Syrian Democratic Forces
83-656: The Seljuk Brigade ( Turkish : Selçuklular Tugayı , Arabic : لواء السلاجقة ) is or was a Syrian Turkmen rebel group participating in the Syrian Civil War , named after the Seljuk Turks . The Seljuk Brigade was founded in early 2013 in the northern Aleppo Governorate by Colonel Talal Ali Silo and was temporary a part of the Suleyman Shah Brigade. It was initially based in the mainly-Turkmen village of al-Rai , before its capture by
166-483: A tittle in the same way English does, with a dotted lowercase version, and a dotless uppercase version. Optional circumflex accents can be used with "â", "î" and "û" to disambiguate words with different meanings but otherwise the same spelling, or to indicate palatalisation of a preceding consonant (for example, while kar /kaɾ/ means "snow", kâr /caɾ/ means "profit"), or long vowels in loanwords , particularly from Arabic . In software development ,
249-655: A French-influenced Latinised rendering of Turkish in his private correspondence, as well as confide in Halide Edip in 1922 about his vision for a new alphabet. An early Latinisation of the Turkish language was made by Gyula Németh in his Türkische Grammatik , published in 1917, which had significant variations from the current script, for example using the Greek gamma where today's ğ would be used. Hagop Martayan (later Dilâçar) brought this to Mustafa Kemal's attention in
332-475: A form of consonant mutation whereby a voiced obstruent, such as /b d dʒ ɡ/ , is devoiced to [p t tʃ k] at the end of a word or before a consonant, but retains its voicing before a vowel. In loan words, the voiced equivalent of /k/ is /g/; in native words, it is /ğ/. This is analogous to languages such as German and Russian , but in the case of Turkish it only applies, as the above examples demonstrate, to stops and affricates, not to fricatives. The spelling
415-579: 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 poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire period ( c. 1299 –1922) is termed Ottoman Turkish , which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably and
498-469: A leading intellectual, voicing his concern that Turkish language has "already started to take over the national and natural dialects of Azerbaijan". However, the presence of Turkish as foreign language is not as high as Russian. In Uzbekistan, the second most populated Turkic country, a new TV channel Foreign Languages TV was established in 2022. This channel has been broadcasting Turkish lessons along with English, French, German and Russian lessons. Turkish
581-529: A multitude of Turkish companies and authorities investing there, while the influence of Turkey in the country is very high. The rising presence of this very similar language in Azerbaijan and the fact that many children use Turkish words instead of Azerbaijani words due to satellite TV has caused concern that the distinctive features of the language will be eroded. Many bookstores sell books in Turkish language along Azerbaijani language ones, with Agalar Mahmadov,
664-415: A negative suffix -me to the verb (the suffix comes after the stem but before the tense): Necla okula gitmedi ('Necla did not go to school'). In the case of a verbal sentence, an interrogative clitic mi is added after the verb and stands alone, for example Necla okula gitti mi? ('Did Necla go to school?'). In the case of a nominal sentence, then mi comes after the predicate but before
747-466: A number of different alphabets including Uyghur , Cyrillic , Arabic , Greek , Latin , and some other Asiatic writing systems. Ottoman Turkish was written using a Turkish form of the Arabic script for over 1,000 years. It was poorly suited to write works that incorporated a great deal of Arabic and Persian vocabulary as their spellings were largely unphonetic and thus had to be memorized. This created
830-413: A significant barrier of entry as only highly formal and prestige versions of Turkish were top heavy in Arabic and Persian vocabulary. Not only would students have trouble predicting the spellings of certain Arabic and Persian words, but some of these words were so rarely used in common speech that their spellings would not register in the collective conscious of students. However, it was much better suited to
913-613: 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 are used referring to a single person out of respect. 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
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#1732776378026996-654: 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
1079-407: A verb in the form of the copula ol or y (variants of "be"). Examples of both are given below: The two groups of sentences have different ways of forming negation. A nominal sentence can be negated with the addition of the word değil . For example, the sentence above would become Necla öğretmen değil ('Necla is not a teacher'). However, the verbal sentence requires the addition of
1162-453: Is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language , consisting of 29 letters, seven of which ( Ç , Ğ , I , İ , Ö , Ş and Ü ) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. Mandated in 1928 as part of Atatürk's Reforms , it
1245-477: Is based on the dialect of Istanbul . This Istanbul Turkish ( İstanbul Türkçesi ) 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 ağız or şive , leading to an ambiguity with
1328-410: Is highly regular and a word's pronunciation is usually identified by its spelling. Dotted and dotless I are separate letters, each with its own uppercase and lowercase forms. The lowercase form of I is ı , and the lowercase form of İ is i . (In the original law establishing the alphabet, the dotted İ came before the undotted I ; now their places are reversed.) The letter J , however, uses
1411-468: Is now used to mean " script " in computer science . Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are: 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
1494-673: Is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras. The Turkish alphabet has been the model for the official Latinization of several Turkic languages formerly written in the Arabic or Cyrillic script like Azerbaijani (1991), Turkmen (1993), and recently Kazakh (2021). The following table presents the Turkish letters, the sounds they correspond to in International Phonetic Alphabet and how these can be approximated more or less by an English speaker. Of
1577-696: 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 in Kirkuk Governorate in Iraq. Cyprus has requested the European Union to add Turkish as an official language, as it is one of the two official languages of the country. In Turkey,
1660-642: Is usually made to match the sound. However, in a few cases, such as ad 'name' (dative ada ), the underlying form is retained in the spelling (cf. at 'horse', dative ata ). Other exceptions are od 'fire' vs. ot 'herb', sac 'sheet metal', saç 'hair'. Most loanwords, such as kitap above, are spelled as pronounced, but a few such as hac 'hajj', şad 'happy', and yad 'strange' or 'stranger' also show their underlying forms. Native nouns of two or more syllables that end in /k/ in dictionary form are nearly all /ğ/ in underlying form. However, most verbs and monosyllabic nouns are underlyingly /k/. The vowels of
1743-431: Is usually referred to as yumuşak g ("soft g"), written ⟨ğ⟩ 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
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#17327763780261826-713: 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
1909-917: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in January 2014. As with the other Syrian Turkmen Brigades , the group was supplied and armed by Turkey , although tensions occurred between them after the capture of al-Rai due to Turkey favouring the Fatih Sultan Mehmed Brigade in Jarabulus , sending only a limited amount of arms to the Seljuk Brigade. It then joined the Army of Revolutionaries in August 2015, which became part of
1992-623: The Laz language ). Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. Karamanli Turkish is spoken in Greece, where it is called Kαραμανλήδικα . It is the literary standard for the Karamanlides . At least one source claims Turkish consonants are laryngeally-specified three-way fortis-lenis (aspirated/neutral/voiced) like Armenian, although only syllable-finally. The phoneme that
2075-773: 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. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic members of
2158-645: The Sanjak of Alexandretta (today's province of Hatay ), which was at that time under French control and would later join Turkey, the local Turkish-language newspapers adopted the Latin alphabet only in 1934. The reforms were also backed up by the Law on Copyrights , issued in 1934, encouraging and strengthening the private publishing sector. In 1939, the First Turkish Publications Congress
2241-528: 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
2324-826: The Syrian Democratic Forces in October 2015. The group's commander, Talal Silo , was present at the SDF formation announcement; furthermore, he announced the SDF's 2015 Al-Hawl offensive . In November 2017, Silo surrendered to Turkey . Unlike other Turkmen rebel groups, they are allied with the Kurdish People's Protection Units . The Seljuk Brigade in Manbij condemned the Turkish military intervention in Syria in late August 2016. On 10 September 2016 one of
2407-539: The Trabzon region of northeastern Turkey follows the reduced vowel harmony of Old Anatolian Turkish , with the additional complication of two missing vowels (ü and ı), thus there is no palatal harmony . It is likely that elün meant "your hand" in Old Anatolian. While the 2nd person singular possessive would vary between back and front vowel, -ün or -un, as in elün for "your hand" and kitabun for "your book",
2490-478: The Turkmen of Turkmenistan . Historically the Turkic family was seen as a branch of the larger Altaic family, including Japanese , Korean , Mongolian and Tungusic , with various other language families proposed for inclusion by linguists. 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
2573-544: The Young Turks movement, including Hüseyin Cahit , Abdullah Cevdet , and Celâl Nuri. The issue was raised again in 1923 during the first Economic Congress of the newly founded Turkish Republic, sparking a public debate that was to continue for several years. A move away from the Arabic script was strongly opposed by conservative and religious elements. It was argued that Romanisation of the script would detach Turkey from
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2656-437: The 29 letters, eight are vowels ( A , E , I , İ , O , Ö , U , Ü ); the other 21 are consonants. Dotted and dotless I are distinct letters in Turkish such that ⟨i⟩ becomes ⟨İ⟩ when capitalised, ⟨I⟩ being the capital form of ⟨ı⟩. Turkish also adds a circumflex over the back vowels ⟨â⟩ and ⟨û⟩ following ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, or ⟨l⟩ when these consonants represent /c/ , /ɟ/ , and /l/ (instead of /k/ , /ɡ/ , and /ɫ/ ): In
2739-519: 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. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are
2822-475: The Latin alphabet for speakers of eastern dialects. 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 . Kıbrıs Türkçesi is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots . Edirne is the dialect of Edirne . Ege is spoken in
2905-567: 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 /ڭ/ but that was merged into /n/ in the Latin script. Additionally are letters such as /خ/, /ق/, /غ/ 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
2988-403: The Ottoman government and instilling updated Turkish values, such as: "Atatürk allied himself with the nation and drove the sultans out of the homeland"; "Taxes are spent for the common properties of the nation. Tax is a debt we need to pay"; "It is the duty of every Turk to defend the homeland against the enemies." The alphabet reform was promoted as redeeming the Turkish people from the neglect of
3071-450: The Ottoman rulers: "Sultans did not think of the public, Ghazi commander [Atatürk] saved the nation from enemies and slavery. And now, he declared a campaign against ignorance [illiteracy]. He armed the nation with the new Turkish alphabet." The historian Bernard Lewis has described the introduction of the new alphabet as "not so much practical as pedagogical , as social and cultural – and Mustafa Kemal, in forcing his people to accept it,
3154-584: The Republic of Turkey, the Perso-Arabic script -based Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with the Latin script -based Turkish alphabet . Some distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination . The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb . Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender . The language makes usage of honorifics and has
3237-504: The SOV structure has diminished relevance and may vary. The SOV structure may thus be considered a "pragmatic word order" of language, one that does not rely on word order for grammatical purposes. Consider the following simple sentence which demonstrates that the focus in Turkish is on the element that immediately precedes the verb: Ahmet Ahmet yumurta-yı Turkish alphabet The Turkish alphabet ( Turkish : Türk alfabesi )
3320-514: The TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka , "political party"—also failed to meet with popular approval ( fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti ). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book")
3403-752: The Turkic republics of the Soviet Union adopted the Latin script, giving a major boost to reformers in Turkey. Turkish-speaking Armenians used the Mesrobian script to write the Bible and other books in Turkish for centuries. Karamanli Turkish was, similarly, written with a form of the Greek alphabet . Atatürk himself had a longstanding conviction that the Turkish alphabet should be Latinised. He told Ruşen Eşref that he had been preoccupied with this idea during his time in Syria (1905-1907), and would later use
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3486-574: The Turkish alphabet is known for requiring special logic, particularly due to the varieties of i and their lowercase and uppercase versions. This has been called the Turkish-I problem. The earliest known Turkic alphabet is the Orkhon script , also known as the Old Turkic alphabet, the first surviving evidence of which dates from the 7th century. In general, Turkic languages have been written in
3569-539: The Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨ı⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , ⟨ü⟩ . The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by how and where they are articulated focusing on three key features: front and back , rounded and unrounded and vowel height . Vowels are classified [±back], [±round] and [±high]. The only diphthongs in
3652-424: The Turkish part of the vocabulary. Although Ottoman Turkish was never formally standardized by a decree of law, words of Turkic origin largely had de facto systematic spelling rules associated with them which made it easier to read and write. On the rare occasion a Turkic word had irregular spelling that had to be memorized, there was often a dialectal or historic phonetic rationale that would be validated by observing
3735-493: The adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. The TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982 , following the military coup d'état of 1980 . Modern standard Turkish
3818-484: The areas of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin and sharing similarities with Azerbaijani , the language of Azerbaijan. The Central Anatolia Region speaks Orta Anadolu . Karadeniz , 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
3901-504: The brigade's commanders, Hani al-Mullah, died of a gunshot to the head in the town of Tell Abyad . Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently claimed that his death was the result of suicide , although other sources dispute this and allege that the killing was an assassination , either by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization and Turkish rebels or by ISIL militants. As a result, a curfew
3984-526: The case of length distinction, these letters are used for old Arabic and Persian borrowings from the Ottoman Turkish period, most of which have been eliminated from the language. Native Turkish words have no vowel length distinction. The combinations of /c/ , /ɟ/ , and /l/ with /a/ and /u/ also mainly occur in loanwords, but may also occur in native Turkish compound words, as in the name Dilâçar (from dil + açar ). Turkish orthography
4067-733: The changes. He toured the country explaining the new system of writing and encouraging the rapid adoption of the new alphabet. The Language Commission proposed a five-year transition period; Atatürk saw this as far too long and reduced it to three months. The change was formalised by the Turkish Republic's law number 1353, the Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet , passed on 1 November 1928. Starting 1 December 1928, newspapers, magazines, subtitles in movies, advertisement and signs had to be written with
4150-506: The diaspora speak the language with native fluency. 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 language , official in Azerbaijan, is mutually intelligible with Turkish and speakers of both languages can understand them without noticeable difficulty, especially when discussion comes on ordinary, daily language. Turkey has very good relations with Azerbaijan, with
4233-574: The first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk ( ديوان لغات الترك ). 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
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#17327763780264316-425: The following members: The commission was responsible for adapting the Latin script to meet the phonetic requirements of the Turkish language. The resulting Latin alphabet was designed to reflect the actual sounds of spoken Turkish, rather than simply transcribing the old Ottoman script into a new form. Atatürk himself was personally involved with the commission and proclaimed an "alphabet mobilisation" to publicise
4399-412: 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 form of Ottoman Turkish and the speaking and writing ability of society atrophied to the point that, in later years, Turkish society would perceive
4482-624: The foundation of the Turkish Language Association in 1932, campaigns by the Ministry of Education, the opening of Public Education Centres throughout the country, and Atatürk's personal participation in literacy campaigns. Atatürk also commented on one occasion that the symbolic meaning of the reform was for the Turkish nation to "show with its script and mentality that it is on the side of world civilisation". The second president of Turkey, İsmet İnönü further elaborated
4565-412: 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 origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning
4648-411: The initial years after the books publication but Kemal did not like this transcription. The encounter with Martayan and looking at Németh's transcription represented the first instance where Kemal would see a systematically Latinised version of Turkish. The current 29-letter Turkish alphabet was established as a personal initiative of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk . It
4731-473: The lack of ü vowel in the Trabzon dialect means -un would be used in both of these cases — elun and kitabun . With the exceptions stated below, Turkish words are oxytone (accented on the last syllable). 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
4814-466: The language are found in loanwords and may be categorised as falling diphthongs usually analyzed as a sequence of /j/ and a vowel. The principle of vowel harmony, which permeates Turkish word-formation and suffixation, is due to the natural human tendency towards economy of muscular effort. This principle is expressed in Turkish through three rules: The second and third rules minimize muscular effort during speech. More specifically, they are related to
4897-515: 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 ( c. 6th –11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia , covering
4980-411: The letters of the new alphabet. From 1 January 1929, the use of the new alphabet was compulsory in all public communications as well the internal communications of banks and political or social organisations. Books had to be printed with the new alphabet as of 1 January 1929 as well. The civil population was allowed to use the old alphabet in their transactions with the institutions until 1 June 1929. In
5063-525: 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. As of 2002 work continued on the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect- atlas of the Turkish language. Although the Ottoman alphabet, being slightly more phonetically ambiguous than
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#17327763780265146-493: The national awareness of the Turks against a wider Muslim identity. It is also imperative to add that he hoped to relate Turkish nationalism to the modern civilisation of Western Europe, which embraced the Latin alphabet." The explicitly nationalistic and ideological character of the alphabet reform showed in the booklets issued by the government to teach the population the new script. They included sample phrases aimed at discrediting
5229-489: The personal ending, so for example Necla, siz öğretmen misiniz ? ('Necla, are you [formal, plural] a teacher?'). Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally subject–object–verb , as in Korean and Latin , but unlike English, for verbal sentences and subject-predicate for nominal sentences. However, as Turkish possesses a case-marking system, and most grammatical relations are shown using morphological markers, often
5312-435: 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. If they are unrounded for the first vowel, the speaker does not make the additional muscular effort to round them subsequently. Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony: Practically,
5395-638: The preceding vowel. In native Turkic words, the sounds [c] , [ɟ] , and [l] are mainly in complementary distribution with [k] , [ɡ] , and [ɫ] ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, [c] , [ɟ] , and [l] often occur with back vowels: some examples are given below. However, there are minimal pairs that distinguish between these sounds, such as kar [kɑɾ] "snow" vs kâr [cɑɾ] "profit". Turkish orthography reflects final-obstruent devoicing ,
5478-440: The principles of i-type vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye' dir ("it is Turkey"), kapı dır ("it is the door"), but gün dür ("it is the day"), palto dur ("it is the coat"). These are four word-classes that are exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony: The road sign in the photograph above illustrates several of these features: The rules of vowel harmony may vary by regional dialect. The dialect of Turkish spoken in
5561-437: The reason behind adopting a Latin alphabet: The alphabet reform cannot be attributed to ease of reading and writing. That was the motive of Enver Pasha . For us, the big impact and the benefit of an alphabet reform was that it eased the way to cultural reform. We inevitably lost our connection with Arabic culture. The Turkish writer Şerif Mardin has noted that "Atatürk imposed the mandatory Latin alphabet in order to promote
5644-543: The regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association ( Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism : indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and of foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. These changes, together with
5727-428: The results of the language reform. 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 or Persian origin, 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
5810-399: The speech of eastern dialects, Azeri, and Turkmen. Whereas Arabic is rich in consonants but poor in vowels, Turkish is the opposite; the script was thus inadequate at distinguishing certain Turkish vowels and the reader was forced to rely on context to differentiate certain words. The introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century exposed further weaknesses in the Arabic script, although this
5893-454: The speech to be so alien to listeners 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,
5976-568: 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
6059-432: The twofold pattern (also referred to as the e-type vowel harmony) means that in the environment where the vowel in the word stem is formed in the front of the mouth, the suffix will take the e-form, while if it is formed in the back it will take the a-form. The fourfold pattern (also called the i-type) accounts for rounding as well as for front/back. The following examples, based on the copula -dir ("[it] is"), illustrate
6142-410: 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. In 1935, the TDK published a bilingual Ottoman-Turkish /Pure Turkish dictionary that documents
6225-452: The wider Islamic world, substituting a "foreign" (i.e. European) concept of national identity for the traditional sacred community. Others opposed Romanisation on practical grounds; at that time there was no suitable adaptation of the Latin script that could be used for Turkish phonemes. Some suggested that a better alternative might be to modify the Arabic script to introduce extra characters to better represent Turkish vowels. In 1926, however,
6308-452: Was a key step in the cultural part of Atatürk's Reforms , introduced following his consolidation of power. Having established a one-party state ruled by his Republican People's Party , Atatürk was able to sweep aside the previous opposition to implementing radical reform of the alphabet. He announced his plans in July 1928 and established a Language Commission ( Dil Encümeni ) consisting of
6391-550: Was adopted very rapidly and soon gained widespread acceptance. Even so, older people continued to use the Turkish Arabic script in private correspondence, notes and diaries until well into the 1960s. The standard Turkish keyboard layouts for personal computers are shown below. The first is known as Turkish F, designed in 1955 by the leadership of İhsan Sıtkı Yener ( tr ) with an organization based on letter frequency in Turkish words. The second as Turkish Q, an adaptation of
6474-406: Was buoyed to some degree by advances in the printing press and Ottoman Turkish keyboard typewriters. Some Turkish reformists promoted the adoption of the Latin script well before Atatürk's reforms. In 1862, during an earlier period of reform , the statesman Münuf Pasha advocated a reform of the alphabet. At the start of the 20th century similar proposals were made by several writers associated with
6557-622: Was imposed in Tell Abyad. Turkish language Turkish ( Türkçe [ˈtyɾctʃe] , Türk dili ; also known as Türkiye Türkçesi '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 ,
6640-483: Was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish. The everyday Turkish, known as kaba Türkçe or "vulgar Turkish", spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, contained a higher percentage of native vocabulary and served as 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: Reforms Kemalism After
6723-492: Was on the government's Language Commission, that by carrying out the reform, "we were going to cleanse the Turkish mind from its Arabic roots." Yaşar Nabi, a leading journalist, argued in the 1960s that the alphabet reform had been vital in creating a new Western-oriented identity for Turkey. He noted that younger Turks, who had only been taught the Latin script, were at ease in understanding Western culture but were quite unable to engage with Middle Eastern culture. The new script
6806-518: Was organised in Ankara for discussing issues such as copyright, printing, progress on improving the literacy rate and scientific publications, with the attendance of 186 deputies. As cited by the reformers, the old Arabic script was much more difficult to learn than the new Latin alphabet. The literacy rate did indeed increase greatly after the alphabet reform, from around 10% to over 90%, but many other factors also contributed to this increase, such as
6889-422: Was slamming a door on the past as well as opening a door to the future". It was accompanied by a systematic effort to rid the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian loanwords, often replacing them with revived early Turkic words. However, the same reform also rid the language of many Western loanwords, especially French, in favor of Turkic words, albeit to a lesser degree. Atatürk told his friend Falih Rıfkı Atay, who
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