Turkmen language

Turkmen belongs, with Azerbaijani, Turkish and Gagauz, to the Oghuz branch of Turkic, and Azerbaijanis understand it easily. It is spoken by about 4.7 million people in Turkmenistan and more than 1.5 million more in north-eastern Iran and north-western Afghanistan.

For centuries it was written in Arabic script, and Magtymguly's poetry forms the foundation of written Turkmen literature. It switched to Latin in 1928 and to Cyrillic in 1940.

After independence, in 1993, Turkmenistan adopted a new Latin-based alphabet, and today the state language is written only in Latin script.