Turkish language

Turkish ( , , also known as 'Turkish of Turkey') 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.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Perso-Arabic script-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with the Latin script-based Turkish alphabet.

Turkish grammar is characterized by extensive agglutination and is generally very regular. The basic word order is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. Other notable grammatical features include evidentiality, converbs, and a variety of tenses, aspects, and moods.

Turkish phonology is marked by vowel harmony; native words typically contain only front () or back () vowels, a phenomenon known as palatal harmony. In addition, certain suffixes exhibit a fourfold harmony that also includes rounding harmony among high vowels. While most suffixes agree with vowel harmony, there are some exceptions. Loanwords are not required to follow this rule.

Turkish has a word accent system that has been described as either stress- or pitch-based. Most native words are accented on the last syllable, though this can vary due to suffixes. Meanwhile, loanwords vary considerably in this regard.

Over 80% of Turkish vocabulary stems from native Turkic, with significant contributions from Ottoman-era Arabic, French, and Persian loanwords, as well as smaller contributions from Italian, Greek, and English. Many loanwords, especially those from Arabic, were replaced by Turkish coinages during the Turkish language reform due to prevailing ideas of linguistic purism.

The language makes usage of honorifics and has a strong T–V distinction which distinguishes varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms can be used for referring to a single person out of respect.

Classification

Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of the Turkic family. Other members include Azerbaijani, spoken in Azerbaijan and north-west Iran, Gagauz of Gagauzia, Qashqai of south Iran, and Turkmen of Turkmenistan.

Historically, the Turkic language family was considered part of the larger Altaic language family, along with the Japanese, Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families. Some linguists have also proposed including other language families.

Altaic theory has fallen out of favour since the 1960s, and a majority of linguists now consider Turkic languages to be unrelated to any other language family, though the Altaic hypothesis still has a small degree of support from individual linguists. The nineteenth-century Ural-Altaic theory, which grouped Turkish with Finnish, Hungarian and Altaic languages, is considered even less plausible in light of Altaic's rejection. The theory was based mostly on the fact these languages share three features: agglutination, vowel harmony and lack of grammatical gender. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Old Turkic alphabet, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to a superficial similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets.

With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (–11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia all the way to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz—the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language—into Anatolia during the 11th century. Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk ().

Ottoman Turkish

thumb|The 15th century [[Book of Dede Korkut]]

Following the adoption of Islam around the year 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of Persian poetic meters and a great quantity of imported Persian words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire period (–1922) is termed Ottoman Turkish, which borrowed heavily from Persian and Arabic that differed considerably from today's modern Turkish, was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish. The everyday Turkish, known as or 'vulgar Turkish', spoken by the less-educated, lower and also rural members of Ottoman society, contained a higher percentage of native vocabulary and served as the basis for the modern Turkish language.

While visiting the region between Adıyaman and Adana, Evliya Çelebi recorded the "Turkman language" and compared it with his own Turkish:

{| class="wikitable" align="center"

|+ Comparison of 17th-century Southern Anatolian Turkman, 17th-century elite, and modern standard Turkish dialects

|- align="left"

! Turkman language

! Ottoman Turkish

! Modern Turkish

! English

| || || || prophet

| || || || imam

| || || || mighty God

| || || || mosque

| , , || || , , || bread, lavash, boortsog

| || || || wine

| || || || Where were you?

| || || || Where are you going?

| || || || Will you wear ?

| || || || My stomach hurt.

| || || || He/She/It became urban.

Language reform and modern Turkish

After the foundation of the modern state of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origins with Turkish equivalents. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.

Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic and Persian origins, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is considered particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used the formal style of Ottoman Turkish that had been common at the time amongst statesmen and the educated strata of society in the setting of formal speeches and documents. After the language reform, the Turkish education system discontinued the teaching of literary Ottoman Turkish, and over time the speaking and writing ability of society atrophied to the point that later generations of Turkish speakers would perceive the speech as sounding so alien that it had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995.

The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as Turkic to replace the Arabic-derived , ("political party")—also failed to meet with popular approval (the Arabic loanword has been replaced by the French loanword ).

Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:

{| class="wikitable"

! align=left | Ottoman Turkish

! align=left | Modern Turkish

! align=left | English translation

! align=left | Ottoman etymology

! align=left | Modern derivation

| () || || triangle

| Arabic ()

| Compound of the noun ('three') and the suffix

| () || || aeroplane

| Arabic (), 'birds, flying'

| Derived from the verb ('to fly'). The word was first proposed to mean "airport".

| () || || ratio

| Arabic ()

| The old word is still used in the language today together with the new one. The modern word is from the Old Turkic verb ('to cut').

| () || || north

| Persian (), 'north'

| Derived from the Old Turkic noun ('cold and dark place', 'shadow'). The word is restored from Middle Turkic usage.

| () || || October

| Arabic (), 'autumn' + 'the first [month of]'

| The noun means 'sowing', referring to the planting of cereal seeds in autumn, which is widespread in Turkey

Geographic distribution

Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. The Turkish language is mutually intelligible with Azerbaijani. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Iraq, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany; and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

thumb|right|upright|An advertisement by the [[IKEA branch in Berlin written in the German and Turkish languages.]]

In 2005, 93% of the population of Turkey were native speakers of Turkish, about 67 million at the time, with Kurdish languages making up most of the remainder.

Azerbaijani is the official language of Azerbaijan and is mutually intelligible with Turkish. Speakers of the two languages can usually understand each other, particularly in everyday conversations. Turkey and Azerbaijan have very good relations, and many Turkish companies and government agencies invest in Azerbaijan. Consequently, Turkey exerts significant influence over Azerbaijan. However, the growing presence of Turkish in Azerbaijan, coupled with the tendency of many children to use Turkish words instead of Azerbaijani ones due to satellite TV, has raised concerns that the unique characteristics of Azerbaijani may be eroded. Many bookstores sell Turkish books alongside Azerbaijani ones. Agalar Mahmadov, a leading intellectual, has expressed concern that Turkish has "already started to take over the national and natural dialects of Azerbaijan." Nevertheless, Turkish is not as prevalent as Russian as a foreign language.

Official status

Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. Turkish has official status in 38 municipalities in Kosovo, including Mamusha,, two in the Republic of North Macedonia and two in Iraq.

Dialects

Standard Turkish is based on the dialect of Istanbul. This Istanbul Turkish () constitutes the model of written and spoken Turkish, as recommended by Ziya Gökalp, Ömer Seyfettin and others.

Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and in the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academic researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as or , leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these words. Several universities, as well as a dedicated work-group of the Turkish Language Association, carry out projects investigating Turkish dialects. work continued on the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect-atlas of the Turkish language. Although the Ottoman alphabet, being more phonetically ambiguous than the Latin script, encoded for many of the dialectal variations between Turkish dialects, the modern Latin script fails to do this. Examples of this are the presence of the nasal velar sound [ŋ] in certain eastern dialects of Turkish which was represented by the Ottoman letter but that was merged into in the Latin script. Additionally are letters such as which make the sounds [ɣ], [q], and [x], respectively in certain eastern dialects but that are merged into [g], [k], and [h] in western dialects and are therefore defectively represented in the Latin alphabet for speakers of eastern dialects.

thumb|Map of the main subgroups of [[Turkish dialects across Southeast Europe and the Middle East.]]

Some immigrants to Turkey from Rumelia speak Rumelian Turkish, which includes the distinct dialects of Ludogorie, Dinler, and Adakale, which show the influence of the theorized Balkan sprachbund. is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörüks of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.

The Meskhetian Turks who live in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia as well as in several Central Asian countries, also speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, originating in the areas of Kars, Ardahan, Artvin, Diyarbakır and Erzurum and sharing similarities with Azerbaijani, the language of Azerbaijan.

The Central Anatolia Region speaks . , spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax; it is also known as Laz dialect (not to be confused with the Laz language). is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. Karamanli Turkish () is an extinct dialect that was spoken in what is now Karaman. It was the literary standard for the Karamanlides.

Phonology

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+ Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish

! colspan="2" |

! Labial

! Dental/ Alveolar

! Post- alveolar

! Palatal

! Velar

!Glottal

! colspan="2" | Nasal

! rowspan="2" | Stop

| ()

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

| rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" | Approximant

| ()

! colspan="2" | Tap

The phoneme that is usually referred to as ("soft g"), written in Turkish orthography, represents a vowel sequence or a rather weak bilabial approximant between rounded vowels, a weak palatal approximant between unrounded front vowels, and a vowel sequence elsewhere. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel. At least one source claims Turkish consonants are laryngeally-specified three-way fortis-lenis (aspirated/neutral/voiced) like Armenian, though they only appear this way at the end of a syllable or at the start of certain suffixes, where they can interact with other morphemes. Some words end in an underlying voiced consonant that remains voiced at the end of the word. Similarly, suffixes beginning with a voiced consonant become voiceless only after a word ending in an underlying "aspirated" consonant. Other words, such as ("wing") end in an underlying "neutral" consonant that becomes devoiced only at the end of a word. Certain words and suffixes such as ("art") and the relative suffix contain an underlying "aspirated" stop that does not voice between vowels.

{| class="sortable wikitable"

|+ "Voiced" stops

!Underlying consonant

!Underlying form

!Dictionary form

!Dative case

!Meaning

|b|||||||||||name

|c|| || ||saca||sheet metal

|d||||||||fire (archaic)

|g||||||||algae (loan)

|g||||||||psychologist (loan)

{| class="sortable wikitable"

|+ "Neutral" stops

!Underlying consonant

!Voiced form

!Underlying form

!Dictionary form

!Dative case / 1sg present

!Meaning

|p||b||*kitab||kitap||kitaba||book (loan)

|p||c|| *uc || uç||uca||tip

|t||d||||||||wing

|k||g||||||||color (loan)

|k||g||||||||bread

{| class="sortable wikitable"

|+ "Aspirated" stops

!Underlying consonant

!Underlying form

!Dictionary form

!Dative case / 1sg present

!Meaning

|pʰ||||||||stem

|çʰ||||||||hair

|tʰ||*but||but||buta||thigh

|kʰ||||||||bench (loan)

|kʰ||||||||law (loan)

Native nouns of two or more syllables that end in /k/ in dictionary form are nearly all /g/ in underlying form. However, most verbs and monosyllabic nouns are underlyingly /k/. Vowels are classified [±back], [±round] and [±high].

The only vowels in hiatus in the language are found in loanwords and may be categorised as falling diphthongs usually analyzed as a sequence of /j/ and a vowel. This principle is expressed in Turkish through three rules:

If the first vowel of a word is a back vowel, any subsequent vowel is also a back vowel; if the first is a front vowel, any subsequent vowel is also a front vowel.

The second and third rules minimize muscular effort during speech. More specifically, they are related to the phenomenon of labial assimilation: if the lips are rounded (a process that requires muscular effort) for the first vowel they may stay rounded for subsequent vowels. and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:

twofold ():