Turkmen is a highly agglutinative language; that is, much of the grammar is expressed by means of suffixes added to nouns and verbs.
Clauses which begin with "who" or "because" in English are generally expressed by means of participial phrases in Turkmen.
Turkmen also employs vowel harmony, a process that is common in fellow Turkic languages.
Despite the fact that ⟨ä⟩ is always long, it is optionally marked with one of these diacritics above, so the letter ⟨ä⟩ in some loanwords like şäher and ähli is pronounced short.
The long ē only exists in the indefinite future suffix -ēr (the front variant never appears as **-är) and its compensatory lengthening unreflected in orthography (see § Phonological processes), while the short ä only exists in Persian loans and historical fusions (alyp gitmek → äkitmek).
Long vowels cause the final voiceless consonant to be voiced; compare ōt /oːd/ with dialectal Turkish od (both mean "fire").
Prefixes and suffixes reflect this harmony, taking different forms depending on the word to which they are attached.
Words of foreign origin, mainly Russian, Persian or Arabic, do not follow vowel harmony.
[1] Sounds /b, ɡ/ are realized as fricatives [v, ɣ] when in intervocalic positions and when after obstruents or taps.
[1] These consonant combinations are pronounced differently and assimilated in spoken Turkmen:[4] The phonemes /l/ and /ɾ/ are deleted when succeeded by indefinite future suffix -er (see § Verbs) and preceded by an identical vowel.
Turkmen has six cases: nominative, (specifically definite) accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental/ablative and locative.
Also notice that dative of vowel-ending nouns has its last letter can being removed and just simply -a or -ä.
After the second-person singular possessive suffix, the genitive ending -iň simply deletes (*öýüňiň → öýüň).
Unlike Romance languages, adjectives does not agree with number or case of the following noun.
Colloquially, genitive forms of singular pronouns were further fused to meň, seň, and oň, respectively.
These demonstratives is also irregularly inflected like personal pronouns, with the oblique forms of bu, şu, ol, şol, and hol are mun-, şun-, on-, şon-, hon-; respectively.
Main interrogative pronouns include: Other interrogative pronouns include näçe "how many", näçinji "which (of an ordinal series)", nädejerede "to what amount", nädip "how (manner)", nähili, neneň, and natüýsli "what kind of".
With the exceptions of haýsy, naçan, and nähili, all interrogative pronouns are declinable like nouns.
Verbs are conjugated for numbers (singular and plural), persons (first, second and third), tenses (present, past, and future), and moods (indicative, conditional, obligational, intentional, imperative).
Definite future, intentional, and obligational are does not inflect for person and have the same forms, thus an explicit subject pronoun is needed.
Men1sgşuthiskitabybook-ACCokamalyread-OBLIGdäl.NEGMen şu kitaby okamaly däl.1sg this book-ACC read-OBLIG NEG"I do not have to read this book."
däl construction below); literally *'He is not hungering'Speakers of Eastern dialects of Turkmen, influenced by Uzbek, are less likely to utilise the -ok suffix.
Evidentiality of a reported event is determined by four markers, suffixed to the finite verb, roughly (the last syllable of -dirminäm lacks vowel harmony): Some independent particles may be said to convey evidentiality: one such word is the particle eken.
)-EVDid I eat something?BenBeniý-en-mişeat-PARTsen-iňbe-RUMköke-ler-iň-i.you-GEN cookie-PL-2SG.POSS-ACCBen iý-en-miş sen-iň köke-ler-iň-i.Ben eat-PART be-RUM you-GEN cookie-PL-2SG.POSS-ACCIt is rumoured that Ben ate your cookies.
"Öýdehouse-LOCAmandanAman-INSTbaşgaexceptadampersonýok.NEGÖýde Amandan başga adam ýok.house-LOC Aman-INST except person NEG"There is no one but Aman in the house."