Turkish

Turkish is a Turkic language spoken predominantly in Turkey. Turkish is the most widely spoken of all the Turkic languages, accounting for 40% of Turkic language speakers. All the Turkish languages including Turkman and Azerbaijani are closely related and can be reasonably understood by speakers of other Turkic languages.

Turkish evolved from Oghuz which came to Anatolia during the eleventh century, here it developed into Ottoman Turkish. As the language evolved it adopted loanwords form Persian and Arabic, using the Perso-Arabic script for its written form. In 1928 Turkish switched to a Latin alphabet and removed some of the Arabic and Persian loanwords.

There are around 88 million Turkish speakers globally with most of these living in Turkey. It is also an official language in Cyprus and a recognised minority language in various countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. These minority groups are often found in countries who once belonged to the Ottoman Empire, including Greece, Romania, Serbia, Iraq, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia.

In addition to this, over two million Turkish speakers are currently living in Germany and Turkish speaking communities can also be found in France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom there are currently 99,000 Turkish speakers, compromising 0.2% of the population. As the fourteenth most spoken language across England and Wales, Turkish plays an important role in communication with local minority populations. We are here to help with any Turkish translation and interpreting needs across the UK.