Turkish language

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. == History ==

'' or "Book of Divination" The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia. Erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the Second Turkic Khaganate (dated 682–744 CE). 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 '' 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: 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: == 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. 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 ==

Modern 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. 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 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. 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 (): In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]). The following examples, based on the copula 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of i-type vowel harmony in practice: ("it is Turkey"), ("it is a door"), but ("it is day"), ("it is a coat"). Exceptions to vowel harmony These are four word-classes that are exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony: • Native, non-compound words, e.g. ' ("also"), ' ("light brown"), ' ("apple"_, ' ("which"), ' ("where"), ' ("to believe"), ' ("sibling"), ' ("fat"), '''' ("mother") • Native compound words, e.g. ' ("today"), ' ("gossip"), '''' ("come on") • Foreign words, e.g. '''' (4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the by consonant alternation): The rules of vowel harmony may vary by regional dialect. Old Anatolian Turkish had a reduced form of this feature and lacked rounding harmony. The Trabzon dialect in northeastern Turkey still exhibits this feature today. Additionally, this dialect lacks the vowels () and (), so front-back harmony is absent. In Old Anatolian Turkish, the second-person singular possessive suffix harmonized with the preceding vowel, appearing as either or . For example, means "your hand," and means "your book." However, the absence of the vowel in the Trabzon dialect means that the form is used in both cases: and . == Word-accent ==

With the exceptions stated below, Turkish words are oxytone (accented on the last syllable). Exceptions to word-accent rules • Place-names are not oxytone: ' (Anatolia), '. Most place names are accented on their first syllable as in . This holds true when place names are spelled the same way as common nouns, which are oxytone: ' (maize), ' (Egypt), ' (vinegar-seller), ' (district in Istanbul), ' (doll, baby), ' (district in Istanbul), ' (army), ' (a Turkish city on the Black Sea). • Foreign nouns usually retain their original accentuation, e.g., ' (< Italian "restaurant"), ' (< Italian "newspaper") • Some words about family members and living creatures have irregular accentuation: ' (mother), ' (husband's sister), ' (grasshopper), ' (ant), '''' (skunk) • Adverbs are usually accented on the first syllable, e.g., ' (now), ' (after), ' (suddenly), ' (really), (but ' (from reality)), ' (during winter) • Compound words are accented on the end of the first element, e.g., ' (stark naked), ' (minister), '''' (prime minister) • Diminutives constructed by suffix –cik are accented on the first syllable, e.g., '''' (very tiny) • Words with enclitic suffixes, –le (meaning "with"), –ken (meaning "while"), –ce (creating an adverb), –leyin (meaning "in" or "during"), –me (negating the verbal stem), –yor (denoting the present tense) • Enclitic words, which shift the accentuation to the previous syllable, e.g., ol- (meaning to be), mi (denoting a question), gibi (meaning similar to), için (for), ki (that), de (too) == Syntax ==

Sentence groups Turkish has two groups of sentences: verbal and nominal sentences. In the case of a verbal sentence, the predicate is a finite verb, while the predicate in nominal sentence will have either no overt verb or a verb in the form of the copula or (variants of "be"). Examples of both are given below: Negation The two groups of sentences have different ways of forming negation. A nominal sentence can be negated with the addition of the word . For example, the sentence above would become ('Necla is not a teacher'). However, the verbal sentence requires the addition of a negative suffix to the verb (the suffix comes after the stem but before the tense): ('Necla did not go to school'). Yes/no questions In the case of a verbal sentence, an interrogative clitic is added after the verb and stands alone, for example ('Did Necla go to school?'). In the case of a nominal sentence, then comes after the predicate but before the personal ending, so for example ? ('Necla, are you [formal, plural] a teacher?'). Immediately preverbal Consider the following simple sentence which demonstrates that the focus in Turkish is on the element that immediately precedes the verb: Postpredicate The postpredicate position signifies what is referred to as background information in Turkish — information that is assumed to be known to both the speaker and the listener, or information that is included in the context. Consider the following examples: This has direct implications for word order as it is possible for the subject to be included in the verb-phrase in Turkish. There can be S/O inversion in sentences where the topic is of greater importance than the subject. == Grammar ==

Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. Nouns Gender Turkish does not have grammatical gender and the sex of a person does not affect the forms of words. The third-person pronoun '''' may refer to "he", "she" or "it." Despite this lack, Turkish still has ways of indicating gender in nouns: • Most domestic animals have male and female forms, e.g., ' ("stallion"), ' ("mare"), ' ("bull"), ' ("cow"). • For other animals, the sex may be indicated by adding the word ' ("male") or ' ("female") before the corresponding noun, e.g., '''' ("female cat"). • For people, the female sex may be indicated by adding the word ' ("girl") or ' ("woman"), e.g., ' ("heroine") instead of ' ("hero"). • Some foreign words of French or Arabic origin already have separate female forms, e.g., ' ("actress"), ' ("female clerk"). • The Serbo-Croat feminine suffix is used in three borrowings: ' (queen), ' ("empress") and ' ("tsarina"). This suffix was also used in the neologism ' ("goddess") (2); future (2); indirect/inferential past (4); and aorist (2 or 4). The most important function of some of these attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The subject of the verb in an 2 form is (possibly implicitly) in the third person (he/she/it/they); this form, when used in a modifying phrase, does not change according to number. The other attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (2) and an older form (4), which covers both present and past meanings. These two forms take "personal endings," which have the same form as the possessive suffixes but indicate the person and possibly number of the subject of the attributive verb; for example, yediğim means "what I eat," yediğin means "what you eat," and so on. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. == Vocabulary ==

The latest 2011 edition of (Current Turkish Dictionary), the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 117,000 words organized into 93,000 entries. Word origins Around 86% of the Turkish vocabulary is of Turkic origin. The majority of the core vocabulary and the most commonly used words in Turkish, including those first acquired by children as they learn to speak, derive from Turkic. Nevertheless, Turkish vocabulary contains a significant number of loanwords from other languages, in which around 14% of Turkish words are of foreign origin. According to the Turkish Language Association, 6,463 of these foreign words come from Arabic, 4,974 from French, 1,374 from Persian, 632 from Italian, 538 from English, 399 from Greek, and 147 from Latin. In Turkish, there are many pairs of synonyms where one word is of foreign origin and the other of Turkic origin. These pairs are the result of the enrichment of the Turkish vocabulary with loanwords from Arabic, Persian and French, and of the Turkish language reform initiated in the early 20th century that aimed to restore foreign-origin words with Turkic equivalents. Word formation Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary. Turkish obeys certain principles when it comes to suffixation. Most suffixes in Turkish will have more than one form, depending on the vowels and consonants in the root- vowel harmony rules will apply; consonant-initial suffixes will follow the voiced/ voiceless character of the consonant in the final unit of the root; and in the case of vowel-initial suffixes an additional consonant may be inserted if the root ends in a vowel, or the suffix may lose its initial vowel. There is also a prescribed order of affixation of suffixes- as a rule of thumb, derivative suffixes precede inflectional suffixes which are followed by clitics, as can be seen in the example set of words derived from a substantive root below: Another example, starting from a verbal root: New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. Compounds can be of two types- bare and . The bare compounds, both nouns and adjectives are effectively two words juxtaposed without the addition of suffixes for example the word for girlfriend () or black pepper (). A few examples of compound words are given below: However, the majority of compound words in Turkish are compounds, which means that the second word will be marked by the 3rd person possessive suffix. A few such examples are given in the table below (note vowel harmony): Idiomatic language Turkish has a wide variety of idioms derived from body parts. Unlike Western metaphors that connect the heart with love, Turkish speakers more often conceptualize the heart ( (the more commonly used one of the two in idioms) or ) as a container, bearer, or experiencer of negative emotions such as sadness, pity, distress, or fear. The eye is similarly used in a great number of idioms. Common metaphors for the eye include using it to represent a compartment or division of a physical object, a hole or gap, an object of love, a person or experiencer, perception, hunger, or a mental state. == Writing system ==

introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French ''L'Illustration'' magazine) Turkish is written using a version of Latin script introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, a version of Perso-Arabic script. The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowels—long ā, ū and ī—and included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels. As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original, pre-modern levels. The Latin alphabet was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th-century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas—"An apple does not fall far from its tree"). Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonemic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans); and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and . The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following and when these consonants represent and —almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters (q, w, x omitted and ç, ş, ğ, ı, ö, ü added); the complete list is: :a, b, c, ç, d, e, f, g, ğ, h, ı, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, ö, p, r, s, ş, t, u, ü, v, y, and z (Capital of i is İ and lowercase I is ı.) The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table: == Sample texts ==

Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın is a Turkish folk poem by the world-renowned poet and ashik Âşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973). İnsan Hakları Evrensel Bildirisi Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Turkish: : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: : International Phonetic Alphabet transcription: : == Turkish computer keyboard ==

Turkish language uses two standardised keyboard layouts, known as Turkish Q (QWERTY) and Turkish F, with Turkish Q being the most common. == See also ==