Language
Turkmen 72%, Russian 12%, Uzbek 9%, other 7%. Nearly 22% of the non-Russian population indicated in the 1995 census that they spoke Russian fluently. According to Ethnologue, up to 50% claim "good knowledge" of Russian. Other languages includes Balochi, which was spoken by 36,600 people in 1995, as well as Persian and Pashto.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Turkmenistan
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Though language forms the preacher,
‘Tis “good works” make the man.”
—Eliza Cook (1818–1889)
“You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)