The Turkish spoken in the Ottoman Empire (called Ottoman Turkish ) used a modified version of the Arabic alphabet . In 1928 however, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , as a part of his efforts to modernize Turkey, illegalized the Arabic alphabet, replacing it with a modified version of the Latin alphabet .

Classification Turkish is a member of the Turkish family of languages, which includes Balkan Gagauz Turkish , Gagauz , and Khorosani Turkish in addition to Turkish. The Turkish family is a subgroup of the Southern Turkic languages , which is a member of the Altaic language family .

g (yumusak ge, "soft G") has no independent pronunciation in Turkish, but rather indicates a lengthening of the preceding vowel. Example: Elmadag. The effect can be compared to the vowel-lengthening effect of the 'g' in 'Natalie Imbruglia'

Grammar Turkish, like Finnish and Hungarian , is an agglutinative language . It is known for having an abundance of suffixes and very few prefixes. Word order in Turkish is Subject Object Verb similar to Japanese and Latin , but unlike English .

Writing system Until 1928 , Turkish was written using a modified version of the Arabic alphabet . In 1928, Kemal Atatürk , as a part of his efforts to modernize Turkey, illegalized the Arabic alphabet, replacing it with a modified version of the Latin alphabet .