Encyclopedia
Turkish is a
Turkic language spoken natively by the
Turkish people in
Turkey,
Cyprus,
Bulgaria,
Greece,
Republic of Macedonia and other countries of the former
Ottoman Empire, as well as by several million emigrants in the
European Union. The exact number of native speakers in Turkey is uncertain, primarily due to a lack of minority language data.
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and other
Oghuz languages such as
Azeri,
Turkmen, and
Qashqai. If these are counted together as "Turkish", the number of native speakers is 100 million, and the total number including second-language speakers is around 125 million.
Classification
Turkish is a member of the Turkish family of languages, which includes Gagauz and
Khorasani Turkish. The Turkish family is a subgroup of the
Oghuz languages, themselves a subgroup of the
Turkic languages, which some linguists believe to be a part of the Altaic language family.
Like
Finnish and
Hungarian, Turkish has
vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. The basic word order is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect.
Geographic distribution
Turkish is spoken in Turkey and by minorities in 35 other countries.
In particular, Turkish is used in countries that formerly belonged to the
Ottoman Empire, such as
Bulgaria,
Romania,
Serbia , the
Republic of Macedonia,
Syria,
Greece and
Israel . More than two million Turkish speaking people live in
Germany, and significant Turkish speaking communities in
Austria,
Belgium,
France, the
Netherlands,
Switzerland and the
United Kingdom.
Turkish is spoken by almost all of Turkey's residents, with
Kurdish making up most of the remainder . However, the vast majority of the linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Official status
Turkish is the official language of
Turkey, and is one of the official languages of
Cyprus. It also has official status in several municipalities of
Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the
Turkish Language Association , which was founded by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1932 under the name
Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti . The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the linguistic purism ideology and one of its primary acts was the replacement of loan words and grammatical constructs of
Arabic and
Persian origin in the language with their Turkish equivalents, which, together with the adoption of the new
Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language as it is in use today . TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August, 1983, when it was again tied to the government following the military coup of 1980.
Dialects
As a result of the original nationalist idea of establishing the
Istanbul dialect of Turkish as the standard, dialectology remains as a highly immature discipline in Turkey. The standard language of Turkish is essentially the Ottoman Turkish language as written in the
Latin alphabet and with an abundance of neologisms added. The preferred colloquial form is named
Istanbul Türkçesi as manifested in the works of prominent
pan-Turkists like Ziya Gökalp and
Ismail Gaspirali. Academically, Turkish dialects are often referred to as
agiz or
sive, leading to ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent. Turkish still lacks a comprehensive
atlas of dialects and assimilation into official Turkish is influential.
The main dialects of Turkish include:
- Rumelice includes peculiar dialects of Dinler and Adakale,
- Kibris ,
- Edirne ,
- Dogu has dialect continuum with Azerbaijani in some areas,
- Karadeniz is represented primarily by Trabzon dialect,
- Ege has extension to Antalya,
- Güneydogu ,
- Orta Anadolu ,
- Kastamonu ,
- Karamanlica is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
Sounds
One characteristic feature of Turkish is
vowel harmony, meaning that a word will have either front or back vowels, but not both. For example, in
visne "sour cherry"
i is closed unround front and
e is open unround front. Stress is usually on the last syllable, with the exception of some suffix combinations, and words like
masa ['masa]. Also, in the use of proper names, the stress is transferred to the syllable before the last , although there are exceptions to this .
Consonants
The phoneme usually referred to as "soft g", "g" in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
Vowels
| IPA chart for Turkish monophthongs |
|---|
|
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, i, i, o, ö, u, ü. There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound.
Turkish Vowels with Example Words| Vowel sound | Example |
| IPA | Description | IPA | Orthography | English translation |
|---|
| monophthongs |
|---|
| Close front unrounded vowel | | dil | 'tongue', 'language' |
| Close front rounded vowel | | günes | 'sun' |
| Close back unrounded vowel | | ilik | 'mild' |
| Close-mid front unrounded vowel | | yel | 'wind' |
| Open-mid front rounded vowel | | gör | 'to see' |
| Open front unrounded vowel | | dal | 'branch' |
| Close-mid back rounded vowel | | yol | 'way' |
| Close back rounded vowel | | uçak | 'airplane' |
Writing system
Turkish is written using the
Turkish alphabet, a modified version of the
Latin alphabet, which was introduced in 1928 by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as an important step in the
cultural reforms of the period, replacing the Ottoman Turkish alphabet previously in use. The work of preparing the the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications to account for sounds specific to Turkish language, was appointed to the
Dil Encümeni including Falih Rifki Atay, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, Rusen Esref Ünaydin, Ahmet Cevat Emre, Ragip Hulûsi Özdem, Fazil Ahmet Aykaç, Mehmet Emin Erisirgil and Ihsan Sungu. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by
Public Education Centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself in trips to the countryside teaching the new letters to the public.
The sounds of the individual letters exhibit few surprises for English speakers. Following
International Phonetic Alphabet conventions on
phonetic transcription,
angle brackets < > here are used to enclose written letters, and
brackets [ ] are used to enclose symbols that represent the sounds. Most writing-sound correspondences can be predicted by English speakers, with the following exceptions. The
is pronounced [], like in jail. The <ç> is pronounced [] like the in church. The represents [] and is pronounced like the represents [] and is pronounced like in sheet. The represents [], a sound which does not exist in most varieties of English. It is pronounced somewhat like the in baton or the in munificent but with the mouth more closed and raised in the center. The is pronounced like a soft, voiced version of the guttural Scottish or merely manifested by lengthening the precedent vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel --except for the two highly irregularly spelled verbs dögmek and ögmek, where is pronounced [v].
The effect of Kemal's introduction of an adapted Roman alphabet was a dramatic increase in literacy from Third World levels to nearly one hundred percent. It is critical to note that, for the first time, Turkish had an alphabet that was actually suited to the sounds of the language; the Arabic alphabet, which was hitherto in use, commonly shows only three different values for vowels but also lacked several vital consonants. The lack of discrimination among vowels is serviceable in Arabic but intolerable in Turkish, which features eight fundamental vowel sounds and a host of diphthongs based thereupon.
Grammar
Turkish has an abundance of suffixes, but no native prefixes . One word can have many suffixes. Suffixes can be used to create new words or to indicate the grammatical function of a word.
Turkish nouns can take endings indicating the person of a possessor.
They can take case-endings, as in Latin. "Vowel harmony" is the principle by which a native Turkish word generally incorporates either exclusively back vowels or exclusively front vowels . A notation such as -den means either -dan or -den, whichever promotes vowel harmony; a notation such as -iniz means either -iniz, -iniz, -unuz, or -ünüz, again with vowel harmony constituting the deciding factor.
Finally, they can take endings that give them a person and make them into sentences:
| Turkish | English |
|---|
| ev | house |
| evler | the houses |
| evin | your house |
| eviniz | your house ' |
| evim | my house |
| evimde | at my house |
| evinde | at your house |
| evinizde | at your house ' |
| evimizde | at our house |
| Evindeyim | I am at your house |
| Evinizdeyim | I am at your house ' |
| Evindeyiz | We are at your house |
| Evinizdeyiz | We are at your house ' |
| Evimizdeyiz | We are at our house |
| Turkish | English |
|---|
| üzüm | grape |
| üzümüm | my grape |
| üzümün | your grape |
| üzümümüz | our grape |
| üzümünüz | your grape", |
| üzümümüzü | of our grape |
|
Turkish adjectives as such are not declined .
Used attributively, they precede the nouns they modify.
Possession is expressed by means of constructions based on verbs meaning "to exist" and "to not exist". Thus, while "var" and "yok" represent "exists" and "not exists," "vardi" and "yoktu" are the preterite of these, while "olacak" and "olmayacak" are the future. These lead to the most bizarre-looking sentential structures: e.g., in order to say, "My cat had no shoes," we form:
kedi + -m + -in ayak + kab + -lar + -i yok + -tu
which literally translates as, "cat-mine-of foot-cover-plural-his non-existent-was."
Turkish verbs exhibit person.
They can be made negative or impotential; they can also be made potential.
Finally, Turkish verbs exhibit various distinctions of tense, mood, and aspect: a verb can be progressive, necessitative, aorist, future, inferential, present, past, conditional, imperative, or optative.
gel- " come",
gelme- "not come",
geleme- "not be able to come",
gelebil- " be able to come",
Gelememis "She [or he] was apparently unable to come."
Gelememisti "She had not been able to come."
Gelememistiniz "You had not been able to come."
Gelememis miydiniz? "Have you not been able to come?"
All Turkish verbs are conjugated the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i- , which can be used in compound forms:
Gelememisti = Gelememis idi = Gelememis + i- + -di
Word order in Turkish is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Japanese and Latin, but not English.
This can be seen in the following sentence from a newspaper . The sentence uses all noun cases except the genitive:
Türkiye'de modayi gazete sayfalarina tasiyan,
gazetemiz yazarlarindan N. S. yasamini yitirdi:
Türkiye'de "in Turkey"
modayi"fashion"
gazete"newspaper"
sayfalarina "to its pages"
tasiyan, "carrying"
gazetemiz "our newspaper" gazete "newspaper"
yazarlarindan "from its writers"
N. S. [person's name]
yasamini "her life"
yitirdi. "lost"
"One of the writers of our newspaper, N. S.,
who brought fashion to newspaper pages in Turkey, lost her life."
Vocabulary
Turkish extensively utilizes its agglutinative nature to form new words from former nouns and verbal roots. The majority of the Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example with a substantive root:
göz "eye",
gözlük "eyeglasses"
gözlükçü "someone who sells eyeglasses"
gözlükçülük "the business of selling eyeglasses"
Another example starting from a verbal root:
yat- "to lie down"
yatir- "to lay down [that is, to cause to lie down]"
yatirim "instance of laying down: deposit, investment"
yatirimci "depositor, investor"
Language reform
After the adoption of Islam by the Turks as their religion, Turkish language acquired a rather large collection of loan words from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, in particular Ottoman Divan poetry was heavily influenced by Persian forms, including the adoption of Persian poetic meters and ultimately the bringing of Persian words into the language in great numbers. During the course of over six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire, the literary and official language of the empire was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic, which differed considerably from everyday spoken Turkish of the time, and is now given the name Ottoman Turkish.
After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish Language Association was established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923 with the aim of conducting research on Turkish language. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to replace loan words of Arabic and Persian origin in the language with Turkish equivalents. The language reform was a part of the ongoing cultural reforms of the time and also included the abolishment of Arabic script in lieu of the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet which greatly helped increasing the literacy rate of the population. By banning the usage of replaced loan words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred Arabic words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by TDK were new, TDK also suggested using old Turkish words which had not been used in the language for centuries.
Older and younger people in Turkey tend to express themselves with a different vocabulary due to this sudden change in the language. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the old Arabic origin words, the younger generations favor using new expressions. Some new words are not used as often as their old counterparts or have failed to convey the intrinsic meanings of their old equivalents. There is also a political significance to the old versus new debate in the Turkish language. Sectors of the population that are more religious also tend to use older words in the press or daily language. Therefore, the use of the Turkish language is also indicative of adoption/resistance to Atatürk's reforms which took place more than 70 years ago. The last few decades saw the continuing work of the Turkish Language Association to coin new Turkish words to account for new concepts / technologies as they enter the language as loan words , but the association is occasionally criticized for coining words that obviously seem and sound as "invented".
However, many of the words derived by TDK, live together with their old counterparts. The different words one originated from Old Turkic or derived by TDK; one originated from Arabic or Persian; and sometimes one originated from one of the European languages, especially French- having exactly the same literal meaning are used to express slightly different meanings, especially when speaking about abstract subjects. This is quite like the usage of Germanic words and the words originated from Romance languages in English.
Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, directions , some of the months and many nouns and adjectives. Many new words have also been derived from verbs. Some examples of new and their old counterparts are:
| Old word | New Turkish word | English meaning | Remarks |
|---|
|
| müselles | üçgen | triangle | derived from the noun üç, which means "three" |
| tayyare | uçak | airplane | derived from the verb uçmak, which means "to fly" |
| nispet | oran | ratio | the old word is still used in the language today together with the new one |
| simal | kuzey | north | derived from the Old Turkic noun kuz, which means cold and dark place |
| Tesrini-evvel | Ekim | October | the noun ekim means the action of planting, referring to the planting of cereal seeds in autumn, which is widespread in Turkey |
Please see List of replaced loan words in Turkish for an extensive list of replaced old words and current loan words
The language in daily life
Turkish has many formulaic expressions for various social situations. Several of them feature Arabic verbal nouns together with the Turkish verb et- .
| | literal translation | meaning |
|---|
| Merhaba | Welcome | Hello |
| Alo | Hello | |
| Efendim | My lord | 1. Hello ; 2. Sir/Madam ; 3. Excuse me, could you say that again? |
| Günaydin | [The] day [is] bright | Good morning |
| Iyi günler | Good days | Good day |
| Iyi aksamlar | Good evenings | Good evening |
| Iyi geceler | Good nights | Good night |
| Evet | Yes | |
| Hayir | No | |
| Belki | Maybe | |
| Hos geldiniz | You came well / pleasantly | Welcome |
| Hos bulduk | We found [it] well | We are glad to be here |
| Nasilsin? | How are you ? | How are you? |
| Nasilsiniz? | How are you ? | How are you? |
| Iyiyim; siz nasilsiniz? | I'm fine; how are you? | |
| Ben de iyiyim | I too am fine | I am fine too |
| Affedersiniz | You make [a] forgiving | Excuse me |
| Lütfen | Of favour | Please |
| Tesekkür ederim; Sagolun | I make [a] thanking; Be alive | Thank you |
| Bir sey degil | It is nothing | You're welcome |
| Rica ederim | I make [a] request | Don't mention it; You're welcome; Don't say such bad things of yourself; Don't say such good things of me |
| Estagfurullah | I seek God's forgiveness | |
| Geçmis olsun | May [it] be passed | Get well soon |
| Basiniz sag olsun | May your head be healthy | My Condolences |
| Elinize saglik | Health to your hand | |
| Afiyet olsun | May [it] be healthy | bon appétit |
| Kolay gelsin | May [it] come easy | |
| Güle güle kullanin | Use [it] smiling | |
| Sihhatler olsun | May [it] be healthy | |
| Hosçakal | Stay nice | "So long" or "Cheerio" |
| Güle güle | [Go] smiling | Good bye |
| Allah'a ismarladik | We commended [you] to God | Good bye [said to the person staying behind] or Adieu in French |
A famous quotation and motto of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk:
- Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh "Peace at home, peace in the world."
In the current language, this is
- Yurtta baris, dünyada baris.
Notes
References
See also
...
- Swadesh list of Turkish words
- List of replaced loan words in Turkish
- List of English words of Turkic origin
External links
