Turkish

Turkish, is known as an agglutinative language belonging to the Turkic languages family. It is generally spoken in the Southeastern Europe and the Western Asia. Turkish, known as the Western Oghuz language from the group of the Oghuz languages, which is a member of the Turkic languages family, also constitutes the continuation of Ottoman Turkish.

The geography, where Turkish is spoken, in general terms is known as particularly Turkey, and the Balkans, Cyprus and within the borders of the former Ottoman Empire located in the Middle East. It is known that there are approximately 100,000 Turkish speaking people in the world, placing Turkish among the top 20 most spoken languages. With a national official language status in Turkey, the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus, Turkish language should have been a language officially recognized by the European Union as well, as it was considered an official language essentially according to the provisions of the Constitution of Cyprus of 1960. However, for political reasons that are still inexplicable, Turkish is not accepted as an official language in the European Union.

Grammatical Features of Turkish

Turkish has common grammatical features with many Turkic languages. Examples include features such as agglutinative structure of words and vowel harmony. It has a sequence such as “subject-object-predicate” as sentence structure. However, it is also accepted as one of the most flexible languages worldwide in terms of syntax. For example, with a sentence as “Kaplan avcıyı öldürdü” (“The tiger killed the hunter”), as it is seen from the variety of sentences below created with the exact same words, different meanings can be captured with many intonations and syntax, although they express the same judgment:

“Kaplan öldürdü avcıyı”

“Avcıyı kaplan öldürdü”

“Avcıyı öldürdü kaplan”

“Öldürdü kaplan avcıyı”

“Öldürdü avcıyı kaplan”

Loanwords in Turkish

Turkish is a language influenced by many languages in terms of its vocabulary features. There are vocabularies borrowed from foreign languages such as Latin, Persian, French, English, and particularly Arabic. In addition, there is no grammar rule indicating masculine/feminine forms in Turkish, as opposed to some languages such as German. According to the current Turkish dictionary issued by the Turkish Language Association, 14% of the words in Turkish are those taken from different languages such as Persian, French, Greek, and particularly Arabic, while 86% of them are of Turkish origin.

Also, as Turkish has many words with similar connotations with languages such as Turkmen, Gagauz, Uyghur and Azerbaijani, which are among the Oghuz languages, it can be understood by people who speaks these languages. However, it should be noted that misunderstandings may occur in this linguistic relation with Turkic languages as some common words can have very different meanings. Standard Spelling Rules in Turkish The standard spelling rules in Turkish were always determined by the Turkish Language Association until the coup in September 12th, 1980. However, after the coup took place, the spelling rules, for which the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was the leading and responsible authority since its establishment, lost their consistency under the pressures of the political power, and the new guides on spelling rules were partially replaced with the old spelling standards. Especially given the problems such as political view on word formation and longing for the past as well as the confusion experienced in the circumflex accent used in the letters “a” and “i”, deep contradictions emerged regarding spelling rules. In addition to differences and disputes in the orthographic rules of the old TDK and the new TDK guides, confusion further increased when private publishing houses also published orthography guides. However, Ömer Asım Aksoy’s valuable work “Ana Yazım Kılavuzu” (Essential Guide of Spelling and Punctuation) published by Adam Publishing House has been accepted as one of the most reliable sources. Subdialects and Dialects Spoken in Turkish The standard form of Turkey Turkish is known as Istanbul Turkish (also referred to as “Laleli Turkish”). Turkish written language is also based on this subdialect. In addition, there are also various accents related to Turkish in the Middle East and the Southeastern Europe. These accents have various sound differences compared to Istanbul Turkish. Since alphabet reform realized by the Great Leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1928, the Latin alphabet started to be used, and these dialects and subdialects also started to be formed in accordance with the alphabet. Turkish Alphabet of Turkey:

A a (Â â), B b, C c, Ç ç, D d, E e, F f, G g, Ğ ğ, H h, I ı, i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, Ö ö, P p, [Q q], R r, S s, Ş ş, T t, U u (Û û), Ü ü, V v, [W w], [X x], Y y, Z z