Turkish is an official language in Turkey and Cyprus. There are circa 10 million speakers on the European side of Turkey and a further 55 million speakers on the Asian side of Turkey. It is mutually intelligible with the Azeri language of Azerbaijan.
Turkish was written with Arabic style Ottoman script until Ataturk’s reforms in the early 20th century when it was replaced with the Latin alphabet. The official dictionary of the Turkish language includes over 100 000 words.
Most medical, political and much financial terminology is loaned from the French and would be pronounced the French way e.g. kriz (crisis), resesyon (recession), enflasyon (inflation).
