TURKISH LANGUAGE

The Turkish language is commonly found over a large geographical area through Europe and Asia ; recent studies show that this language goes back 5500 years, and perhaps even 8500. As well, it is one of the most widely spoken tongues in the world - the sixth most widely spoken, to be precise. It is found in the dialects of the Azeri, the Türkmen, the Tartar, the Uzbek, the Baskurti, the Nogay, the Kyrgyz, the Kazakh, the Yakuti, and the Cuvas among others. Turkish belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, and thus is closely related to Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, Korean, and perhaps Japanese. Some scholars have maintained that these resemblances are not fundamental, but rather the result of borrowing. However, comparative Altaistic studies in recent years demonstrate that the languages listed all go back to a common Ur-Altaic.

Turkish is a very ancient language, with a flawless phonetic, morphological and syntactic structure, and at the same time possesses a wealth of vocabulary. The fundamental features that distinguish the Ural-Altaic languages from the Indo-European are as follows:

1. Vowel harmony, a feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues.
2. The absence of gender
3. Agglutination
4. Adjectives precede nouns
5. Verbs come at the end of the sentence

The language spoken in Turkey proper falls into the southwestern dialect category of the Western Turkish language family, and also into the dialects of the Oguz Türkmen language group. When the Turkish that is spoken in Turkey is considered in a historical context, it can be classified according to three separate periods because of the inherent characteristics of each of the periods:

1. Old Anatolian Turkish (old Ottoman - between the 13th and the 15th centuries)
2. Ottoman Turkish (from the 16th to the 19th century)
3. 20th century Turkish

The Republican Era and Language Reform

With the proclamation of the Republic in 1923 and after the process of national integration between 1923-1928, the subject of adopting a new alphabet became an issue of the utmost importance. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had the Latin alphabet adapted to the Turkish vowel system, believing that to reach a higher level of contemporary civilization, it was essential to benefit from western culture.

The creation of the Turkish Language Society in 1932 was another milestone in the effort to reform the language. Later renamed the Turkish Linguistic Association, the society concentrated on making use of authentic Turkish words discovered in linguistic surveys. At present, in conforming to the relevant provision of the 1982 Constitution, the Turkish Language Association continues to function within the organizational framework of the Atatürk High Institution of Culture, Language, and History.

The essential outcome of the developments of the last 50-60 years is that, whereas before 1932 the use of authentic Turkish words in written texts was 35-40 percent, this figure has now risen to around 75-80 percent.

The Turkish Alphabet

The Turkish alphabet contains 29 letters. There are 8 vowels and 21 consonants. Although letters Q, W, X do not appear, there are 6 more letters, namely; Ç, G, S, Ö, Ü, I . The other letters are the same in both alphabets, but they are pronounced differently.

NOTE: Please notice the letters [i, I and i, I]

A - a as in " u gly "
B - be as in " b ell"
C - ce as in " j ealous"
Ç – çe as in " ch air"
D - de as in " d ecade"
E - e as in " e lephant"
F - fe as in " f ederal"
G - ge as in " g et"
Ğ – ğ e*
H - he as in " h elicopter"
I - ı as in "numb e r"
İ - i as in " i nsect"
J - je as in "a z ure" (gara j = garage, pronounced as in French & English)
K - ke as in " k ettle"
L - le as in " l eg"
M - me as in " m en"
N - ne as in " n ever"
O - o as in " o rchestra"
Ö - ö as in " u rge"
P - pe as in " p en"
R - re as in " r ed"
S - se as in " s ell"
Ş - şe as in " sh elf"
T - te as in " t elephone"
U - u as in " oo ps!"
Ü – ü as in "fr ui t, n u de"
V - ve as in " v egetable"
Y - ye as in " y es"
Z - ze as in "z ebra "

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