History of the Turkish language

Introduction

The Turkish language is a very old language. Its history dates to almost 5500 to 8500 years ago. The Turkish language is very rich in terms of its vocabulary, and it has a unique morphological, phonetic, and grammatical structure which distinguishes this language from other languages. The Turkish language is spoken in various parts of Europe and Asia, and it is classified as an Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic language family (Dogançay, 1995). The Turkish language is also known by other names such as Anatolian, Türkisch, and Istanbul Turkish (Ethnologue, 2022). According to Ethnologue, the Turkish language is spoken by over 88,098,480 people around the world.  

The stages of development of the Turkish language 

The development of the Turkish language started 2500 to 3000 years ago in Southern Siberia and Mongolia. Therefore, the history of this language can be divided into 3 main categories (AYDINGÜN & AYDINGÜN, 2010). 

Ancient Turkish Language

Old Turkish Language, which is also known as the Old Ottoman, has its roots from the 7th to 13th centuries (Dogançay, 1995). Old Turkish language and Germanic runes had similar alphabets but still, both these languages had different scripts. Currently, it is spoken in Magnolia, and it has very little connection with modern Turkish (AYDINGÜN & AYDINGÜN, 2010). According to many scholars, the Chinese people held the Turks as their slaves, and this was the time when both these communities established cultural and diplomatic relations between them. That is the reason that the Modern Turkish language also has some words from the Chinese language in it (Topuzkanamış, 2020). In the 11th century, the Turks converted to Islam. This was the phase when the Turks established a relationship with the Arabs Muslims and the Turkish language was influenced by the Arabic Language. Therefore, Arabic calligraphy was being used to write the Turkish language. But still, the Turkish language is very different from the Arabic language (Aytürk, 2008). During the establishment of the Seljuk Empire, the Persian language influenced the Turkish language and became the official language of the government at that time which greatly impacted the growth and development of the Turkish language (Dogançay, 1995).

Middle Turkish

It was the period of the Ottoman Empire (from the 13th to the 20th Century). The development of the Turkish language during this period is also known as Middle Turkish. The growth and development of the Turkish language were greatly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Therefore, the Turkish language at that time was a mixture of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish itself. During this time, Arabic letters were being used to write the Turkish language (Ottoman Turkish) and, Arabic and Persian words were being used in the Turkish language (AYDINGÜN & AYDINGÜN, 2010). The Ottoman Empire was spread over the area of the Caspian Sea to Algeria (west) and the Turkish (Ottoman Turkish) was being used as the official language of the state known as the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Turkish became the language of elites as it was only spoken by a certain segment of the empire. The local people of the empire were used to speak their local languages, such as Albanian, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Berber Kurdish, Bulgarian, etc (Aytürk, 2008).

Modern Turkish Language

The new phase for the development of the Turkish language was initiated by Kemal Ataturk. In 1928 AD, after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Arabic alphabet used in the Turkish Language was removed and replaced by the Latin alphabet. Therefore, within the next few years, the Turkish language freed itself from foreign vocabulary words (Dogançay, 1995). 

Until the 15th century, the Uyghur alphabet was being used to write the Turkish Language. After the 15th century, it was written using the Arabic alphabet. After the 20th century, the era of reforms was started which replaced the Arabic alphabet. It was the time when the Turkish language has shown great signs of development. In 1932 AD, a new institute was created for the development of the Turkish language known as the Turkish Language Institute (TLI) (Topuzkanamış, 2020).

The Objective of Founding the Turkish Language Institute

The objective of this institution was to contribute towards the development of the Turkish language through conducting linguistic research in order to develop language literacy and to make the Turkish language a whole culture (AYDINGÜN & AYDINGÜN, 2010). 

Many scholars think that the Latin text used in the Turkish language is more suitable than the text or alphabet of Arabic because the Latin text made the way for the Turkish language for a better representation of the vowel system (Turkish language). Therefore, gradually, and slowly the Persian and Arabic words got replaced by appropriate Turkish words through the work done by the Turkish Language Institute. Of these appropriate words, some words were new, and some were from the Turkish language, but they were not being practised for a long time (Dogançay, 1995). This institute also developed and changed the grammatical structure of the Turkish Language. Previously, the Persian and Arabic grammatical structure was used in the Turkish language. Today, the literacy rate in Turkey is more than 96%, and the reforms made in the journey of growth and development of the Turkish language and different education reforms played a great role in it (Aytürk, 2008).

Works Cited

1. AYDINGÜN, A., & AYDINGÜN, İ. (2010). THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE FORMATION OF TURKISH NATIONAL IDENTITY AND TURKISHNESS. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.
2. Aytürk, İ. (2008). Politics and Language Reform in Turkey: The 'Academy' Debate. Department of Oriental Studies, University of Vienna.
3. Dogançay, S. (1995). An Evaluation of the Turkish Language Reform After 60 Years. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
4. Ethnologue. (2022). Turkish. Retrieved from ethnologue.com: https://www.ethnologue.com/language/tur
5. Topuzkanamış, E. (2020). History of Turkish language education in the process of educational modernisation of Ottoman: from the 1770s to 1890s. Paedagogica Historica.