Turkmen, the official language of Turkmenistan, belongs to the Turkic language family (*).

Originally written in Arabic characters, Turkmen was switched to the Latin alphabet in 1928 as part of the Soviet Union's language reforms. In 1940, it switched to the Cyrillic alphabet (**) and, following Turkmenistan's independence in 1991, returned to the Latin alphabet. 

A unique feature of the Turkmen language is its vowel harmony, meaning that the vowels in a word are similar in pronunciation. Turkmen also has a rich vocabulary influenced by Persian, Arabic and Russian, which sets it apart from Turkic languages.

Note:

(*) Turkic language: A major language group spoken in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Siberia. It includes languages such as Turkish, Uzbek and Kazakh.

(**) The Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system used for many Slavic languages, but also for other languages such as Armenian, Kazakh and Serbian, among others. It was developed in the 9th century by the brothers Cyril and Methodius.