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Turkmenistan
The Spoken Language
Turkmen belongs to the family of Turkic languages spoken in
Eastern Europe (Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash), the Caucasus (Azeri,
Kumik), Siberia (Yakut, Tuva, Khakas), China (Uygur, Kazak), Central
Asia (Kazak, Kyrgyz, Uzbek), and the Near East (Turkish, Azeri).
Its closest relatives are the languages of the Turks in northeastern
Iran and the Khorazm Province of south central Uzbekistan (Khorasani),
Azerbaijan (Azeri), and Turkey (Turkish), all of which belong
to the Oghuz group of this language family.
In 1989 some 2,537,000 speakers of Turkmen lived in Turkmenistan,
with 121,578 in Uzbekistan (the vast majority in the Khorazm region
on Turkmenistan's north central border), 39,739 in the Russian
Federation (including 12,000 in the Stavropol' region along Russia's
southwestern border), 20,487 in Tajikistan, and 3,846 in Kazakstan.
A high degree of language loyalty was reflected in the fact that
some 99.4 percent of Turkmen in the republic claimed Turkmen as
their native language in the 1989 census. At the same time, 28
percent claimed Russian as their second language--a figure that
remained constant between the 1979 and 1989 censuses. More than
half of the second category were part of the urban population.
Only 3 percent of Russians in the republic spoke Turkmen.
The total number of Turkmen speakers in Europe and Asia has
been estimated at between 4 and 4.8 million. These figures include
the 2,517,000 Turkmen in the republic, 185,000 Turkmen in other
Central Asian states and Russia, an estimated 700,000 Turkmen
in Afghanistan, and 850,000 Turkmen in Iran who speak a closely
related but distinct language called Khorasanli.
Data as of March 1996
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