Turkish language.

Before discussing the arts of the Turkish language, it is necessary to delve into the very origin of Turkey as a state. It is known that Turkey has played a difficult and honorable role in the history of mankind. Since the Stone Age, this country has been the cradle of many civilizations; more than 2,500 ancient settlements are located on its territory. Troy, palaces and ancient mosques, snow-white statues of Rome and the remains of Byzantine culture - all this is here.

The Greeks came to Anatolia in the XIV-XII centuries BC. They settled on the western shores and developed trade and navigation. Later, colonies were founded there and in 800 BC. the Lydians and Phrygians had already come there, and by the 600s the Persian raids had already led to a three-hundred-year rule of this civilization. Then the greatest of the commanders - Alexander the Great in 334 BC. destroyed the dominion of the Persians and after him, until the 3rd century BC. This area was ruled by Rome. The split of the Roman Empire in 230 made Constantinople (now Istanbul) the capital of its eastern part, and in 570-622. The prophet Mohammed began the spread of Islam, and introduced the world to the holy book - the Koran. In the 11-13 centuries there was a Christian period, and later, in 1071, the Seljuk Turks first appeared on these lands and after that they began to spread throughout Anatolia.

From the time of the first settlements (8th century BC) uninterruptedly from the Neolithic to the Calcolithic; then, the Bronze and Iron Ages, from the most ancient historical civilizations of the Hittites, Phrygians, Urartu peoples, from the Lydians to the Persians, from the Achaeans to the Hellenes and later civilizations, the existence of which was proved by the richest archaeological investigations, as a result of which thousands and thousands of objects were discovered, included in the exposition of hundreds of museums around the world, as well as the "cradle of civilizations", located on the sites of hundreds of settlements and ruins of cities...

Most of the lands of modern Turkey, located only on a small part of the Ottoman Empire (with the aforementioned surface area) before the First World War, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Persian Gulf, i.e. all the way indian ocean. Well, the largest part of modern Turkey is occupied by Anatolia on the Asian continent and on the European continent East Thrace (surface area 23,000 sq. km.). Following from west to east, the plateau of middle Anatolia grows in front of you with an area of approximately 800 m, and approaching Eastern Anatolia, the plateau rises to 2000-2200 m.

Parallel to the Mediterranean Sea, the south of the country is majestically decorated with the Taurus Mountains, whose approximate height is 2500 m, in some places reaching 4000 m. increases to 3600 m. Between the mountain ranges in the region of western Anatolia in the vertical direction to the Aegean Sea, fruitful plains were formed irrigated by the rivers of the ancient period: Megandros, Kastros, Paktale, Seelunus; as a result of the formation of mountain folds and other natural beauties of nature, the coastline has stretched out, resembling openwork lace of wondrous beauty. And in the south of the country, in those areas where the Taurus Mountains branch out from the Mediterranean coast, melt water these mountains flow into the sea with the help of numerous rivers, which in turn irrigate the almovial, fruitful plains of these places. Lake Tuz, which has turned into a collapsed pool, and after the zone of immersion, plateaus, rising in the direction of the east at a height of 3000 and 4000 meters in places, are decorated with mountainous volcanic areas. The highest of these mountains, Mount Ağrı (5165 m) is located in the east of the country. The country's largest lake Van (3600 sq.m.) is also located in this region. The high altitude yayles in the region of eastern Anatolia are mainly used as summer pastures. In some places there are mountain lowlands, in some places fruit-bearing plains, such large rivers as the Euphrates and Tigris, directing their course towards the south, losing their swiftness, irrigate southeastern Anatolia, then, the formations of upper Mesopathamia, and leave the lands of Turkey.

Having left to the north and approaching the Black Sea, the proximity of the mountain landscape to the coastline emerges most clearly. As a result of this, such Almovkal plains as Bafra and Charshamba were formed. In addition, the mountain slopes leaning towards the sea took on a vertical shape. The Anatolian and Rumeli lands, located around the Sea of Marmara, are in the form of fertile lowlands with a few rivers and mountains of low height.

Based on the facts of the origin of the Turkish state, we can safely conclude that: Turkish is one of the Turkic languages; belongs to the Oghuz group. Since words meaning "Turkic" and "Turkish" sound similar in many languages, Turkish is sometimes called "Anatolian-Turkish" (according to ancient name peninsulas of Asia Minor - Anatolia).

Before the Kemalist revolution of 1918-1923 and the proclamation of Turkey as a republic, the language was called Ottoman, after the name of the Ottoman Empire; according to the constitution of 1924 it is called T rk dili.

Until the 1930s, the term “Ottoman-Turkish language” was also used in Russian-language specialized literature, and the Turkic language family itself was called Turkish or Turkish-Tatar. Widespread in Turkey official language), on a part of the island of Cyprus (one of the official languages), in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and some other countries; there is a significant Turkish community in Germany.

In the former USSR, according to the 1989 census, there were 207,500 Turks, of which 189,000 considered Turkish as their mother tongue. The largest representative of the Turkic language family in terms of the number of speakers (about 45 million people). Anatolian (Asia Minor) and European (Rumelian) groups of dialects stand out.

In phonetics, the Turkish language is characterized by the presence of -j- in place of some noisy consonants in related Turkic languages; the difference between voiceless and voiced consonants at the beginning of a word; in morphology - special forms of the present tense, participles of the past tense, preservation of the ancient Turkic form of the name of the action, etc.

The vocabulary and grammar of the Turkish language has been heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian; literary language of the 16th-18th centuries. was saturated with Arabic and Persian lexical borrowings, in fact, only grammar remained Turkic.

The displacement of most Arabic-Persian borrowings and their replacement with native Turkic words occurred already in the 1930s and was the result of an active language policy implemented by the Turkish Linguistic Society, created in 1932 at the initiative of President Ataturk.

Starting from the 15th century, mainly in connection with the activities of the Genoese and Venetians in the eastern Mediterranean, Italian borrowings penetrated the Turkish language. Some borrowings from the Greek language also date back to the same time, often accompanying the assimilation by the Turks of elements of the culture and social institutions of the Byzantine Empire.

Since the 18th century, as a result of the cultural and political influence of France, French words, and after World War II, borrowings from English.

Literary Turkish existed from the 13th to the 15th centuries. in the form of the Old Anatolian-Turkic language. Forms of the existence of the literary language in the second half of the 15th-16th centuries. and in the 17th - first half of the 19th centuries. (the latter period is known as the "golden age" of Ottoman literature) are called, respectively, Early Turkish and Middle Turkish; they were very different from the spoken language of the corresponding historical periods.

The new Turkish language takes shape in the first half of the 19th - first quarter of the 20th centuries. based on the European group of dialects; currently there is an influence on the literary language of the dialects of the Anatolian group.

Until 1928, writing in Turkish existed on an Arabic basis (it arose under the influence of the Eastern Turkic Karakhanid-Uighur language, which was used as a written language in the 11th-13th centuries on the territory of modern Central Asia and Kazakhstan). In 1928, in the course of the Kemalist reforms, the Latin-based alphabet was adopted with some additional letters.

The first European grammar of the Turkish language was compiled in 1533 by F. Argenti, secretary of the Florentine consulate in Istanbul; the first description of the Turkish language in Arabic belongs to Bergamali Qadri (1530). The first descriptions of the Turkish language in Russia were made by O. I. Senkovsky and A. Kazem-bek (19th century). Fundamental works in the field of the Turkish language were owned by A.N. Samoilovich, A.N. Kononov, R. Liz, R. Underhill, J. Lewis and other researchers.

Turkish is known to be one of the ancient Greek languages.

Turkish in Turkey is relatives for 60 million people, or for almost 80% of the country's population.

About 740 thousand people speak Turkish in Bulgaria(2001), 37 thousand in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan(data from 1979).

177 thousand people consider Turkish as their native language Cyprus(1995) and ca. 128 thousand in Greece(data from 1976).

About 64 thousand carriers lived by 1984 in Belgium, 170 thousand in Austria(2000). 2 million 800 thousand Turks live in Germany (2009), half of whom were not born there and consider Turkish as their native language. In addition, in 1982 in Romania Turkish was spoken by 14 thousand people, and in former Yugoslavia 250 thousand

In 1990 Iraq there were about 3,000 native speakers of the Turkish language, and in Iran OK. 2500.

AT USA in 1970 there were 24,000 speakers of Turkish, and in Canada in 1974 more than 8,000 people declared Turkish as their mother tongue.

In France in 1984, the Turkish language was considered native approx. 135 thousand people, and in Netherlands-- 150 thousand people

In 1988 in Sweden was registered approx. 5000 native Turkish speakers.

At present (2010), according to various estimates, there are from 61-63 million to 73 million Turkish speakers in the world, which is about 40% of the total number of all Turkic speakers and makes Turkish the first in terms of the number of speakers among all Turkic languages.

But it's not a secret for anyone that the modern Turkish language goes back to the Old Anatolian-Turkic - the language of the Oghuz-Seljuk eastern Turkic tribes who once inhabited Central Asia, in the 8-10 centuries ousted from there by competing Uighur(also Turkic) by tribes to the west and settled by the 10th-11th centuries Anatolian Peninsula.

The literary Turkish language began to take shape at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries on the basis of the Old Anatolian-Turkic language, which in turn goes back to the Central Asian-Turkic language, brought to Asia Minor Seljuks and heavily diluted with elements of the vernacular language of the mixed Turkic population Anatolia.

Over the past few centuries, the Turkish language has been significantly influenced Persian and Arabic languages, in connection with which the number of words borrowed from these languages reached at times 80% of the Turkish vocabulary. Before XX century there was a literary language of the Ottoman Empire, quite different from the spoken Turkish language - Ottoman language. Pan-Turkists (in particular, I. Gasprinsky) at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. published magazines and newspapers in a language that was gradually cleared of borrowings, although different from the modern Turkish language. New language promoted Young Turks.

After the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 in the 30s. the process of replacing foreign borrowings with original Turkish words began. This process continues to this day, although in the Turkish language one can still find words of Persian-Arabic origin along with their synonyms constructed from Turkic roots. In the 20th century new concepts appeared from European languages, primarily from French.

In order to returkize and modernize the Turkish language in 1932, the actively operating and now state-owned "Turkish Linguistic Society" was created.

The state language of Turkey (Türkçe) is not the most popular in the world, but it is becoming more widespread, and therefore it will be useful to know Interesting Facts about Turkish. The Turkish-speaking population is found in Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkmenistan and other states adjacent to Turkey, as well as in France, Sweden, and America. Among the many dialects, Istanbul can be attributed to the literary language. Relating to the Altaic language family, its Turkic branch, modern Türkçe (the language of Turkey) is included in the southwestern subgroup of the Turkic branch.

Those who know Turkish have the ability to understand many other languages that are its dialect. These are Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and numerous others, which will be much easier to master after Turkish. In total, 40% of the world's population speak it.
Up to 77 million speak Turkish around the world, 60 of them live in Turkey. Many Turks live in America and Europe.
The Turkish language has many dialects that differ in such a way that people who speak them do not understand each other.. Istanbul dialect is literary.
The correct Turkish language began to form in the 15th century on the Anatolian Peninsula according to scientists. Then words and phrases from the Arabic language, as well as Persian, appeared in it, by the 19th century it had 80% of foreign borrowings.
In 1922, the Republic of Turkey was formed, after which the language began to be thoroughly reformed.. The Latin alphabet appeared, which made writing easier. Literacy among the population began to increase. The transition to the Latin alphabet was made in 1928.
The characters Q, W and X were excluded by the Turks and also banned by the Turkish authorities. People with these letters in their first and last names may even be unable to obtain a passport.
Turkish has 8 vowels and 21 consonants. The Turks abandoned the difficult Arabic spelling, which is dominated by consonants. After all, vowels are the most important for the Turkish language.
During the reform, foreign words began to be subject to exclusion. Until now, there is a struggle with foreign borrowings in the Turkish language. Even the word "computer" has been replaced by the term "bilgisayar" (information processing). There are almost no English-language concepts left, but there are French words and terms.
K. Atatürk, the first president of the republic, was the founder of TDK - the Turkish Language Association, created for the purpose of a successful reform. The language was recreated, neologisms appeared, and the bearers of the new standards did not understand the older inhabitants who spoke the old language.
The Turkish language is completely subject to the rules, there are no exceptions to which, especially in terms of morphology.
Words are read the same as they are written, without additional phonetic transcription.. But some letters require attention when used in terms of pronunciation or placement in a word. Each letter usually corresponds to a specific sound. This makes it easier to read.
There is no concept of "gender for a noun", as in verbs, the endings are invariable in relation to the gender.
Words are arranged in a sentence in a certain way: at the beginning - the subject, and at the end - the predicate, the rest - in the middle. This makes learning the language less difficult.
Learning the Turkish language is not so easy, as it has features that are unusual for a European person. Changing grammatical forms in words is achieved by adding suffixes, prefixes, affixes, each of which has its own meaning, which can turn a word into a whole sentence. The root in the word stands out in a clear way, the order of adding suffixes is also defined.
Because of this agglutination (adding suffixes), long words can be made up of 40 or even 70 letters. A European sentence can be successfully turned into a single Turkish word.

Throughout the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, passions were in full swing in the Ottoman Empire about improving the language. (Let me remind you that from the middle of the 19th century, the official language of the empire was the Ottoman language, consisting of 70-80, and according to some estimates, all 90 percent, of borrowings from Arabic and Persian.) Disputes ended already in republican Turkey with the language reform of 1928, after which was created, in fact, a completely new Turkish language.

The writing was translated into the Latin alphabet. Writing in Turkish in Arabic letters, under pain of imprisonment, is prohibited by law.

Vocabulary has undergone huge changes. The number of "original Turkish" words in the last 50-60 years has increased from the previous 10-15 percent to the current 75-80 percent. Moreover, for “originally Turkish” words are often hastily concocted neologisms.

Oxford University Professor Jeffrey Lewis in his lecture “Turkish Language Reform. A disastrous success”, delivered at the Jarring Institute in Sweden in 2002 (http://www.turkishlanguage.co.uk/jarring.htm), says in part:

“... the boundless energy of Kemal Atatürk, as well as his powers as the President of the Republic, prompted him to start an ethnic cleansing of the language. In 1928, he changed the alphabet: he replaced the Arabic-Persian script with the Latin alphabet.

Two years later, he wrote a short preface to a book on the history and potential of the language, in which he included these fateful words: "The Turkish people, who know how to defend their territory and their sublime independence, must free their language from foreign yoke ".(. ..)

Three methods were prescribed for obtaining the necessary words, designed to make the Turkish language independent of foreign vocabulary: study the resources of the spoken language, collect the necessary words found in old texts, and, if necessary, create new words from existing roots and suffixes.

In October 1932, the collection of words began. Each provincial governor presided over a collection committee. During the year over 35,000 words were written down. Meanwhile, scientists, in search of words that were out of use or never used in Turkey, turned over the dictionaries of the Turkic languages and more than 150 ancient texts. Their “catch” for the year amounted to 90,000 words. In 1934, the results of both events were published in a book called Tarama Dergisi. (...)

The journalists wrote their articles in Ottoman and then submitted them to special commissions (ikameci). Ikameci opened their copy of Tarama Dergisi and replaced the words from the Ottoman language with equivalents chosen from this book. At the same time, in the office of another newspaper, another committee was choosing other equivalents, which turned out to be the same words from the Ottoman language.

At that moment, Ataturk decided that the reform had reached a dead end, and that it would be wiser to keep in the language all foreign words for which no Turkish synonyms were found, providing them with Turkish etymology. (For example, the old word “civilization” is “medeniyet” It is of Arab origin. But the case was presented as if the Arabs borrowed it from the Turks).

However, many of the reformers, instead of inventing an etymology for the doomed Arabic and Persian words, honestly tried to find pure Turkish counterparts for them, and made several gross mistakes. For example, there was no Turkish equivalent to the Arabic "Maarif" - "education". The reformers replaced it with the word “Egitim”, which allegedly comes from the ancient verb eğitimek - to educate. But the verb eğitimek never existed. This was a misinterpretation of the verb igidimek - to feed (people or animals). But this did not stop “Egitim” from becoming a modern Turkish word for the concept of “education”. (...)

Many neologisms were correctly constructed from Turkish roots and suffixes. For example, "altyapı" - "potential", replacing the French enfrastrüktür. But too many neologisms, however, were not built correctly. (...)

Among them are neologisms compiled personally by Atatürk for geometry. (Before 1937 Turkish schoolchildren were still learning geometry in Ottoman technical terms. Changes began in the winter of 1936/7 when Atatürk wrote a small book on the elements of geometry, published anonymously). To replace the Arabic names of the figures: triangle, pentagon, etc., he came up with new words: adding the newly invented suffix - “gen” to the corresponding figure. So "triangle" became "üçgen". But the "father of the Turks" did not take into account that for many generations of peasants in Anatolia, the word "üçgen" could only mean "three fallow fields." (...)

New technical terms have also been developed for other branches of science, although not all of them are used in practice today. For example, doctors prefer terms from English or French. (...)

Let me sum up, give four reasons why the reforms were disastrous. First: the reformers did not close the gap between the intelligentsia and the non-intellectuals - they did everything to create a new gap. Secondly: the language became impoverished, there was no Turkish replacement for all the Arabic and Persian words that were forgotten. This loss affects every Turk who, when speaking or writing, looks for words to express his feelings, but does not find them, because words are dead, like the Etruscan language. Thirdly, many of the replacements made are far from being purely Turkish. Fourth, most Turks under the age of 50 are cut off from the literary works of the 1920s and 1930s, one of the greatest periods of their literature. The “modern Turkish translation” that you see in bookstores cannot replace the actual original sources.”

Turkish is spoken by about 70 million people worldwide. Most of them live in Turkey, but there are numerous communities in other countries. Thus, the Turkish language can be heard in Greece, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany and some other countries.

In all these states, there are Turkish communities that honor their traditions and cultural heritage. The history of the Turkish language originates from the Turkic tribes, due to which Turkish belongs to the Turkic branch of languages. But according to the geopolitical map, Turkish belongs to the Altaic language family, which includes the Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu and Japanese-Ryukyu branches. It can be said that along the entire length of the Altai Mountains, the similarity of some elements of local dialects with Turkish can be traced. At the same time, the Turkish language retained elements of the Old Anatolian language that existed during the time of Anatolia.

History of Turkish

The modern one was largely transformed in 1932, when the struggle for " clean language"became the basis of the policy of the Republic of Turkey. However, the language retains its uniqueness due to ancient history Turkish language.

The origin of the Turkish language was gradual. By the XIV-XV centuries, Turkish speech appeared, which differed from Greek and Arab-Persian. The poetry and literature of Turkey, with its linguistic traditions, was founded in the Middle Ages, from the moment the Ottoman state was formed. Up to this point in colloquial and writing The peoples of Turkey intertwined elements of the old Anatolian culture, Arabic and Persian dialects. The same applies to writing: in ancient treatises, first the Turkic alphabet was used, and then the Arabic script, which was replaced by the Latin alphabet only at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, many monuments of architecture and culture store Arabic scripts. At present, the Arabic script is also preserved in religious treatises, since Islam still considers the Arabic language to be the language of the Koran.

It belongs to the Altaic group of the Ural-Altaic language family, just like Finnish and Hungarian languages. It is the most western in terms of area of distribution among the Turkic languages spoken throughout Central Asia and is generally classified in the southwestern group, also known as the Oghuz group. Other closely related Turkic languages include Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, and many others that have spread from the Balkans to northwestern China and southern Siberia. The Turkic languages are often classified as Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu of the Altaic language family. Strictly speaking, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of "Turkish", referring to the language of Turkey, and the concept of Turkic languages, referring to all Turkic languages.

In a short time, the Turks settled over a vast territory, bringing their language with them. The people who speak Turkish, lived in a wide area from today's Mongolia to the northern coast of the Black Sea, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Anatolia, Iraq and the region in northern Africa. because of long distances, various dialects and accents emerged. Turkish is also the native language of those people who lived in the areas under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. For example, over a million Turkish speakers live in Bulgaria. Approximately 50,000 Turkish speakers live in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. In Cyprus, Turkish is one of the official languages (along with Greek) and is spoken as a mother tongue by 19 percent of the population, especially in the north. More than 1.5 million speakers live in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece, and more than 2.5 million speakers live in Germany (and other Nordic countries), where Turks have been "guest workers" for many years. About 40,000 Turks live in the United States.

Has several dialects. Turkish dialects can be divided into two main groups: Western dialects and Eastern dialects. Of the major Turkish dialects, the only representative of the Western group is the Danubian dialect. The following dialects are included in the Eastern group: Eskisehir, Razgrad, Dinler, Rumelian, Karamanli, Edirne, Gaziantep and Urfa. There are other classifications by which the following groups of dialects are distinguished: southwestern, central Anatolian, eastern, rumelian, and kastamonu. Modern Standard Turkish is based on the dialect of Istanbul in Anatolia.

The history of the language is divided into three main periods: Old Turkish (from the 7th to the 13th centuries), Middle Turkish (from the 13th to the 20th centuries) and New Turkish, starting from the 20th century. During the Ottoman period Turkish language words of Arabic and Persian origin flooded, so the language began to be a mixture of three different languages. During the Ottoman period, which spans five centuries, the natural development of the Turkish language was severely hampered and formed the basis of Ottoman Turkish, the written language of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Turkish was basically Turkish in structure, but with a lot of overlap vocabulary Arabic and Persian, as well as some grammatical influence. Ottoman Turkish existed alongside spoken Turkish, the latter being considered a "vulgar language" unworthy of study. Ottoman Turkish, and the spoken language used the Arabic script.
Then the movement began new language”, which was headed by Kemal Ataturk. In 1928, five years after the proclamation of the Republic, the Arabic alphabet was replaced by the Latin, which in turn accelerated the movement to "cleanse" the language from foreign words. Before the introduction of the Latin script, the Arabic script was used to write the Turkish language. Until the fifteenth century, the Anatolian Turks used the Uyghur alphabet. The Institute for the Study of the Turkish Language (Turk Dil Kurumu) was established in 1932 to conduct linguistic research and promote the natural development of the language. As a result of these efforts, modern Turkish is a literary and cultural language that develops naturally and without outside influence. Today, the literacy rate in Turkey is over 90%.
Like all Turkic languages, Turkish is an agglutinative language, that is, grammatical functions are indicated by adding various suffixes to the root. Separate noun suffixes indicate gender and number, but there is no grammatical gender as such. There are three noun declensions with six case endings: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and ablative; the plural suffix indicates the amount. Verbs agree with subjects in case and number, and, as with nouns, separate suffixes are used to do so. The order of the elements in the verb form is as follows: verb root + tense marker + subject affix.

For Turkish the word order of the type: “subject-object-predicate” is characteristic, but in certain speech situations a different word order is also possible. As a "SOP" language where the object precedes the verb, Turkish is dominated by postpositions and relatively subordinate clauses that precede the verb.

Turkish has 8 vowels and 21 consonants. It is characterized by the vowel harmony inherent in the Turkic languages, when the vowels of suffixes must agree with the root vowels of nouns and verbs. Thus, for example, if the root has a front row vowel, then the suffix vowel must also be a front row, and so on (the law of vowel harmony). the stress on a word pronounced in isolation falls on the last syllable, but in speech, the place of stress, especially in the verb, is complicated.