member of the Turkic language family, which is a subfamily of the Altaic languages. Turkmen is spoken in Turkmenistan, in parts of neighbouring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and, by fewer people, in Iran and Afghanistan.

Turkmen is a member of the southwestern, or Oğuz, branch of the Turkic languages. Its literary tradition dates back to the 14th century AD. Later, Turkmen writers began to use the Chagatai literary language of the southeastern (Chagatai) Turkic language branch. In the 18th and 19th centuries an exclusively Turkmen literary language began to emerge. A new development began after the Russian Revolution of 1917 with the introduction of a literary language based on spoken Turkmen. The language was written with the Arabic alphabet before 1927, when the Latin alphabet (as modified for the Turkish language) was adopted. In the Soviet Union the Latin alphabet was replaced by a Cyrillic alphabet in 1940. See also Turkic languages.