"The Ottoman Turkish... The Ottoman Empire's glorious language which is the mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic. Even the modern Turkish people cannot understand it! How interesting! After the language reform, we finally got rid of those hard-to learn Arabic letters, yay!! Turkish language is born again!"
OKAY, STOP!
I still want to kill myself for writing this, ugh... Even though I wasn't serious, really, those are the words that makes me feel sick like hell. Yes, you can hear from so many people that Ottoman Turkish was "Arabic" or something, they would say you such things, really. It's so funny and sad. Of course I don't expect them to read Ottoman scripts, but at least, they have to have the correct informations about their own language, which is also my language.
Wait, we were talking about the Ottoman Turkish, not about the modern Turkey Turkish....??
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you the truths about the Ottoman Turkish, under a linguistical view...
The Ottoman Turkish is not a spoken language.
Yes, one of the differences between the modern Turkish and the Ottoman Turkish is the writing system, which makes Turkish people think that they are so different languages. Now we write in Latin alphabet, but it was Arabic alphabet back then. And it doesn't make it Arabic because of this. Urdu and Farsi are also written in Arabic letters, but they aren't even in the same language family. Turkish is written in Latin alphabet but it is not a Indo-European language. Same thing! You even don't have to know linguistics, if you think a bit, you would understand this. However, I don't understand some people really -_-
Let's think about the earlier Turkish... Before Turks became Muslims... They believed in the holy and only God, Göktengri (Göktanrı in the modern Turkish), they didn't know about the Arabic alphabet, they used Orkhun alphabet, which looked like Old Viking Rhunes. It was the Turkish with no Arabic, Persian, or French words. That was the original Turkish, which had the same writing logic with the Ottoman scripts (I'm going to tell about it as well.). And guess what, some Turkish people accept Göktürk writings as their own language, but not the Ottoman scripts.
However, what is the reason for that?
The Ottoman Turkish has no specific definition.
Yes, because there are two different branches for it actually:
1-The Palace Language
The Palace Language was the language of well educated and wisdom people. Those people were mostly worked or lived in the palace. Political documents and palace poems (Tr: Divan Şiiri) had so many Arabic and Persian words with some grammatical stuff, Turkish origin words were much less.
2-The Folk Language
Unlike today's Anatolian Turkish, there were no French words since French wasn't an international language those times. However, if you examine today's Anatolian Turkish and those times' Anatolian Turkish, you cannot see many differences except some natural differences.
Diachronocity exists in every language. Seeing some sound differences through the time is acceptable anyway. Like the word "good/well", "iyi" in Turkish:
Edgü-> Eygü -> Eyü -> Eyi -> İyi
8th century -> 12th century -> 13th century -> 18th century -> 20th century
The Ottoman Empire Term: 1299-1922
Since I come from a farmer family, I had to chance to see the city and the regional language. My mother has always used old words because she saw so from her family. For example, I use "iyi" because I grown up in city, but she uses "eyi". She also use a lot of old words that aren't used in cities anymore. She taught me a lot about it as well.
Reading Turkish with Arabic letters is not a hard thing unlike what you think.
Most of people think the same thing; The Ottoman Turkish is too hard to read, so Latin letters are much better and useful. No, it isn't. Yes, Turkish with Latin letters is much easier and simple. However, you only put the phonemes letter by letter. However, The Ottoman Turkish requires some logic to read and write. However, it doesn't make it a hard system. It's not like Persian or Arabic anyway. Arabic is a semitic language, Persian is an Indo-European language, but Turkish is an Altaic language.
Uralic and Altaic languages has a common trait; we call it "vowel harmony". In these languages, vowels are important, and we classify them as "labial harmony" and "palatal harmony". We put the suffixes and any other things in those languages according to this rule. Front and back vowels are important in this point as well.
For example, think about the word "balık" (means fish). And think that we have to conjugate it with the locative case (in/on/at).
Locative case: -de, -da, -te, -ta
So, which one are we going to use? Let's check out the word first... "Balık"...
a and ı are back vowels. Also "k" is a strong consonant. So...
1-We have to add "-da" or "-ta" because the vowels in "balık" are back vowels.
2-We have to add "-ta" at last because the last consonant "k" is a strong consonant.
Balıkta = In/on/at fish
NOTE: We say this word without an article, we don't use the articles eveytime in Turkish unless we add the word "bir" (a/one) or the suffix "-ı/-i/-u/-ü/-yı/yi/yu/yü" for the accusative case (equals to "the" in English).
Now let's check out The Ottoman Turkish writing:
Here I have to show the alphabet table...
As you can see, there are several letters for "s", "z", "t", "n", "k" and "h". However, they have some differences. Let's tell this on the same word, "balık".
B -> There is only one phoneme for it in The Ottoman Turkish alphabet, so we directly use it....
ب = B
A -> Here we have to know a writing rule... In Turkish origin words, you have to add the letter alef after the first consonant if you want to describe the sound "ah". So we attach the next letter...
ا = A , با = BA
L -> We just simply add this like B because there is only one letter for this sound.
ل = L , بال = BAL
I -> This sound equals "e" in "the". This is a back vowel. Now, everything changes here... We don't have a special letter for this sound actually. We only have yi/i. So we can turn this front vowel into a back vowel! However, we will make it when we come to the last letter.
ي = Y/İ , بالى = BALI
K -> Just check out the previous letter, and remember that we want to turn it into a back vowel. In this situation, we have two different letters for the sound "K"... Qaf and kef.... Aha, so we have "qaf" for back vowels... We put it and make the previous sound a back vowel.
ق = K (we don't use q in Turkish, but know that it is actually "q") , باليق = BALIK
Pretty logical, no? ;)
Turkish language wasn't born AGAIN after the langauge reform in Turkey.
I just want to emphasize the word "AGAIN" yet again. You don't have to learn linguistics to understand the underlined sentence I wrote above. Why? I have told this again and again in real life, now I tell the same thing again here...
A language cannot be born if it died once. Humans can be born again when they died once? Unless they are zombies or Frankensteins, then the answer is no... Languages are just like humans. They are born, develop, breathe, get old, and finally die. Just like Latin or Old Prussian.
Don't tell me about Hebrew, since it has never been died. If you don't see someone, that doesn't mean that person is dead, he/she may be just hiding in somewhere. Hebrew was also in the same situation.
And remember that you acquire your native language when you are children. From the other native speakers of course. It is impossible to acquire Latin as a native language in the 21st century since it's already dead... This is also so for any other languages, including the Turkish language as well...
I hope that it was helpful. I just wanted to inform foreigners about the Ottoman Turkish. I had no other purposes but it.
See you in another blog post, have a good day! ^_^
OKAY, STOP!
I still want to kill myself for writing this, ugh... Even though I wasn't serious, really, those are the words that makes me feel sick like hell. Yes, you can hear from so many people that Ottoman Turkish was "Arabic" or something, they would say you such things, really. It's so funny and sad. Of course I don't expect them to read Ottoman scripts, but at least, they have to have the correct informations about their own language, which is also my language.
Wait, we were talking about the Ottoman Turkish, not about the modern Turkey Turkish....??
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you the truths about the Ottoman Turkish, under a linguistical view...
The Ottoman Turkish is not a spoken language.
Yes, one of the differences between the modern Turkish and the Ottoman Turkish is the writing system, which makes Turkish people think that they are so different languages. Now we write in Latin alphabet, but it was Arabic alphabet back then. And it doesn't make it Arabic because of this. Urdu and Farsi are also written in Arabic letters, but they aren't even in the same language family. Turkish is written in Latin alphabet but it is not a Indo-European language. Same thing! You even don't have to know linguistics, if you think a bit, you would understand this. However, I don't understand some people really -_-
Let's think about the earlier Turkish... Before Turks became Muslims... They believed in the holy and only God, Göktengri (Göktanrı in the modern Turkish), they didn't know about the Arabic alphabet, they used Orkhun alphabet, which looked like Old Viking Rhunes. It was the Turkish with no Arabic, Persian, or French words. That was the original Turkish, which had the same writing logic with the Ottoman scripts (I'm going to tell about it as well.). And guess what, some Turkish people accept Göktürk writings as their own language, but not the Ottoman scripts.
However, what is the reason for that?
The Ottoman Turkish has no specific definition.
Yes, because there are two different branches for it actually:
1-The Palace Language
The Palace Language was the language of well educated and wisdom people. Those people were mostly worked or lived in the palace. Political documents and palace poems (Tr: Divan Şiiri) had so many Arabic and Persian words with some grammatical stuff, Turkish origin words were much less.
2-The Folk Language
Unlike today's Anatolian Turkish, there were no French words since French wasn't an international language those times. However, if you examine today's Anatolian Turkish and those times' Anatolian Turkish, you cannot see many differences except some natural differences.
Diachronocity exists in every language. Seeing some sound differences through the time is acceptable anyway. Like the word "good/well", "iyi" in Turkish:
Edgü-> Eygü -> Eyü -> Eyi -> İyi
8th century -> 12th century -> 13th century -> 18th century -> 20th century
The Ottoman Empire Term: 1299-1922
Since I come from a farmer family, I had to chance to see the city and the regional language. My mother has always used old words because she saw so from her family. For example, I use "iyi" because I grown up in city, but she uses "eyi". She also use a lot of old words that aren't used in cities anymore. She taught me a lot about it as well.
Reading Turkish with Arabic letters is not a hard thing unlike what you think.
Most of people think the same thing; The Ottoman Turkish is too hard to read, so Latin letters are much better and useful. No, it isn't. Yes, Turkish with Latin letters is much easier and simple. However, you only put the phonemes letter by letter. However, The Ottoman Turkish requires some logic to read and write. However, it doesn't make it a hard system. It's not like Persian or Arabic anyway. Arabic is a semitic language, Persian is an Indo-European language, but Turkish is an Altaic language.
Uralic and Altaic languages has a common trait; we call it "vowel harmony". In these languages, vowels are important, and we classify them as "labial harmony" and "palatal harmony". We put the suffixes and any other things in those languages according to this rule. Front and back vowels are important in this point as well.
For example, think about the word "balık" (means fish). And think that we have to conjugate it with the locative case (in/on/at).
Locative case: -de, -da, -te, -ta
So, which one are we going to use? Let's check out the word first... "Balık"...
a and ı are back vowels. Also "k" is a strong consonant. So...
1-We have to add "-da" or "-ta" because the vowels in "balık" are back vowels.
2-We have to add "-ta" at last because the last consonant "k" is a strong consonant.
Balıkta = In/on/at fish
NOTE: We say this word without an article, we don't use the articles eveytime in Turkish unless we add the word "bir" (a/one) or the suffix "-ı/-i/-u/-ü/-yı/yi/yu/yü" for the accusative case (equals to "the" in English).
Now let's check out The Ottoman Turkish writing:
Here I have to show the alphabet table...
As you can see, there are several letters for "s", "z", "t", "n", "k" and "h". However, they have some differences. Let's tell this on the same word, "balık".
B -> There is only one phoneme for it in The Ottoman Turkish alphabet, so we directly use it....
ب = B
A -> Here we have to know a writing rule... In Turkish origin words, you have to add the letter alef after the first consonant if you want to describe the sound "ah". So we attach the next letter...
ا = A , با = BA
L -> We just simply add this like B because there is only one letter for this sound.
ل = L , بال = BAL
I -> This sound equals "e" in "the". This is a back vowel. Now, everything changes here... We don't have a special letter for this sound actually. We only have yi/i. So we can turn this front vowel into a back vowel! However, we will make it when we come to the last letter.
ي = Y/İ , بالى = BALI
K -> Just check out the previous letter, and remember that we want to turn it into a back vowel. In this situation, we have two different letters for the sound "K"... Qaf and kef.... Aha, so we have "qaf" for back vowels... We put it and make the previous sound a back vowel.
ق = K (we don't use q in Turkish, but know that it is actually "q") , باليق = BALIK
Pretty logical, no? ;)
Turkish language wasn't born AGAIN after the langauge reform in Turkey.
I just want to emphasize the word "AGAIN" yet again. You don't have to learn linguistics to understand the underlined sentence I wrote above. Why? I have told this again and again in real life, now I tell the same thing again here...
A language cannot be born if it died once. Humans can be born again when they died once? Unless they are zombies or Frankensteins, then the answer is no... Languages are just like humans. They are born, develop, breathe, get old, and finally die. Just like Latin or Old Prussian.
Don't tell me about Hebrew, since it has never been died. If you don't see someone, that doesn't mean that person is dead, he/she may be just hiding in somewhere. Hebrew was also in the same situation.
And remember that you acquire your native language when you are children. From the other native speakers of course. It is impossible to acquire Latin as a native language in the 21st century since it's already dead... This is also so for any other languages, including the Turkish language as well...
I hope that it was helpful. I just wanted to inform foreigners about the Ottoman Turkish. I had no other purposes but it.
See you in another blog post, have a good day! ^_^
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