latin alphabets.  After the declaration of republic and the completion of the national unification, especially between 1923-1928 years, the problem of the alphabet is discussed and debated. In order to carry the new Turkish Republic to the modern civilization level, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic had believed to use the Western Culture and Civilization and therefore with this aim Latin letters which are rearranged in a manner that they are convenient to the vocal structure of the Turkish language are accepted instead of the Arabic alphabet which was currently in use in 1928.  The Historic development of Turkish Language as a written tongue:  Ancient Turkish (VI – X Century) : The language used in Uygur tongue written documents with the Orhon and Yenisey Inscriptions.  Intermediate Turkish (XI – XV Century) : This language certifies the period between the first Islamic written document and completion of the formation of the new written Turkish dialects. (Anatolian Turkish – Azerbaijani Turkish – Turkoman Turkish)  New Turkish (XV – XX Century) : (Uzbek language – Kipchak Language)  In Anatolia, a written language called Ottoman language which was developed from Oğuz language was used during this period.  Modern Turkish (XX Century) : The modern Turkish includes the Turkish dialects used in various locations all around the world in XX. Century. In this century, Turkey Turkish language is used in Anatolia.  Turkish is located among the ending languages in the world tongue classification. The root of the words are not altered while the word structure and declination. The declinations and building of the words are executed by the affixes. The order of the words and affixes are as “root + building affix + declination affix” .  There are 29 letters in Turkish language in the Republic period Latin letters. ç,ğ,ı,ö,ş letters are peculiar only to Turkish alphabet.