The Turkish language is spoken by about 90 million people in the world. It is spread over a large geographical area in Europe and Asia and spoken in Turkey as well as in 35 more countries.
Therefore, there are a great number of dialects of Turkish used. However, Istanbul Turkish is considered the official standard Turkish. The oldest Turkish written records are 1300 years old. The Ottoman script was long used as the administrative and governmental script until the 20th century, when it was replaced by the Latin alphabet.
