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Why did the Turkish alphabet change? | ||
Tags: Turkish | Writing System | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5272 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 1 of 14 27 August 2011 at 7:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm very interested in Turkish and became very confused when I found out that the script is no longer Ottoman(Arabic/perisan) script and is now a modified latin script. So far I've read that it was because of literacy issues, but this makes no sense to me. Ottoman(Arabic/persian)are Phonetic alphabets and unlike Chinese take a week or two to learn.
Is there perhaps something within turkish that is hindered in the modified Ottomon(Arabic/Persian) script?? Or was this purely political in nature?? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5599 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 14 27 August 2011 at 8:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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The Arabic alphabet is originally an abjad, so you are forced to leave out the vowels or use consonants as vowel indicaters.
So for example in Ottoman Turkis the letter vav (و) stood not only for the consonant v, but for a whole range of vowels: o, ö, u, ü. This is far from perfect. Of course the latinisation was a political decision. One wanted a break from the Ottoman past and language reform aimed at returkify the language, shun many Arabic and Persian loanwords and some foreign grammatical constructions. Arabic script is only ideal for semitic languages, Persian also does not fit well into this writing costume. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 3 of 14 27 August 2011 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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BTW, a relatively little known fact is that the Turkish language reform not only changed the alphabet but also the vocabulary, which had far-reaching consequences.
One of the most outspoken critics about this aspect of the language reform was noted Turkologist Geoffrey Lewis. For more information about this see his lecture The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. Edited by Doitsujin on 27 August 2011 at 9:30am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5272 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 4 of 14 28 August 2011 at 7:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you both for the helpful comments. The link that Doitsujin gave was very informative.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6867 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 5 of 14 19 September 2011 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that one of the main political points was that Mustafa Kemal Pascha wanted to drive Turkey towards Europe.
I don't think that the normal use of the Arabic script is ideal anywhere. I can fairly correctly read what's written in several languages that I don't understand too well but for which I know the script, but to read normal (i.e. mainly vowel free) Arabic, you have to know the grammar. Edited by Lugubert on 19 September 2011 at 11:04pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| my lost lenore Diglot Newbie Turkey Joined 4797 days ago 6 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Russian, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 14 08 October 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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For political reasons indeed. It was about M.Kemal's rejection of Ottoman legacy. Now almost no one can read any text written just three generation before. I always opposed such a social engineering. It's strictly a facist application.
And so I learned latin alphabet first, which took several months despite arabic alphabet took just 5 days... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| xuxakat Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 4748 days ago 15 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, Italian, Spanish, English Studies: Turkish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 7 of 14 29 November 2011 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that you are in parts right: you can question whether changing the alphabetic
(and several other politics of Atatürk) were right. But I think that in Turkish vowels are very important and very variable (and you have quite many as compared to Arabic that has 3 long ones that are written and three short ones..). So I don't think that this was his worst decision. But this is quite subjective, I guess. It is normal, however, that the first alphabet takes longer to be learned then the following ones. I never had difficulties in learning the Arabic, Hebrew or Cyrillic alphabet although it also took me months to learn the Latin one - because I had to get used to the concept of scripture and to the activity of actually writing. I think it is like that for everyone - as long as the basic system of scripture is more or less the same 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4749 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 8 of 14 30 November 2011 at 3:10am | IP Logged | |||||
But it's not only the alphabet but the dialect. Ottoman Turkish has little in common with modern Istambul Turkish, most of vocabulary is different. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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