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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| dltwlf18 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5869 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Arabic (Written), Polish | Message 1 of 34 04 April 2009 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've found that I really enjoy learning middle eastern languages. I started learning Arabic a couple years ago and just started Farsi about a month ago. I don't plan on trying to learn another language for at least a few more months, so that I can learn Farsi better, but I'm already thinking about which to take on next, and Turkish is one that I'm considering.
I know that Turkish belongs to a completly different language family from arabic and farsi, but I was wondering how much arabic and farsi influence there might be in Turkish. I read on wikipedia that when the Turks switched to their modern alphabet in the early 1900's they also attempted to root out arabic and persian loan words from their language. I was just wondering how succesful they were in that, would already knowing arabic and farsi be a great advantage in learning turkish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5746 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 2 of 34 04 April 2009 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, it would. After only a week or two of Arabic I have been able to detect certain loanwords in Turkish
whenever I hear people speak it on the streets. (There is a substantial Turkish population here in Germany and occasionally I hear them speak) Don't expect to know everything though just because you speak Arabic. A lot of Egyptians that I know here get cocky whenever they hear a Turkish conversation and they become embarrassed when they don't understand a lot. I only have a few Egyptian friends who think that Arabic is the basis of every language in the Middle East =). It is only the most widespread and that is the reason why a lot of Middle Eastern languages such as Turkish, Farsi, and even Urdu (although that is more in the center of asia so you can't count that as a Middle Eastern language), have a lot of Arabic loanwords. Turkish is not even Indo European from what I have heard so don't expect so many similarities with Farsi which is. Trust me, Turkey is an amazing country and Turkish is definitely on my hit list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 34 04 April 2009 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
There are more grammatical similarities than one might expect, some sheer coincidence, others the result of long-time mutual influence. They both have no grammatical gender, use SOV word-order, both use suffixes a lot, etc. Turkish even has borrowed some very common grammatical features, e.g. 've' for 'and' from Arabic (actually, 'pure' Turkish doesn't express 'and' by a conjunction!) or the Persian conjunction 'ki' for subordinate clauses. And of course, many loanwords in Turkish are of Arabic or Persian origin, in a way comparable to Latin and French loanwords in German, i.e. many but not as many as in English. A solid background in Arabic and/or Persian certainly helps a lot when studying Turkish! EDIT: I corrected SVO to SOV. Edited by Marc Frisch on 05 April 2009 at 8:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| modus.irrealis Bilingual Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 5878 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Greek*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Turkish | Message 4 of 34 05 April 2009 at 5:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I think you meant they're both SOV, as I know Turkish is pretty strict about that.
I'm interested in this question as well, although I approach it from the other direction. Turkish is the first Middle Eastern language I've tried to learn and I've always wondered how much it would help me if I ever decide to try Persian or Arabic. I do know that, even though they say a lot of loanwords have been replaced by Turkish ones, when I look up words, a lot of the time I notice the word has a Persian or Arabic origin, so there still must be a lot of loanwords, even among some of the more grammatical words like Marc Frisch's example with ve and ki. I've also been told that Ottoman Turkish can be seen as a sort of stepping stone between Modern Turkish and the other two languages, so you might consider that as a possibility if you're interested in that period. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 34 05 April 2009 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say a good knowledge of Turkish is some use with Arabic vocabulary though not the grammar. There was a systematic effort to rid Turkish of Arabic and Persian words, though it was only partly successful.
Ottoman Turkish, in its written form, was not entirely distinct from Arabic and Persian. The boundaries between the languages were not clear. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5697 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 34 04 May 2009 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I learnt a bit Arabic. Now I'm studying Turkish. The first Turkish word "ders" lesson is spoken out like the Arabic
word "dars" also lesson. You see! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6821 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 7 of 34 05 May 2009 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Turkish is totally different from Arabic and Persian from a grammatical point of view. As far as I know the two have nothing in common with Turkish grammar.
But, I remember to have read that about 30% of Turkish vocabulary still consists of Persian and Arabic loanwords (and another huge chunk from French loanwords). So knowing Pesian and/or Arabic will be as useful to learning Turkish, as knowing French, Latin, or German will be to learning English. Ottoman Turkish started out as Turkish being lightly influenced by Persian and Arabic and ended up being a mix between Turkish, Persian and Arabic. This went so far, that the Turkish speaking population of Anatolia could not understand Ottoman Turkish (which was mostly used for administrative purposes and by the educated elite in Istanbul) at all. But now, it can be considered a dead language, because except for scholars nobody can even read it. Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 8 of 34 05 May 2009 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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In late Ottoman times, British soldiers who had been stationed in Egypt and had picked up some Arabic were able to communicate with many Ottoman soldiers, for example at Gallipoli (talking to Ottoman POWs, or during truces). Some of the Ottoman troops were probably Arabs anyway, but there was probably some degree of conprehension of the language even among non-Arabs in the Empire, for various reasons.
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