The Turkmen or Turkoman language (تورکمن ﺗﻴﻠی ,تورکمنچه, pronounced as [tʊəʳk’men dɪ’li:) is a member of the East Oghuz branch of the Turkic family of languages; its closest relatives being Anatolian Turkish and Azerbaijani, with which it shares a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility. Before 1929, Turkmen was written in an Arabic alphabet. In 1929–1938 a Latin alphabet replaced it, and then the Cyrillic alphabet was used from 1938 to 1991. In 1991, the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow. Writing system: Latin (Turkmen alphabet) Official in: Turkmenistan