Turkish

1. 1
   adjective

   Relating to Turkey, originating from there, or belonging to the Turkish people or language.

   The festival showcased Turkish music and dance from across the country.

   Many Turkish students study abroad each year.

2. 2
   proper noun

   The official language of Turkey and, alongside Greek, of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus.

   The novel was translated from Turkish into twelve languages.

   Street signs across the city are printed in Turkish.

   Note

   A plain English coinage, Turk plus -ish, and a doublet of turquoise: the two words share one origin but reached English by different roads. When precision matters, specialists call the language of Turkey Anatolian Turkish. The longer name keeps it apart from the broader 'Turkic' use of the same word.

3. 3
   adjective

   Relating to the broader group of Turkic peoples and languages, of which the language of Turkey is one member.

   Comparative scholars traced shared roots across the Turkish languages of Central Asia.

   Nomadic herders spoke a Turkish tongue related to Uzbek and Kazakh.

   SimilarTurkic

   Note

   The adjective of comparative philology is most at home before languages in the plural: "Mongolian and some Turkish languages", "Eastern Turkish languages and dialects". Gerard Clauson's Turkish and Mongolian Studies (1962) uses it this way. A plural noun or a branch label such as Eastern or Old is the clue. The everyday adjective points to Turkey and its people, and Turkic removes the doubt.

4. 4
   proper noun

   The Turkic language family taken as a whole, used as an alternative name for that grouping.

   Linguists once grouped Yakut and Chuvash under Turkish.

   At its broadest, Turkish stretches from Anatolia to eastern Siberia.

   SimilarTurkic

   Note

   Scholars of Central Asia often put a qualifier in front: Chaghatay Turkish, Uyghur Turkish, Uzbek Turkish. That qualifier signals that the language of Turkey is not meant. In Elif Batuman's The Possessed, an uncle insists that "Uzbek Turkish is very close to our Turkish language", using both senses in one breath. Turkic says the same thing without the ambiguity.

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