Turkish Language Association
Encyclopedia
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, founded on July 12, 1932 and headquartered in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. The association acts as the official authority on the language (without any enforcement power), contributes to linguistic research on Turkish and other Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
, and is charged with publishing the official dictionary of the language, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük.
History
The association was established on July 12, 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti (Society for Research on the Turkish Language) by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal AtatürkMustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....
, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, by Samih Rıfat, Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın, Celâl Sahir Erozan and Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu was a Turkish novelist, journalist, diplomat, and senator.-Early life:...
, all prominent names in the literature of the period and members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
Grand National Assembly of Turkey
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey , usually referred to simply as the Meclis , is the unicameral Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Constitution. It was founded in Ankara on 23 April 1920 in the midst of the Turkish War of Independence...
. The head specialist and Secretary General of the association was the Turkish Armenian
Armenians in Turkey
Armenians in Turkey have an estimated population of 40,000 to 70,000 . Most are concentrated around Istanbul. The Armenians support their own newspapers and schools...
linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
Agop Dilaçar
Agop Dilaçar
Agop Martayan Dilaçar was an Armenian-Turkish linguist who specialized in Turkic languages and the first Secretary General and head specialist of the Turkish Language Association.- Biography :...
starting from 1934, who continued to work in the association until his death in 1979.
Functions
The association heads the academic efforts for linguistic research on the Turkish language and its sister Turkic languagesTurkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
. Another primary mission of the association is to maintain and publish Türkçe Sözlük, the official Turkish dictionary, and Yazım Kılavuzu, the Turkish writing guide, in addition to many other specialized dictionaries, linguistics books and several periodicals.
The association strives to protect the integrity of the Turkish language and was a key institution in the struggle of the Republic of Turkey to re-position itself as a secular nation-state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. During the 1930s and 1940s, it has led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s whose immense use in the Turkish language during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Republic had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Turkish of the time, which is now called Ottoman Turkish
Ottoman Turkish language
The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
.
Recently however, the attention of the association has been turned towards the persistent infiltration of Turkish, like many other languages, with English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
words, as a result of the globalization process. Since the 1980s, TDK constantly campaigns for the use of the Turkish equivalents of these new English loanwords. It also has the task of linguistically deriving such words from existing Turkish roots if no such equivalents exist, and actively promoting the adoption of these new coinages instead of their English equivalents in the daily lives of the Turkish people.
There have been criticisms of the association domestically—mostly for some of the new coinages which sound overly artificial—and internationally such as the linguist H.C. Hony, writing in 1947, describing the organisation as "composed almost entirely of politicians" and its proceedings full of "arrant nonsense" and "absurdities". Hony described the three aims underlying the workings of the association as "the desire to make a complete cut with the past", "the desire to be considered a member of the European society of nations" and "a narrow and rabid nationalism".
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, for example). On the other hand, there is a bill that is in consideration in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
Grand National Assembly of Turkey
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey , usually referred to simply as the Meclis , is the unicameral Turkish legislature. It is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Constitution. It was founded in Ankara on 23 April 1920 in the midst of the Turkish War of Independence...
at the moment that would give TDK and the Ministries of Education and Culture the tools to enforce legally the labelling of Turkish equivalents of these words next to their foreign counterparts, particularly in the news media, advertising, and commercial communications.
Publications
The association, in addition to maintaining Türkçe Sözlük and Yazım Kılavuzu has published more than 850 linguistics related books, mainly consisting of studies on Turkic languagesTurkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
, specialized dictionaries, philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
books, and works of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
TDK also publishes Türk Dili, a journal on Turkish literature, since 1951, Belleten, the annual journal on Turkic languages, since 1953, and Türk Dünyası, another periodical published twice a year on Turkish language and literature since 1996.
Vocabulary
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 entries, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
.
See also
- SeslisozlukSeslisozlukSeslisozluk is a multilanguage online dictionary, primarily English to Turkish and Turkish to English. As of February 2009, it has a rank of 6 among all online dictionaries worldwide. Ottoman Turkish, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek translations are also provided...
- Agop DilaçarAgop DilaçarAgop Martayan Dilaçar was an Armenian-Turkish linguist who specialized in Turkic languages and the first Secretary General and head specialist of the Turkish Language Association.- Biography :...
, the first secretary general and head specialist of the TDK
External links
- Türk Dil Kurumu, the official site of the association
- Kitaplar, the list of published books by TDK
- Süreli Yayınlar, the list of periodicals published by TDK