Our Beautiful Turkish

"He stole a pistol from the face of a rose," says Ali in the story of Yusuf. Ali lived around Khwarizm in the late twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries. Harizm or Khwarezm was the name of the region lying to the south of Lake Aral, where the river Ceyhun (Amu Derya) flows, and on both sides of this river, within the borders of today's Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Ali wrote this single work before 1377, although the exact year is uncertain. 

The Iranian Sufi poet Ferîdüddîn-i Attâr wrote: "If a GUN strikes us, it will make us / our necks sad from our süksünumuz" in his poetic work Mantıku't-Tayr, or In the Language of Birds. He wrote this work in 1317.

Süksün means jaw, by the way, a forgotten word today. Chin is actually a Persian word. So there is actually a Turkish equivalent of chin. For some reason it has been forgotten over time, it is not even in the TDK dictionary.

Yes, don't say what are you saying, TABANCA was actually once used to mean "slap". It is a Turkish word. Today, for some reason, it has acquired the meaning of a gun. Maybe this change happened because slaps and pistols sound similar. After all, they both sound like slaps!

The association of the pistol with weapons was not so immediate.

Evliya Çelebi wrote in his famous Travelogue written in 1665, "There are tufengler bellerüngde..." and "there are five pistols and five rifles...". Here he used the word "pistol" in the sense of "trigger assembly". I don't understand what kind of rifle he meant when he said "wheeled rifle". I guess the wheel is the one we know, that is, the wheel in Turkish.

In fact, pistol is related to the word base, base is the foot, pistol is the hand, the palm of the hand. I guess it is understood that it was used in the sense of slap at first. Later on, I think the meaning of "trigger assembly" is also understandable, after all, you grasp the trigger assembly with the palm of your hand. And the last meaning is today's pistol, that is, the small gun that we can grasp with the palm of our hand, piştov in Hungarian. The last meaning is related to the old meanings.

The subject I want to talk about is not pistols, of course. I wanted to illustrate how words change their meanings over time, using the pistol as an example.

Today we probably have a lot of words that have changed their meanings like this. 

The first one that comes to my mind is "bör", for example, the wild wolves we know were once called bör. Due to their beliefs, our ancestors once decided not to mention it because it summoned evil spirits, and when it was mentioned, they started to use the word wolf, which they gave to the tree wolf. From that day to this day, wolf has been used instead of bör. Today, there are still Turkish communities who still call the wolf bör. This is another example of a change in meaning.

If I search, I would probably find a lot of them. 

Especially with the development of technology, many words continue to enter our language from foreign languages. 

Some say that these new words enrich the language. Others, on the contrary, call it a deterioration of the language. Language does not stay where it is, it is in a constant state of development. Societies do not live alone either. We necessarily interact with other societies. Therefore, we can accept it as normal for new words from other languages to enter our language. 

Nevertheless, I think it is a bit simplistic to describe things with words from foreign languages. 

When we want to convey something we have in mind to someone else, I think it is easier to use a word that is already available in other languages. 

However, if we think about it, if we ponder a little, we will see that we can easily explain the new concept we want to express with the words in our own language.

While defending this view, I am also aware that I have used a lot of foreign words in this article. Even though I try to be careful, sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I can't think of a substitute word at the moment, sometimes because I want what I am writing to be in a fluent language, I use all kinds of words that have entered our language out of necessity. Maybe we have taken it for granted. We don't care.

However, let's take the word technology as an example. Even when we say technology, the root word is related to craftsmanship, and like many words, this is also from French. But they took it from ancient Greek. 

For example, instead of technology, something could be derived from the word "mastery". 

Although "master" is also Persian, so we took it from the Persians because it was easier for us. In the dictionary, it says one who is engaged in art or craft. If we say art or craft, they are also Arabic.

In short, we have a chaotic language.

Someone was saying recently that I can't think in Turkish. And we used to ridicule what they said together. The part of what he said that we disliked the most was that he blamed all this inadequacy on the Republic. What they were really saying was that the Republic simplified the language.

However, the inadequacy of the language has nothing to do with the way the country is governed. 

Yes, there was a language revolution with the Republic. But the aim was not to destroy the language. It was to Turkishize our language. 

Perhaps there may have been excesses in some areas. It is a fact that simplification was also done in some areas. However, a language that was spoken only around the palace and was adorned with fancy words was of no use to anyone. At least the palace language was not the language used by the society.

The language we use should be the common language used by society. It should develop together with the society. And those who will develop the language are the leaders of the society, i.e. intellectuals. 

Today, I think our problem is that our intellectuals do not attach enough importance to our language.

However, in these days when the literacy rate has reached the desired level, there are a thousand ways to reach the society. I am not making a distinction here between political views, this neighborhood or that neighborhood. If we love our language, I think the development of the language should be above politics.

The task of improving the language is also on our intellectuals. This has been the case for every society.

Shakespeare is not just a theater writer for the English. He developed the English language. That is why it has survived until today.

Pushkin, too, is not a simple writer or poet for Russians. Although his roots go back to Ethiopia, he is very important for today's Russian language.

We also have writers and poets who have contributed to our language. But as I said, language is like a living organism. It is in a constant state of change.

Our Turkish is a very beautiful language. It is more structured than many languages in the world. It is not difficult to derive new words from simple roots, and compound words are a good way to derive appropriate words for new concepts.

Dear intellectuals, my word to you. Please do not be shy. Instead of using foreign words in your writings, use words that you deem appropriate. The rules are already clear. At most, society will not like the new word you propose and will not use it. But you will not lose anything. You can derive another word for another subject you write about and try it out, and that will be the end of it.

Let us take care to improve our beautiful Turkish. For example, I would say pioneering instead of technology. 

Technology has improved a lot, instead of technology has improved a lot, how is it, it doesn't sound so scratchy, does it?

Because if you look at the etymology of master, besides art or craft, there is also a definition of pioneer. Since TECHNOLOGY is related to craftsmanship, Pioneering may be the right word.

Let me also suggest a word for psychology. Psycho means soul. Some people call it ruhbilim instead of psikoloji, ruh is not Turkish. Dictionaries say that ruh is related to breath, and the Turkish word for breath is soluk. 

Wouldn't it be nice if we said "solbilimim" instead of psychology, a Turkish word? 

I'm afraid that someone might say let's call this concept right-science. After all, we are a society that is very eager to polarize.

Jokes aside, the moral of the story is that language should be above politics.

Let's love our language, we have a really beautiful language.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow