The Turkish language reform (Turkish : Dil Devrimi), initiated on 12 July 1932, aimed to purge the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian-derived words and grammatical rules, transforming the language into a more vernacular form suitable for the Republic of Turkey.
Under the leadership of president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the reform commenced and persisted with varying degrees of intensity and momentum until the 1970s, following the most profound period of transformation between 1932 and 1938. The closure of the former Turkish Language Association in 1982 was officially recognized as the end of the language reform. Aligned with the alphabet reform in 1928, the language reform stands as one of the fundamental pillars of the significant structural alterations undergone by the Turkish language in the 20th century.
During interactions with Arabic and Persian-speaking nations, Turks adopted words not present in their own language. Alongside these absent words, however, Turkish words gradually lost their functionality over time, yielding to Arabic and Persian vocabulary. For instance, the Turkic-origin word "od" meaning "fire" gave way to the Persian-origin word "ateş". Not only words but also grammatical rules and constructions were borrowed from both languages. Nevertheless, at the core, Turkish inflections and grammar rules were still used. The Ottoman Empire was governed from the Sublime Porte ("Bâb-ı Âlî" in Ottoman Turkish, borrowed from Arabic الباب العالي "Bab Al-A'li"), where "bâb" meaning "door" in Arabic combined with the Persian-origin possessive suffix "-ı" and the Persian word "âlî" meaning "high" to form a new word in Ottoman Turkish. Neither Turkish nor Arabic and Persian speakers nor others could understand this form of Ottoman Turkish. Only the educated elite, writers, poets, and officials of the country used this language.[ dubious – discuss ] There was a gap between written and spoken language to the extent that newspapers, not understood by large segments of society, struggled to sell, leading journalists to seek ways to simplify their language. For example, they found it more comprehensible to use "Tabii İlimler" (natural sciences) instead of the Arabic term "Ulûm-i Tabiiyye" and resorted to such simplifications in their writings. [1]
The issue of simplifying the written language by purging it of complex Arabic and Persian expressions and bringing it closer to spoken Turkish had concerned Turkish writers since the Tanzimat period. The trend toward simplification, which began with İbrahim Şinasi and Namık Kemal, made significant progress with Ahmet Mithat and reached its peak during the Second Constitutional Era with writers like Ömer Seyfettin and Mehmet Emin Yurdakul.
The 1910s witnessed the rise of Turkist and Turanist views within organizations such as the Turkish Hearths and the Committee of Union and Progress. During this period, new ideas began to be incorporated into the simplificationist perspective. Among these, the most influential was the idea of borrowing words from other Turkic languages, particularly the ancient written languages of Central Asia, besides the Istanbul Turkish. The publication of French orientalist Abel Pavet de Courteille's Chagatai Dictionary in 1870, the deciphering and publication of the Orkhon inscriptions in 1896, and the printing of Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk in 1917 provided abundant resources for this approach.
There was also a tendency circa 1914 to derive new words from existing Turkish roots to express new concepts.
Views on language modernization receded during the period of the War of Independence and the early years of the republic. Prior to 1931, there was no clear stance on this matter from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. However, with the establishment of the Turkish Language Association in 1932, the language reform gained momentum. In the opening speech of the parliament in 1932, Atatürk expressed caution regarding the language reform by stating, "We will ensure the rise of national culture by opening up all avenues. We expect all our national organizations to be cautious and engaged in enabling the Turkish language to regain its essence and beauty". [2]
One of the primary interests of Atatürk was history, while the other was language. Like many intellectuals, he recognized the problem with the Turkish language. In 1932, he founded the "Turkish Language Research Society" (Turkish : Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti). Within this society, various subcommittees were established, each assigned with different aspects of the language under what seemed like a "military" organization (linguistics, etymology, grammar, terminology, lexicography, etc.). [3] One of the tasks of this society was to research words in the language and find Turkish alternatives for foreign loanwords. Word search operations were initiated under the chairmanship of governors in every province. Within a year, a source of 35,000 new words was created. During this time, scientists also researched 150 old works and collected words never before used in the Turkish language. In 1934, the 90,000-word search dictionary was compiled and published. Suggestions for alternative words used in local dialects were proposed instead of the Arabic-origin word "kalem" (pen), such as "yağuş, yazgaç, çizgiç, kavrı, kamış, yuvuş" and for the word "akıl" (mind), 26 suggestions were received, while for "hediye" (gift), 77 suggestions were made. Eventually, the Turkish-origin word "armağan" was chosen in place of the word "hediye". [1]
However, this process of "purging the language of foreign loanwords" only affected words from eastern-origin languages (Arabic, Persian, etc.) while foreign loanwords of western origin were not subjected to this process to the same extent. Moreover, many loanwords from western languages were added to Turkish to fill the gaps left by the purged words. [4]
The work of the "Language Council", initiated in 1929, culminated in the establishment of the "Turkish Language Research Society" founded by Atatürk in 1932. This society had two main objectives. First, to liberate the Turkish language from the domination of foreign languages and return it to its essence, thereby eliminating the distinction between spoken and written language and enabling all citizens, not just the educated elite, to write and read in their own spoken language. This would be achieved by replacing structures and grammar rules borrowed from Arabic and Persian with correct Turkish equivalents. Terminology accumulation would be achieved through surveys of local dialects. The second objective was to compare and reveal dead languages.
The simplification of the Turkish lexicon over time led to Turkification, and attempts to replace foreign-origin loanwords used in literary works with sometimes conditioning words that did not even conform to Turkish language rules, posed a risk of the language being disconnected from its cultural and historical sources.
Most of the new Turkish words are derived from other words with thematic suffixes. For example:
bat- is the root of the verb batmak, which means "to sink" or "to set". The derived word batı means "west" or the cardinal direction in which the sun "sinks". Another example would be aylık, which means "salary" as well as monthly. This is derived from the word ay, which means "moon, month".
Here are some other examples of derivations:
Some of the Turkish words are also compound words, such as:
For more information, see the related article: Turkish vocabulary .
This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2024) |
Öztürkçe refers to a purist form of Turkish, which is largely free of Persian and Arab influences. [5] Öztürkçe was an active target of the Turkish language reform. This language policy of Turkification was enforced by the written reform and from 1932 by the Turkish Language Association (TDK). The TDK collected for this purpose Turkic wordings in historical sources and Anatolian dialects. On this basis, the TDK formed a large number of neologisms that were disseminated using media and textbooks. From the 1940s, the TDK developed normative dictionaries (Türkçe Sözlük) and spelling guides (Yazım kılavuzu).
The use of Öztürkçe was and is an indicator for the world view of Kemalism. [ clarification needed ]
For several decades, no active policy of language regulation has been in place. [6]
In the preface to the 1971 edition of Atatürk's Geometri book, written by Agop Dilâçar, the story of the book's creation is recounted. In the autumn of 1936, Atatürk sent his private secretary Süreyya Anderiman along with Agop Dilaçar to the Haşet bookstore in Beyoğlu and had them purchase French geometry books. During the winter of 1936, Atatürk worked on the book and produced a 44-page volume in which geometry terms were modified and translated into Turkish. The authorship of the book by Atatürk is not explicitly stated; only a note on the cover indicates that it was published by the Ministry of Culture as a guide for those teaching geometry and those intending to write books on the subject.
During the Ottoman era, the terminology used in geometry textbooks taught in schools was distant from the daily language of the people and often incomprehensible. Terms such as "müselles" for triangle, "mesaha-i sathiye" for area, "zaviye-i kaime" for right angle, and "kaide irtifaı" for height were used. [1]
English | Ottoman Turkish | Modern Turkish |
---|---|---|
triangle | مثلثmüselles | üçgen |
rectangle | مستطيلmustatil | dikdörtgen |
square | مربعmurabba | kare |
area | مساحه سطحيهmesâha-i sathiyye | alan |
right angle | زاویۀ قائمهzaviye-i kaime | dik açı |
height | قاعده ارتفاعkaide irtifaı | yükseklik |
The area of a triangle is equal to half the product of its base and height. | .بر مثلثك مساحه سطحیهسی ، قاعدهسینك ارتفاعنا حاصل ضربینك نصفنه مساويدر Bir müsellesin mesâha-i sathiyyesi, kaidesinin irtifaına hâsıl-ı zarbinin nısfına müsavidir. | Bir üçgenin alanı, taban uzunluğu ile yüksekliğinin çarpımının yarısına eşittir. |
The terms coined by Atatürk, such as boyut, uzay, yüzey, düzey, kesek, kesit, teğet, açı, açıortay, içters açı, dışters açı, eğik, kırık, yatay, düşey, dikey, yöndeş, konum, üçgen, dörtgen, beşgen, köşegen, eşkenar, ikizkenar, paralelkenar, yanal, yamuk, artı, eksi, çarpı, bölü, eşit, toplam, orantı, türev, varsayı, gerekçe are still used unchanged in the Turkish curriculum today. [7]
Turkish is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 90 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and one of two official languages of Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, other parts of Europe, the South Caucasus, and some parts of Central Asia, Iraq, and Syria. Turkish is the 18th most spoken language in the world.
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language into another language, through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything.
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. Mandated in 1928 as part of Atatürk's Reforms, it is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.
Ottoman Turkish was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire. It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and to rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe, which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern standard. The Tanzimât era (1839–1876) saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language ; Modern Turkish uses the same terms when referring to the language of that era. More generically, the Turkish language was called تركچه Türkçe or تركی Türkî "Turkish".
The Sun Language Theory was a Turkish pseudolinguistic, pseudoscientific hypothesis developed in Turkey in the 1930s that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-Turkic primal language. The theory's promotion of Turks as a progenitor race led to it finding favour among Turkish ultranationalists, who used it to justify their nationalist ideology.
A kilij is a type of one-handed, single-edged and curved scimitar used by the Seljuk Empire, Timurid Empire, Mamluk Empire, Ottoman Empire, and other Turkic khanates of Eurasian steppes and Turkestan. These blades developed from earlier Turko-Mongol sabers that were in use in lands controlled or influenced by the Turkic peoples.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934, was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism (Atatürkism).
The Turkmen alphabet refers to variants of the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, or Arabic alphabet used for writing of the Turkmen language.
Kemalism or Atatürkism is a political ideology based on the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. Its symbol is the Six Arrows.
Turkish grammar, as described in this article, is the grammar of standard Turkish as spoken and written by the majority of people in the Republic of Türkiye.
Atatürk's reforms were a series of political, legal, religious, cultural, social, and economic policy changes, designed to convert the new Republic of Turkey into a secular nation-state, implemented under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in accordance with the Kemalist framework. His political party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), ran Turkey as a one-party state and implemented these reforms, starting in 1923. After Atatürk's death, his successor İsmet İnönü continued the one-party rule and Kemalist style reforms until the CHP lost to the Democrat Party in Turkey's second multi-party election in 1950.
Turkish vocabulary is the set of words within the Turkish language. The language widely uses agglutination and suffixes to form words from noun and verb stems. Besides native Turkic words, Turkish vocabulary is rich in loanwords from Arabic, Persian, French and other languages.
The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or "radicals". Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate way, generally following specific patterns. It is a peculiarity of Semitic linguistics that a large majority of these consonantal roots are triliterals.
Ishq is an Arabic word meaning 'love' or 'passion', also widely used in other languages of the Muslim world and the Indian subcontinent.
The Ottoman Turkish alphabet is a version of the Perso-Arabic script used to write Ottoman Turkish until 1928, when it was replaced by the Latin-based modern Turkish alphabet.
The Turkish Language Association is the regulatory body for the Turkish language, founded on 12 July 1932 by the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and headquartered in Ankara, Turkey. The Institution acts as the official authority on the language, contributes to linguistic research on Turkish and other Turkic languages, and is charged with publishing the official dictionary of the language, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük.
Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries visited by Islam or Islamic power.
Qalat or kalata (قلعه) in Persian, and qal'a(-t) or qil'a(-t) in Arabic, means 'fortress', 'fortification', 'castle', or simply 'fortified place'. The common English plural is "qalats".