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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ertugrul Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5662 days ago 63 posts - 124 votes  Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 34 11 June 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged |
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What William Camden says may be true.
In Ottoman times, official and majority religion was Islam; from Maghreb through Middle East to far Indus major religion was Islam. Since Islam's official language is Arabic, people who supported Islam used this holy (according to them) language and script. Ottoman Empire's official language was Turkish though never mentioned. But the alphabet and scription was Arabic. And the effects of Arabic/Persian loanwords could be felt deeply. Writing Turkish with highly influenced Arabic/Persian loanwords with the Arabic alphabet is called "Ottomanish / Osmanlıca" Educated people living in the big cities of the Empire knowed Arabic and Persian beside from Ottomanish. Especially officers graduted from Military Academies knowed at least 3 languages. Non-educated people simply might understand what an Arabic person talked but not completely. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 34 11 June 2009 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
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I can address the Persian side of this triangle. My expertise is in classical Persian. A friend and I are going to start Arabic (though he already knows quite a bit and I know a few bits and pieces). In fact, our books just arrived today! I don't claim to know any Turkish to speak of, but I've perused the grammar, and I have a long-festering desire to work on it by decoding (slowly, slowly at first) one of Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk's novels. In fact, just today I found a nicely discounted Turkish dictionary (Redhouse Larger Portable) in an unlikely bookstore downtown.
In addition to all the things already mentioned--three separate language families, common knowledge of Quranic passages, lots of Arabic and Persian loanwords in Turkish (and a smaller number going from Turkish back into the other two)--it is my understanding that whole chunks of classical Persian poetry may have shown up in Ottoman Turkish, much as chunks of Arabic show up in classical Persian. The effect is something like reading a 19 c. English novel and having a sentence set into the text in French or Latin. In those days people were simply supposed to read those languages, and, given the widespread influence of Persian poetry throughout the region, I'd expect the same to have been the case among the Ottomans, as Ertugrul points out. The reason for Arabic, then, in Turkish is due to religion. For Persian, I would guess that much of the reason has to do with poetry. And, I'm guessing, the influence was not just through loanwords, but rather through "loan-phrases" and the general knowledge of Persian and Arabic among many occupants of the Ottoman Empire. I saw a fascinating lecture a couple of years ago by an American who became, after long residency and apprenticeship in Turkey, a very well-known and respected calligrapher of Turkish (Ottoman, of course) and Arabic (mostly religious inscriptions, for which there is a lot of call). He does fancy lettering--in Arabic script--for books, artwork, and even archtecture. He said that there are something like a hundred members of the calligraphy association of Turkey, or whatever it was called. I'm not sure about the number, either, but it was small. He compared it to Iran--where the comparable association has tens of thousands of members. I make absolutely no judgments about the wisdom of Turkey switching from Arabic script to Western and then trying to "cleanse" the vocabulary of non-Turkish elements, but this story illustrates a bit of traditions that were lost in the process. 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 11 of 34 11 June 2009 at 2:53pm | IP Logged |
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Relatively few people in Turkey can read documents or books published before the late 1920s. I think the language reform was too successful, cutting most Turkish people off from their past. The equivalent in English would be English speakers having to learn a new alphabet and lots of new vocabulary before they can read Dickens.
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| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6821 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 12 of 34 11 June 2009 at 3:03pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, but the Arabic alphabet was just not fit for the sounds of Turkish. Plus, the Ottoman elite borrowed too many words from Arabic and Persian, too many because a majority of the Turkish-speaking population didn't know these words and therefore didn't have access to literature at the first place.
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ertugrul Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5662 days ago 63 posts - 124 votes Speaks: Turkish*, English Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 34 12 June 2009 at 8:56am | IP Logged |
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The Language Reform in Turkey had been performed insensibly.
The alphabet been changed to Latin supposedly would help Turkey to communicate within modern-age's countries via similar alphabet. However there are numbers of countries and their unique alphabets who are quite even up-to-date modern; check out Japanese for instance. It is quite real as stone as that no alphabet can match Turkish original sounds. There is only one and that is Old-Turkic Orkhon Alphabet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkhon_script Arabic and Persian loanwords regarding with law, literature, religion, civilization and culture in Turkish vocabulary had enriched the nomad language (pure Turkish) to an evolved rich language. Besides, I cannot agree that people in the Empire couldn’t understand the Ottomanish. People rather understood the spoken and written language unless they were illiterate. The thing that people couldn’t understand clearly was the Divan Literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_literature#Divan_poetry It is reasonable that language keeps evolving and may require human's interference like cleansing old and unused words/phrases as suggesting new ones. But destroying numbers of Arabic/Persian-origin-words by wholesale is unacceptable. That is a slaughter! I think that the main goal of the language reform was just a masking to show Turkey and its language not to be from an easterner or an oriental culture to the West since Turkish government had turned its face to the West. Edited by Ertugrul on 12 June 2009 at 9:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 14 of 34 12 June 2009 at 9:23am | IP Logged |
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I realize that this is a sensitive subject, but since Ertugrul has spoken in favor of continuity and the Arabic alphabet as used for Ottoman Turkish, I'll add a little more from the calligrapher I mentioned above. I asked him about this issue and he said that in his opinion, the Arabic alphabet as used in Ottoman times was actually very well suited to Turkish. I've seen the opposite expressed by others, but his viewpoint was interesting, given the fact that, as an American, he had to learn Turkish--both Ottoman and modern, Arabic script and Roman script--and he also knows the Arabic language itself.
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| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6821 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 15 of 34 12 June 2009 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
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I find the Arabic script not suited to the language at all. I have seen it, and even though it looks great, and is probably perfectly suited for Arabic (and maybe Persian, too), it is not for Turkish. Especially the fact that vowels are not written out makes a word impossible to pronounce unless you know it.
In the new Turkish alphabet every letter corresponds to the exact same sound no matter what. I think yes, loanwords are a part of a language. They are part of a natural progress. But not if they are used overecessively to the point the Ottomans did it (I guess trying to imitate Arabs and Persians). Of course, this is all subjective and everybody has his/her personal opinion, but for me it is a proven fact (I'd have to do some research in order to post a few quotes and links here) that only a minority of Ottomans, the Ottoman elite (which had also Armenian, Greek, Jewish, etc. members), understood and used Ottoman Turkish. But a great majority of the Turkish speaking population did not. Regards, Ilhan 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 16 of 34 12 June 2009 at 12:13pm | IP Logged |
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There is an interesting book on this: "The Turkish Language Reform - A Catastrophic Success" by Geoffrey Lewis. The author argues that while the reform was necessary and in many ways well done, they overdid when it comes to inventing new words that weren't used by anyone.
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