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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Analia Newbie Netherlands Joined 5636 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English | Message 17 of 34 20 June 2009 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, undertook some major reforms in the 1920s in order to westernise the newly established republic. Progress and modernisation are surely desirable objectives, but these should not mean destroying one's own culture. Ataturk introduced his revolutionary ideas under the name of 'modernisation', but his ulterior motive had always been to cut the link with the Islamic past. I can understand, in fact support very much the idea of introducing Latin alphabet. Adoption of the latin alphabet is fine, but why did he remove the old one from the curriculia of schools? In fact, when he introduced the alphabet reform in 1928, the legislation literally said that the old alphabet can be used / tolerated only for two more years. No ordinary person of common sense would fail to understand that the alphabet reform not only accomplished a transformation of symbols, but also denied the future youth of Turkey an inheritance from their cultural past. Today, %99 of Turkish people are unable to read a book written before 1928.
Also, from a pure linguistic perspective, there are more sounds in Turkish today than there are letters in the modern Turkish alphabet. 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 18 of 34 20 June 2009 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have a dictionary that shows the Ottoman Arabic script for many words (now obsolete in many cases) next to the Roman equivalent. I have the impression that the Arabic script was less phonetic, especially vowels. It had the habit, taken from Arabic, of not showing some vowels at all. Different sounds are also represented by the same letter.
There has been an official hostility to Arabic script. For example, I saw a religious building which had the Koranic bismillaharahmanarahim ("In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful") on the front, but the Arabic phrase was rendered in the Roman alphabet. I was told that rendering it in Arabic script was considered a threat to secularism. There is an Arabic-speaking minority in Turkey, but they generally cannot read Arabic, as the script has not been taught in school, except in religious establishments, and in any case there is quite a bit of difference between their colloquial dialect and written MSA. Edited by William Camden on 20 June 2009 at 9:27am 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 19 of 34 20 June 2009 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'd like to see a source/proof/example/you name it for that claim. I totally and 100% support all of Atatürk's reforms. We should keep in mind, that Ottoman was the language of the elite of the Empire, a majority of the Turkish-speaking population neither understood most of the heavier Arabic/Persian loanwords, nor Arabic/Persian grammatical structures. "Why should I get down to their level? I will raise them to my level!" -Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| medeor Newbie Turkey Joined 5755 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Turkish* Studies: English | Message 20 of 34 22 June 2009 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
for example open and close "e" letters. also, the sounds we try to express through accent characters. yes changing the alphabet into latin is a sensible step but our alphabet is not enough to express the real sounds we utter exactly, we got to agree this. 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 21 of 34 22 June 2009 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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open and closed e? That's the same letter, just pronounced a different way. Every language has that problem...and Arabic didn't solve that problem.
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kounryusui Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5985 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Polish, Russian*, Portuguese, English, Japanese Studies: Turkish | Message 22 of 34 23 June 2009 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hear, hear. We'd all end up using IPA if we were to write exactly the way we pronounce :)
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| Analia Newbie Netherlands Joined 5636 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English | Message 23 of 34 24 June 2009 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Turkish words are always written the way they are pronounced, and vice versa. This is because orthography maps one-to-one to pronunciation. In English, for example, run and put, though these are both written with a "u" letter, the sound is quite different. This would never happen in Turkish...
There are three h sounds, and two k sounds in the Turkish language, and the modern Turkish alphabet has only one letter for which these sounds can correspond to. The Ottoman alphabet had 36 letters; the modern Turkish alphabet has 29 letters. I am not alleging that the Ottoman alphabet was perfect, but I do indeed say that it fits to the phonology of the Turkish language more than the Latin alphabet does. For example, there are two k sounds in the Turkish phonology. The present alphabet only has one k. Therefore, when you write k, it is not clear which sound you refer to. To solve this problem, we need the letter q. In fact, when Ataturk proposed the new alphabet, first he consulted to the General Kazim Karabekir; and Kazim said that with the new alphabet, it would not be possibly to write his name, because the new alphabet does not distinguish between the old  and  .
Both of these ottomatic letters are written as k today. Ataturk's solution was to put a line over the adjacent letter to k, what is known as "sapkali a" in Turkisk today. While this solution worked for k, there is no such a solution for the h sound. There are two k and three h sounds in the Turkish language. Besides, had the language reform not been introduced, and the Ottoman alphabet not been banned, surely, there would have been progress with the Ottoman orthography as well. The Ottoman alphabet has been used in the Turkish history for over 1000 years, and therefore, while adopting the latin alphabet, in my opinion, the Turks should continue the tradition as well, or at least they should be able to read books written before 1928. Otherwise, it will lead to a culture loss. Lastly, even though Ataturk was peerless with his outstanding achivements, I think Turks should stop idoloising him. It is just too dogmatic. A man cannot be "the best" in every regard. You should accept this. Ataturk was a good commander, but not a good lingust. The reform he did in linguistics is also appalling. If you don't understand what I mean, check for example, the Gunes Dil Teorisi (The Sun Language Theory) of Ataturk. He claimed that all existing languages have originated from Turkish. The examples he provided to back up his argument are ridiculous...Again as I said, I acknowledge his political and military skills, but he was not very skilled with regard to linguistic matters, to say the least... 2 persons have 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 24 of 34 24 June 2009 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi everybody!
Analia, I have to disagree with you.In modern standard Turkish (high Turkish) there are not three h and two k sounds. There is only one k and one h sound. Now, people from the east pronounce all the h in a different way, for example. I like the current solution. Kâzım Karabekir looks like a very good solution. I prefer it over the Ottoman script...because even though I know both Turkish and the Arabic script, I can not read it! If your country had have a leader of Atatürk's caliber, you would've understood the idealization of Atatürk. Turkey is the only country in the world that lost a major war but made peace under it's own terms. He saved and modernized Turkey, and if he had lived just a few years longer, Turkey would not have many of the problems it has now. But this is a little off topic, and I will stop with this right here. Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful |
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