Your thoughts on Turkish. (Questions About Your Target Languages) Language Learning Forum

Your thoughts on Turkish.
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages

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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6035 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes

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Message 25 of 36

02 August 2008 at 4:19pm | IP Logged

!LH@N wrote:

Sennin wrote:

I wonder when did they adopt it... and why. Arabic script would seem to be a more fitting choice, especially having in mind the Islamic tradition of the country.

Just because we're Muslim doesn't mean we pretend to be Arabs. We have our own culture and tradition, our own way of life and especially our own way of Islam.
And of course, Turkey is very secular. The Latin script was a way to break up with the Ottoman Empire, to show that the Republic of Turkey wasn't some kind of successor state, or the Ottoman Empire with a different name, but something totally new.

Then adopting the the Latin script is a very positive change, made for the right reasons. I would very much like to think the Ottoman Empire and modern day Turkey are two countries that have nothing in common. Unfortunately in my mind they blend into a single entity ;p

Edited by Sennin on 02 August 2008 at 4:20pm
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!LH@N
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6822 days ago
487 posts - 531 votes

Speaks: German, Turkish*, English
Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish

Message 26 of 36

02 August 2008 at 5:15pm | IP Logged

Sennin wrote:

Haha happy to hear that :D
It's not that they didn't have anything in common, you know, the thing is that...the Ottoman Empire right before, during and after World War One was not what it used to be once, degenerate, extremely elitist, self-centered, ego-centric.
Yes, they do blend kind of very well into each others, since they have the same "core territory," and the same people (mostly :D)

Regards,
Ilhan
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zhiguli
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6442 days ago
176 posts - 221 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Mandarin

Message 27 of 36

02 August 2008 at 9:19pm | IP Logged

Geoffrey Lewis wrote an excellent book about the Turkish language reform, and he's not altogether positive about all the changes it wrought:

http://www.amazon.com/Turkish-Language-Reform-Catastrophic-L inguistics/dp/0199256691/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217 727667&sr=8-2

http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/jarring.htm

I've met Turks who've voiced similar opinions - that the reform simplified and "dumbed down" the language and cut them off from an entire millennium of literature. The changes were so drastic that even books from the 1950s and 60s are mostly unintelligible to the present generation and need to be "translated" into modern versions.
Personally I find it does make the language a lot easier to learn, than, say, Persian, which, although simpler from a grammatical point of view, is made all the more difficult for its Arabic-based writing system. On the other hand it does conceal the long vowels, which are not phonemic but nevertheless are pronounced long by Turks, and will make you sound foreign if you don't pronounce them yourself.

Turkish was one of the first languages I studied completely on my own. I do appreciate its logic, though the logic is a very foreign one to someone with an Indo-European language background. Everything seems to be the complete reverse of what you're used to, but that's what makes it interesting. It also makes those other Turkic languages easier to reach, but the funny thing is that since I started (and quit) studying Azeri I have trouble going back to "straight" Turkish - whenever I want to remember a Turkish word it's usually an Azeri one that pops up.

Edit: and here is an example of "neo-Ottoman" (basically modern Turkish in Arabic letters), اینترنتڭ ایلك عثمانلیجه سیته سی (internetin ilk osmanlıca sitesi - the first Ottoman-language site on the internet!)

http://www.islamharfleri.com/osmanlica01/
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6273 days ago
1936 posts - 2333 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

Message 28 of 36

03 August 2008 at 1:56am | IP Logged

Only specialists can read pre-1928 Turkish writing. I think the language reform was a mixed blessing. Even Atatürk speeches have had to be modernised to be comprehensible to modern Turkish speakers - as though he died in 1638 as opposed to 1938.

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!LH@N
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6822 days ago
487 posts - 531 votes

Speaks: German, Turkish*, English
Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish

Message 29 of 36

03 August 2008 at 6:13am | IP Logged

zhiguli wrote:

Yes, I have heard about that book and read a review, it sounded very interesting.

Quote:

I've met Turks who've voiced similar opinions - that the reform simplified and "dumbed down" the language and cut them off from an entire millennium of literature. The changes were so drastic that even books from the 1950s and 60s are mostly unintelligible to the present generation and need to be "translated" into modern versions.

I do not agree. The language during the late Ottoman period was not the language of the people anymore, but an artificially "leveled-up" version of Turkish, with thausands of foreign words (up to 70% of Ottoman Turkish consisted of Persian or Arabic words!)
It was the language of the elite, the language of Istanbul. The "normal folks" couldn't understand a word of it. It was just...artificial, fake.
Atatürk simplified it by throwing out all those unnecessary loan words and using Turkish words or words derived from other Turkish words instead, which I see as a plus. Why should I use a foreign word if a Turkish word does the same job?
I have never understood the Turkish affinity to dropping ones own culture and adopting another...the Mughal emperors were Turks, but they adopted the language of the people they ruled. The Balkans were Turkish for a long time, but you don't see anybody speaking Turkish there (except for those tiny Turkish minorities), the Hijaz was Turkish for so long, still nobody speaks Turkish there. Instead we adopted so many loanwords that almost more than 70% of our language consisted of those...

Quote:

Personally I find it does make the language a lot easier to learn, than, say, Persian, which, although simpler from a grammatical point of view, is made all the more difficult for its Arabic-based writing system. On the other hand it does conceal the long vowels, which are not phonemic but nevertheless are pronounced long by Turks, and will make you sound foreign if you don't pronounce them yourself.

I can't think of anything from the top of my head...do you have an example for those long vowels?

Quote:

Turkish was one of the first languages I studied completely on my own. I do appreciate its logic, though the logic is a very foreign one to someone with an Indo-European language background. Everything seems to be the complete reverse of what you're used to, but that's what makes it interesting. It also makes those other Turkic languages easier to reach, but the funny thing is that since I started (and quit) studying Azeri I have trouble going back to "straight" Turkish - whenever I want to remember a Turkish word it's usually an Azeri one that pops up.

Azeri does sound kind of funny :D

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zhiguli
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6442 days ago
176 posts - 221 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Mandarin

Message 30 of 36

03 August 2008 at 11:41am | IP Logged

!LH@N wrote:

I can't think of anything from the top of my head...do you have an example for those long vowels?

Naturally these long vowel words are of Persian/Arabic origin. From the old Teach Yourself Turkish:

âdil - just
te:sir - effect
tarihî - historical
âdet - custom (as opposed to adet - number)
hâlâ yet (hala - paternal aunt)
kaatil murderer (katil murder)

More examples from turkishlanguage.co.uk :

Quote:

4. Some of these (imported) words which are pronounced with a short vowel in Turkish, regain their long vowel sound when suffixed or when a verb ending is added;
esas / esasen (esa:sen); hayat / hayatı (haya:tı); kanun / kanuni (ka:nu:ni); ruh / ruhum (ru:hum); usul / usulü (usu:lü); vicdan / vicdanen (vicda:nen); ahbap olmak (ahba:b olmak), hitap etmek (hita:b etmek).

6. Generally, pronounced long vowels are not shown when writing in Turkish.
adalet (ada:let), badem (ba:dem), beraber (bera:ber), idare (ida:re), ifade (ifa:de), işaret (işa:ret), kaide (ka:ide), numune (numu:ne), rica (rica:), şair (şa:ir), şive (şi:ve), şube (şu:be), vali (va:li), vefa (vefa:).

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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6035 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes

5 sounds

Message 31 of 36

03 August 2008 at 12:41pm | IP Logged

!LH@N wrote:

I have never understood the Turkish affinity to dropping ones own culture and adopting another...the Mughal emperors were Turks, but they adopted the language of the people they ruled. The Balkans were Turkish for a long time, but you don't see anybody speaking Turkish there (except for those tiny Turkish minorities), the Hijaz was Turkish for so long, still nobody speaks Turkish there. Instead we adopted so many loanwords that almost more than 70% of our language consisted of those...

Just a little clarification here.

The Balkans were never "Turkish", they were simply enduring the Ottoman rule. This is one of the darkest periods of Bulgarian history, commonly associated with oppression and degradation in all spheres of society. I guess we've seen the worst of that late Ottoman Empire.

It's a good thing many Persian and Arabic words were discarded from Turkish. In the same fashion, many Turkish words were discarded from Bulgarian. Sooner or later this is bound to happen with everything that is artificially injected into a given language. Only the faintest of traces remain, building layer after layer of subtle cultural influences.

Edited by Sennin on 03 August 2008 at 2:18pm
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!LH@N
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6822 days ago
487 posts - 531 votes

Speaks: German, Turkish*, English
Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish

Message 32 of 36

03 August 2008 at 1:43pm | IP Logged

Yes, I like your examples, never thought of that!

Sennin wrote:

The Balkans were never "Turkish", they were simply enduring the Ottoman rule.

They were as Turkish as parts of Africa were French, South-America was Spanish, Indonesia was Dutch, and India was British.

Quote:

This is one of the darkest periods of Bulgarian history, commonly associated with oppression and degradation in all spheres of society. I guess we've seen the worst of that late Ottoman Empire.

This is a thing of interpretation, and I bet a lot of nationalistic propaganda formed that perception (as much as nationalistic propaganda formed the perception that Ottoman rule was all good).
But an interesting side fact...Christian peasants were better off living under Ottoman rule than any other Christian rule.

Quote:

It's a good thing many Persian and Arabic words were discarded from Turkish. In the same fashion, many Turkish words were discarded from Bulgarian. Sooner or later this bound to happen with everything that is artificially injected into a given language. Only the faintest of traces remain, building layer after layer of subtle cultural influences.

Agreed :)

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