Language
Turkmen is the official language of Turkmenistan (per the 1992 Constitution), although Russian still is widely spoken in cities as a "language of inter-ethnic communication". Turkmen is spoken by 72% of the population, Russian 12%, Uzbek 9%, and other languages 7% (Kazakh (88,000), North Azerbaijani (33,000), Bashkir (2,607), Belarusian (5,289), Brahui, Dargwa (1,599), Dungan, Erzya (3,488), Georgian (1,047), Karakalpak (2,542), Armenian (3,200), Korean (3,493), Lak (1,590), Lezgian (10,400), Lithuanian (224), Northern Uzbek (317,000), Ossetic (1,887), Romanian (1,561), Russian (349,000), Tabasaran (177), Tajik (1,277), Tatar (40,434), Ukrainian (37,118), Western Persian (8,000)).
Read more about this topic: Subdivisions Of Turkmenistan
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)