World Language Turkish

One of the most specific characteristics of our country is the large number of people who have an opinion without knowledge and act in every field in a way that fits this aphorism. Once again, I pay tribute to the late Uğur Mumcu, a valuable person who said this beautiful and true saying. 

While the country has so many problems, I can't help but wonder what good it would do to talk about our mother tongue in public and to make the atmosphere tense. While this issue should be the subject of linguists and academics who think about these issues, I wonder what sense it makes to make this issue an election material for political gain before the elections? 

What is this language of discourse a year before the celebration of the 100th anniversary of our Republic and a few days before the celebration of the 99th anniversary of the founding of our Republic. These are not elegant things. As a citizen of the Republic of Turkey, hearing such statements from those who are at the top of the administration of the Republic has upset and continues to upset me and those who think like me. 

I would like to repeat once again a sentence that I always say everywhere: "Turkish language is the honor and dignity of the Turk". We all know very well that nations whose language has been destroyed in history have disappeared from the stage of history. Turkish language constitutes the essence of Turkish culture. If we are to walk into the future together as a nation, as one and as a whole, with a unitary understanding, I think we need to protect our language and culture more than ever. Now I would like to share with you the information I have obtained as a result of a short research I have done on this subject. 

The languages of the world are generally classified in two ways: in terms of origin and in terms of structure. In terms of origin, Turkish is shown among the Altaic languages among the world languages. Apart from Turkish, Mongolian and Manchu Tunguz are also included in this group. According to some researchers, Korean and Japanese can also be included in this group. When languages are classified according to their structure, that is, according to typological classification, Turkish is included in the group of agglutinative languages. Along with Turkish, languages such as Hungarian, Finnish and Mongolian are also included in this group. Turkish is an agglutinative language. It is quite easy to derive new words and terms in agglutinative languages. In this respect, Turkish is a favorable language for deriving new words and has a rich affixation system. 

Noticing this unique structure of Turkish, French Turkologist Jean Deny likened the perfection of Turkish structure to a mathematical formula. Turkish is one of the richest languages in the world. There are various power sources that provide this richness to Turkish. The most important of these power sources is history. Turkish is among the few languages of the world whose roots go back thousands of years. 

Researchers trying to reveal the age of Turkish have compared the words in Sumerian with Turkish. Osman Nedim Tuna is one of the leading names in this field. According to Tuna, there are 168 words in common between Sumerian and Turkish. 

It is assumed that Turkish, Turkmen, Salarca and Azerbaijani evolved from a language called Mother Oghuzian. The western branch of this proto-language, which would form Turkey Turkish, evolved into Old Anatolian Turkish between the 11th and 15th centuries, developing around the Anatolian Seljuk State and Anatolian Principalities.

Another proof that Turkish is one of the world's deep-rooted languages is the abundant use of metaphors and figurative usages in Turkish, which took centuries to emerge. Leaving dialects aside, the vocabulary of the written language of Turkey Turkish alone exceeds 114 thousand today. Turkish has an important place among the world languages with this richness in terms of vocabulary. 

Turkish has naturally been and will be in interaction with world languages in every period. As various words have passed from other languages to Turkish, words have also passed from Turkish to other languages. Today, a large number of Turkish words are used in other languages, including 300 words in Chinese, about 3,000 in Persian, 227 in Urdu, about 2,000 in Arabic, about 2,500 in Russian and 8,742 in Serbian. The prevalence of Turkish is one of its sources of strength. Moreover, the fact that the Kültigin and Bilge Kagan inscriptions, which are among the most important texts in terms of Turkish history and Turkish, are in Chinese on one side shows the extent of the Turks' contact with Chinese.

In a report prepared by UNESCO in the 1980s, the fact that Turkish is the fifth largest language in the world in terms of the number of people speaking this language was emphasized. Turkish, which lives in a vast geography stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the China Sea, is divided into many dialects: Anatolian, Azerbaijani, Turkmen dialects of Western Turkish, Uzbek dialect, Kazakh dialect, Kyrgyz dialect... 

Yet, as a Turkish son, it is not right for us to see and accept the unseemly words uttered these days as the result of a common delirium. These consciously uttered words reveal the fact that we must protect the mother tongue of our nation more than ever. "If you remove Atatürk from the Republic, the Turk from history and Turkish from our culture, (believe me) there will be nothing left."

Stay with respectful love

References:

Akalın, Şükrü Haluk, “Türkçe ve Güncel Problemleri”

Akar, Ali, Türk Dili Tarihi, Ötüken Yay., İstanbul 2006

Caferoğlu, Ahmet, Türk Dili Tarihi, Enderun Kitabevi, (3. baskı), 

Demir, Nurettin, Yılmaz, Emine, Türk Dili El Kitabı, Grafiker Yay., Ankara 2003

Ercilasun, Ahmet B., “Tarihten Geleceğe Türk Dili”, Türk Dili, 569, Mayıs 1999, s. 355-362.

Ercilasun, Ahmet B., Başlangıçtan Yirminci Yüzyıla Türk Dili Tarihi, Akçağ Yay.,