Turkmen is natively spoken by about 4.6 million people, primarily in Turkmenistan, where it is the official language, and among Turkmen communities in Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia. It is integral to Turkmen cultural identity, known for its nomadic heritage, Turkmen carpets, and traditional music like the dutar. Written in the Latin alphabet (since 1992, previously Cyrillic), Turkmen grammar features a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, vowel harmony, and extensive use of suffixes to indicate tense, aspect, and mood.