ABSTRACT
Turkish is the most prominent member of the Turkic languages that constitute an important branch of the very large Altaic family. Within Turkic it is one of the south-western (or Oguz) group that also includes Azerbaijani, Gagauz and Turkmen (the so-called s-group). Somewhat more distantly related are Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Kazakh. Turkish is spoken by at least 60 million people in Turkey, by perhaps 200,000 in Cyprus, where it is the co-official language with Greek, and by an estimated 1 million in large Turkish minority groups in Bulgaria, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. Smaller Turkish-speaking communities exist in towns and cities all over the world.
