Analyzing the Turkish language and it’s reform

Before delving into the topic lets delve into the history of the Turkic languages (e.g. Turkish, Uzbek, Turkmen, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, etc.) Turkish was descended from Old Anatolian Oghuz (12th-15th centuries) which was descended from Early Oghuz (8th-11th centuries) [the language of the Oghuz Yabgu State and the Seljukid Turcomans] which was descended from Proto-Oghuz [5th-8th centuries] which is a reconstructed but undocumented sister of the historically well-documented East Old Turkic (6th-9th centuries) [the language of the Gokturk, Old Uyghur, Yenisei Kyrgyz texts]. Proto-Oghuz, Proto-Kypchak, Proto-Karluk, Proto-Khalaj, Proto-Yakut-Dolgan, Proto-Sayan and several other old Turkic languages were descended from Proto Common Turkic which came to existence in around 500 BC. Both Proto Common Turkic and Proto Oghur Turkic (the ancestor of Hun, Bulgar-Chuvash, Khazar, Onoghur languages) were descended from Proto-Turkic (formed in around 3000 BC, dissolved into two languages at around 500 BC).

Alphabets used throughout the history of the Turkish language

The first documented Turkic alpahbet was used by the Celestial Turks (Gokturks) in Central-Asia, it’s called the Turkic runiform script. It was used by the Gokturks, the early Uyghurs, the Yenisei Kyrgyz (and probably by the early Oghuzes of the Oghuz Yabgu State, the early Khazars and the early Kypcaks as well) in the 6th-10th centuries AD.

The Göktürk variant and the Yenisei Kyrgyz variant:

Old Turkic runifrom script (Gokturk variant)

The Old Uyghur variants: 

Irk Bitig or Irq Bitig (Old Turkic: 𐰃𐰺𐰴 𐰋𐰃𐱅𐰃𐰏‎), known as the Book of Omens or Book of Divination in English, is a 9th-century manuscript book on divination that was discovered in the “Library Cave” of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, by Aurel Stein in 1907, and is now in the collection of the British Library in London, England. See Wikipedia

The Perso-Arabic alphabet

Characters in Ottoman Alphabet. Ottoman alphabet has 5 more additional characters than Arabic alphabet which consists of 28 basic characters. Ottoman characters which are different from Arabic are indicated with bounding rectangles.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the founding father of Turkey

 

Why was the Arabic Alphabet not suitable for Turkish?

With a simple, unpretentious and precise expression: Why is the Arabic alphabet not suitable for Turkish, why not only Turkey but all Turkic states have switched to the Latin alphabet? Let’s explain.

The first reason for this is that there are no letters to match the sounds of Turkish in the Arabic letters. For example, there are no vowels that can distinguish o, ö, u, ü. The letter denoting the letter “v” is used to denote all these vowels. The letter that shows the “y” sound also shows the “ı, i” sounds in the same way. So there is no vowel distinction.

The second main reason is that there is no general use of vowels in between. This is a feature of Arabic being a twisted tongue. For example, if you want to write “Hi”, you write “Slam” (سلام). It is now up to the creativity of the reader whether it is read as “Hello” or “Salami”. Well, why don’t the Arabs confuse while reading, because there are patterns in Arabic and it is read according to these patterns, but Turkish is not such a patterned language, it is an agglutinative language.

Literacy in Turkey, 1924

There are 3 consonants in the root of a word in Arabic, it is the same in Hebrew as it is related, and these 3 consonants remain original and are read through various patterns in order to derive words. Words are derived with these patterns, for example: “kitab, kutub (books), katib (book writer), ketebe (scribes), letter, school”. they all depend on the k-t-b root. However, since Turkish is not such a language and has no patterns, it cannot be understood how it is read in every syllable. for this, vowels must also be written in intermediate syllables.

Introduction of the new Turkish alphabet in Kayseri, on 20 September 1928.

It is useful to say that the Arabic alphabet is not the only alphabet used by the Turks in history. There are also Göktürk and Uyghur alphabets, even if you look at the codex Cumanicus, the Latin alphabet was also used in the Kipchak period. Göktürk and Uyghur alphabets have been used for hundreds of years. For example, Turks started to use the Arabic alphabet during the Karakhanid period, but they wrote works in the Uyghur alphabet long after the Karakhanid period, even in the 15th century. That is, they did not leave one and move on to the other, this is a historical process. The Arabic alphabet was used for many years, but they had to adapt it to Turkish due to the deficiencies of the Arabic alphabet. For example, they invented a new letter for the spelling of the “ng” sound, a sound unique to Turkish and other various Turkic languages (e.g. Uyghur, Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek). Apart from this, they have developed various writing methods. In other words, the Arabic alphabet is not a perfect alphabet as some see it, it is even one of the most problematic alphabets. Today, the phonetics of many historical dialects are still not fully known.

Finally: The 1926 Baku Turkology Congress was the first and last one held jointly with the Turkic states. This congress is dedicated to İsmail Gaspıralı, who is considered the father of the Pan-Turkist movement. The second congress was held in Turkmenistan, but Germans and Russians also participated in this congress due to their interest in Turkology and the Russians objected because they could not manipulate the congress in Turkmenistan. Afterwards, assassinations were organized against the Turkologists who participated in this congress, and their continuation could not be made. They switched to the Cyrillic alphabet under the pressure of Stalin, but different variations of Cyrillic alphabets were taught to reduce their intelligibility with each other.

What about other Turkic-speaking states?

The first Turkic state to change to Latin letters was Azerbaijan in 1919 (it was previously used by the Gagauz). Turkey’s transition to the Latin alphabet is based on the joint decision taken at the 1926 Baku Turkology Congress. (see: first Turkology congress)

Along with Turkey, many Turkic states have switched to the Latin alphabet as well. For example, in 1929, the Kazakhs switched to the Latin alphabet and used this alphabet until 1940, see.

Likewise, 1 year after the Baku Congress, in 1927 (i.e. 1 year before Turkey), the Kyrgyz adopted the Latin alphabet, see.

If you think that only these Turkic states have accepted the Latin alphabet, you are wrong, in the same way, Turkmenistan is one of the Turkic countries that switched to the Latin alphabet in 1928, see.

In 1929, Uzbeks, another Turkic state, also switched to the Latin alphabet, see.

In short, this was not only Atatürk’s decision, Atatürk had the idea of making a letter revolution in his mind, but this was a joint decision taken by the Turkic peoples in 1926. Although they complied with this decision for decades, they could not continue as a result of the Russian occupation and switched to the Cyrillic alphabet. Today, however, the Turkic states have switched to the Latin alphabet again or are in the transition phase.

The language reform

Meeting of the Turkish Language Association, 1933.

Modern Standard Turkish did only borrowed the Mongolic suffix -tai (see Qurultai) to coin the terms Danıştay (the Council of State), Kamutay (the Parliament), Sayıştay (the Court of Accounts), Yargıtay (the Court of Cassation a.k.a. Supreme Court of Appeals) from Turkish word roots, and borrowed the Kypchak Turkic deverbal suffix -w/v to coin the nouns görev (task, mission), işlev (function), ödev (duty, homework), söylev (oration, harangue, allocution), türev (derivative) from Turkish verbs.

TDK (Türk Dil Kurumu “Turkish Language Association”) borrowing that Kypchak suffix was a totally unnecessary move since Turkish had already got the Oghuz Turkic cognate of it, which is -(y)ı/i/u/ü, related to the East Old Turkic deverbal suffix -(s)ıġ/ig/uġ/üg. Turkish had already had nouns containing that Oghuz deverbal suffix: abartı (exaggeration, overstatement), batı (west; related to EOT batsıġ “west”), çatı (roof, roofing), çeki (an Ottoman unit of mass, roughly equivalent to 256 kg), doğu (east; related to EOT toġsuġ “east”), gezi (trip, travel; related to EOT kezig), gömü (burial, buried treasure), görü (vision, sight, sense), kazı (digging, excavation), ölü (dead; related to EOT ölüg “dead”), saçı (a Turkic superstitious tradition performed during wedding ceremonies), sanı (imagination; supposition, assumption), satı (sale [noun]), sevi (romantic love), sunu (supply, offering), takı (jewelry), yakı (cataplasm), yapı (structure, build [noun]; related to EOT yapıġ), yatı (sleepover), yazı (writing, script, text; related to EOT yazıġ). Therefore, TDK should’ve produced the words göreyi, işleyi, ödeyi, söyleyi, türeyi instead, by using that Oghuz suffix which is related to the Kypchak suffix TDK borrowed.

The 86% of modern Turkish vocabulary consists of pure Turkish words.
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary — Wikipedia

Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin

The Ottoman literary language was used by the elite and the wannabe-elite. Most of Turkish commoners (ordinary city/town dwellers, villagers, semi-nomads, etc.) spoke what was called Kaba Türkçe (“Vulgar Turkish”). It had much less Persian & Arabic loan words and much more Oghuz Turkic words than Ottoman Turkish did.

Ottoman Turkish language — Wikipedia

Modern standard Turkish is based on the Istanbulite variant of Kaba Türkçe. There were several other variants of course. Some of the Anatolian ones were more archaic and had more Turkic words compared to the Istanbulite one. Below is a map of Anatolia’s Turkish dialectal diversity:

In the early years of the republic, all civil cervants / government officials were required to create a list of Kaba Türkçe words (that don’t exist in the Ottoman literary language) gathered from the local commoners (especially from those living in small towns and rural areas) and send it to the TDK (Turkish Language Association) headquarters in Ankara. TDK used those lists to publish a 12 volumes-long dictionary. It’s called Derleme Sözlüğü (“Compilation Dictionary”) a.k.a. Türkiye Türkçesi Ağızları Sözlüğü (“Dictionary of the Dialectal Varieties of Turkey’s Turkic”). It’s accessible on the Internet. A large number of words in that dictionary got incorporated into modern standard Turkish, so basically, Turkish borrowed from itself. Besides, TDK produced a lot of new Turkish words to replace the Arabic, Persian and Western European terminologies (technical, academic, cultural…) by adding Turkish suffixes to Turkish word roots or by creating compound words from two Turkish nouns. Many modern Turkish words were created using those methods. 

On a side note, the modern Kyrgyz word учак (uchak) “airplane” and the modern Kazakh word ұшақ (ushaq) “airplane” were copied from Turkish uçak “airplane”, a word created by TDK. The modern Kyrgyz words эгемен “independent” & эгемендик (egemendik) “independence” and the modern Kazakh words егемен “sovereign” & егемендік (egemendik) “sovereignity” were copied from modern Turkish egemen “sovereign” & egemenlik “sovereignity”.