|
 Turkish at Texas Tech University
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/classic_modern/undrgrad/turkish/turkish.htm
TURKISH
LANGUAGE
http://www.worldturkey.com/lang/eng/language.php
The Turkish language
is spread over a large geographical area in Europe and Asia; recent
studies show that this language goes back 5500 years, and perhaps even
8500. At the same time, it is one of the most widely spoken tongues in
the world - the sixth most widely spoken , to be precise. It is spoken
in the Azeri, the Türkmen, the Tartar, the Uzbek, the Baskurti, the
Nogay, the Kyrgyz, the Kazakh, the Yakuti, the Cuvas and other dialects.
Turkish belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of
languages, and thus is closely related to Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus,
Korean, and perhaps Japanese. Some scholars have maintained that these
resemblances are not fundamental, but rather the result of borrowings,
however comparative Altaistic studies in recent years demonstrate that
the languages we have listed all go back to a common Ur-Altaic.
Turkish is a very
ancient language, with a flawless phonetic, morphological and syntactic
structure, and at the same time possesses a wealth of vocabulary. The
fundamental features which distinguish the Ural-Altaic languages from
the Indo-European are as follows:
-
Vowel harmony, a
feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues.
-
The absence of
gender.
-
Agglutination
-
Adjectives precede
nouns.
-
Verbs come at the
end of the sentence. The name of the script of the language spoken
in Turkey proper, the dialect falls into the southwestern dialects
of the Western Turkish language family and also into the dialects of
the Oguz Türkmen language group. When the Turkish spoken in Turkey
is considered in a historical context, it can be classified
according to three separate periods because of the inherent
characteristics of each of the periods:
Old Anatolian
Turkish (old Ottoman - between the 13th and the 15th centuries)
Written Turkish
The oldest written
records are found upon stone monuments in Central Asia, in the Orhon,
Yenisey and Talas regions within the boundaries of present-day Mongolia.
These were erected to Bilge Kaghan (735), Kültigin (732), and the vizier
Tonyukuk (724-726). Apart from these, there are some one hundred
inscriptions of various sizes mentioned by the Swedish army officer
Johan von Strahlenberg. The first to read them and publish his results
was the Danish Turcologist Wilhelm Thomsen, while the Russian
Turcologist (of Prussian extraction) Wilhelm Radloff contributed in a
major way to the deciphering of the script. The perfection of the
language used in these records, which document the social and political
life of the Gokturk Dynasty, proves that Turkish, as a language of
letters, has been in use from very ancient times.
In later periods
many forms of writing would appear: Nestorian writing in the northeast,
Sogd, Uighur, and Pali writings in the southeast, Manichaean texts. In
Brahman writing, and from the 11th centuary onward, Arabic script for
Islamic texts. In addition, depending on the region in which they lived,
the Turks have employed Suryani, Armenian, Georgian and ancient Greek
alphabeths, producing literary works which have transmitted the Turkish
culture up to the present day.
After the waning of
the Gokturk state, the Uighurs produced many written texts that are
among the most important source works for the Turkish language. The
Uighurs produced many written texts that are among the most important
source works for the Turkish language. The Uighurs abondened
shamanism(the original Turkish religion) in favor of Buddhism,
Manichaeanism and Brahminism, and translated the pious and philosophical
works of all of them into Turkish. Examples are Altun Yaruk, Mautrisimit,
Sekiz Yükmek, Huastunift, etc. These were collected by european
turcologists in Turkische Turfan-Texte.
The Kokturk (Gokturk)
inscriptions, together with Uighur writings, are in a language called by
scholars Old Turkish. This term refers to the Turkish spoken, prior to
the conversion to Islam, on the steppes of Mongolia and Tarim basin.
With the emergence
of the Cagatay Dynasty, which came about when the Empire of Genghis Khan
was divided among his sons, a new wave of Turkish literature was born
and flowered under the influence of Persian literature. It reached its
pinnacle with the works of Ali Sir Navai in the 15th century.
The Turkish of
Turkey that developed in Anatolia and across the Bosphorus in the times
of the Seljuks and Ottomans was used in several valuable literary works
prior to the 13th century. The men of letters of the time were, notably,
Sultan Veled, the son of Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi, Ahmed Fakih, Seyyad
Hamza, Yunus Emre, a prominent thinker of the time, and the famed poet,
Gulsehri.
The Turkish Language up to the 16th Century
With the spread of
Islam among the Turks from the 10th century onward, the
Turkish language came under heavy influence of Arabic and Persian
cultures.
The "Divanü-Lügati't-Türk"
(1072), the dictionary edited by Kasgarli Mahmut to assist Arabs to
learn Turkish, was written in Arabic. In the following century, Edip
Ahmet Mahmut Yükneri wrote his book "Atabetü'l-Hakayyk", in Eastern
Turkish, but the title was in Arabic. All these are indications of the
strong influence of the new religion and culture on the Turks and the
Turkish language.
In spite of the
heavy influence of Islam, in texts written in Anatolian Turkish the
number of words of foreign origin is minimal. The most important reason
for this is that during the period mentioned, effective measures were
taken to minimize the influence of other cultures. For example, during
the Karahanlylar period there was significant resistance of Turkish
against the Arabic and Persian languages. The first masterpiece of the
Muslim Turks, "Kutadgu Bilig" by Yusuf Has Hacib, was written in Turkish
in 1069.
Ali gir Nevai of
the Çagatay Turks defended the superiority of Turkish from various
points of view vis-a-vis Persian in his book "Muhakemetül-Lugateyn",
written in 1498.
During the time of the Anatolian Seljuks and Karamano?ullary, efforts
were made resulting in the acceptance of Turkish as the official
language and in the publication of a Turkish dictionary, "Divini Turki",
by Sultan Veled (1277).
AhmetFakih, Seyyat
Hamza and Yunus Emre adopted the same attitude in their use of ancient
Anatolian Turkish, which was in use till 1299. Moreover, after the
emergence of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Orhan promulgated the first
official document of the State, the "Mülkname", in Turkish.
In the 14th
century, Aykpasa, Gülsehri, Ahmedi and Kaygusuz Abdal, in the 15th
century Süleyman Çelebi and Hacy Bayram and in the 16th
century Sultan Abdal and Köroglu were the leading poets of their time,
pioneering the literary use of Turkish. In 1530, Kadri Efendi of Bergama
published the first study of Turkish grammar, "Müyessiretül-Ulum".
The outstanding
characteristic in the evolution of the written language during these
periods was that terminology of foreign origin was accompanied with the
indigenous. Furthermore, during the 14th and 15th
centuries translations were made particularly in the fields of medicine,
botany, astronomy, mathematics and Islamic studies, which promoted the
introduction of a great number of scientific terms of foreign origin
into written Turkish, either in their authentic form or with Turkish
transcriptions.
Scientific
treatises made use of both written and vernacular Turkish, but the
scientific terms were generally of foreign origin, particularly Arabic.
The Evolution of Turkish since the 16th
Century
The mixing of
Turkish with foreign words in poetry and science did not last forever.
Particularly after
the 16th century foreign terms dominated written texts, in
fact, some Turkish words disappeared altogether from the written
language. In the field of literature, a great passion for creating art
work of high quality persuaded the ruling elite to attribute higher
value to literary works containing a high proportion of Arabic and
Persian vocabulary, which resulted in the domination of foreign elements
over Turkish. This development was at its extreme in the literary works
originating in the palace. This trend of royal literature eventually had
its impact on folk literature, and numerous foreign words and phrases
were used by folk poets.
The extensive use f
Arabic and Persian in science and literature not only influenced the
spoken language in the palace and its surroundings, but as time went by,
it also persuaded the Ottoman intelligentsia to adopt and utilise a form
of palace language heavily reliant on foreign elements.
As a result, there
came into being two different types of language. One in which foreign
elements dominated, and the second was the spoken Turkish used by the
public.
From the 16th
to the middle of the 19th century, the Turkish used in
science and literature was supplemented and enriched by the inclusion of
foreign items under the influence of foreign cultures. However, since
there was no systematic effort to limit the inclusion of foreign words
in the language, too many began to appear.
In the mid-19th
century, Ottoman Reformation (Tanzimat) enabled a new understanding and
approach to linguistic issues to emerge, as in many other matters of
social nature.
The Turkish
community which had been under the influence of Eastern culture, was
exposed to the cultural environment of the West. As a result,
ideological developments such as the outcome of reformation and
nationalism in the West, began to influence the Turkish community, and
thus important changes came into being in the cultural and ideological
life of the country.
The most
significant characteristic with respect to the Turkish language was the
tendency to eliminate foreign vocabulary from Turkish.
In the years of the
reformation, the number of newspaper, magazines and periodicals
increased and accordingly the need to purify the language became
apparent.
The writing of
Namyk Kemal, Ali Suavi, Ziya Pasa, Ahmet Mithat Efendi and Semsettin
Sami which appeared in various newspapers tackled the problem of
simplification.
Efforts aimed at "Turkification"
of the language by scholars like Ziya Gökalp became even more intensive
at the beginning of the 20th century.
Furthermore, during
the reform period of 1839, emphasis was on theoretical linguistics
whereas during the second constitutional period it was on the
implementation and use of the new trend. Consequently new linguists
published successful examples of the purified language in the periodical
"Genç Kalemler" (Young Writers).
The Republican Era and Language Reform
With the
proclamation of the Republic in 1923 and after the process of national
integration in the 1923-1928 period, the subject of adopting a new
alphabet became an issue of utmost importance.
Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk had the Latin alphabet adapted to the Turkish vowel system,
believing that to reach the level of contemporary civilization, it was
essential to benefit from western culture.
The creation of the
Turkish Language Society in 1932 was another milestone in the effort to
reform the language.
The studies of the
society, later renamed the Turkish Linguistic Association, concentrated
on making use again of authentic Turkish words discovered in linguistic
surveys and research and bore fruitful results.
At present, in
conformity with the relevant provision of the 1982 Constitution, the
Turkish Language Association continues to function within the
organizational framework of the Atatürk High Institution of Culture,
Language and History.
The essential
outcome of the developments of the last 50-60 years is that whereas
before 1932 the use of authentic Turkish words in written texts was
35-40 percent, this figure has risen to 75-80 percent in recent years.
This is concrete proof
that Atatürk's language revolution gained the full support of public.
Content of this page is taken from
http://www.turkishembassy.org/ |
