eJRQRD6LAmY.txt

Speaker 1:          00:08          Okay.

Speaker 2:          00:10          Hello everyone. Welcome to the line focus channel and my name is Paul. Today I'm going to talk about the Turkish language. Now, right off the bat, the first thing I want to say is that there is a Turkish language because Turkey is situated at the edge of the Middle East. Some people think that Turkey is an Arabic country, but it is not an Arabic country. The language of Turkey is Turkish, although there is a small Arabic speaking minority in Turkey, there are around 75 million native speakers of Turkish. That includes 10 to 15 million people in southeastern Europe. That's mainly in the part of Turkey, that's located in Europe, but also as a minority language in the Balkan area, and it includes 60 to 65 million people in Anatolia. That's the part of Turkey that's located inside of Asia. Now those numbers are for Turkish, but there are other languages inside the Turkic language family that have a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility, and some people consider those languages to be dialects of Turkish.

Speaker 2:          01:06          So if we include those, the number might be as high as 109 million people, but let's back up and look at the classification of Turkish. Because Turkey is located partly inside of Europe, you might have thought that Turkish is an Indo European language or a Slavic language and because part of Turkey is located on the edge of the Middle East, you might have thought that Turkish is a Semitic language, but it is none of the above. The Turkic language family is a separate family unto itself. The Turkic languages are sometimes thought to be a part of larger language family called the [inaudible] language family, which includes some other language groups like the Mongolian language family that Japonica and the chorionic language family amongst others, but this is not a generally accepted theory bilinguist it tends to be debated and these days it seems to be fairly discredited. Turkish is part of the ohs branch of the Turkic language family.

Speaker 2:          01:52          It also includes Azerbaijani, which is sometimes called Azeri Turkish as well as Turkmen as well as some other languages like Qashqai, which is spoken in some parts of Iran. The languages of the ohs branch are all mutually intelligible to some extent, and these are the languages that are sometimes considered to be dialects of Turkish Azeri. Turkish is spoken in Azerbaijan, them as well as parts of Iran, Iraq, Dagestan, and Georgia, and it has 26 million native speakers. Turkmen has 8 million native speakers, including 3.5 million in Turkmenistan, 2 million in northwestern Iran and 1.5 million in northwestern Afghanistan. All Turkic languages descended from a theoretical language called [inaudible] Turkish.

Speaker 1:          02:36          Okay.

Speaker 2:          02:37          The Turkic peoples originated in Central Asia and through migration they expanded over a wide area extending all the way from Siberia down through China and Central Asia through the Middle East, up into the Balkan area and even north of the Black Sea owes Turkic the ancestor language of modern day Turkish language as well as all the languages of the ohs branch was brought to Anatolia by the Seljuk Empire, a Turkic Empire in the 11th century Ce. The seljuk empire had previously adopted Islam and they were admirers of Persian culture and they were influenced by the Persian language and the Arabic language person became the administrative and literary language. While Arabic was used for religious purposes, but Turkish was still spoken by the average common people. Later when the Ottoman empire a rose in place of the Seljuk Empire, the official language would be a form of Turkish that was highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. This form of Turkish became known as ultimate Turkish.

Speaker 2:          03:31          Ottoman Turkish was big stone, Turkish grammar, but with some influence from Persian and Arabic grammar, but it was the vocabulary that was most influenced by Persian and Arabic. Sometimes up to 88% of the vocabulary used was Persian and Arabic. This was the language of the elite people, not the language of the common people, which had much less foreign influence, although it did still have some foreign influence. When the modern republic of Turkey was founded. In 1923 Mustafa came out, Ataturk created the Turkish language association to initiate a reform of the Turkish language. He essentially got rid of that administrative language, Ottoman Turkish, and he replaced it with a new standard language based on the everyday common language spoken in Istanbul and effort was made to replace Persian and Arabic words with native Turkish words. Sometimes those were archaic Turkish words that were brought back to life and sometimes they were newly created Turkish words taken from Turkish roots and other big changes that Turkish was switched from the Arabic alphabet, the Arabic writing system to a modified Latin alphabet, which was much more suitable for reading and writing.

Speaker 2:          04:33          Turkish Arabic has only three short vowels and three long vowels while the Turkish language has eight vowels. So that created a lot of confusion in reading and writing in Turkish. And the literacy rates had always been very low, but after switching to the Latin alphabet, the literacy rates skyrocketed. What the common people haven't always accepted the suggestions by the Turkish language association. So some of those foreign loan words in Turkish still exist alongside and native Turkish words. So sometimes there are two words for the same thing, one Turkish and one Persian or Arabic, and they might have the same meaning, but they're used in a slightly different way or have a slightly different sense to the meaning before I mentioned the Azeri language as well as the Turkmen language, which are sometimes considered a dialects of Turkish, but they are actually more similar to the Turkish that was spoken before auditors reform of the Turkish language.

Speaker 2:          05:22          That is to say that they use more Persian and Arabic loan words. Then the modern day standard Turkish of Turkey uses and also Azerbaijan. Turkmenistan were under the control of the USSR for a long time. So there are also some Russian loan words and from what I understand, there are a lot of funny misunderstandings between the different varieties of Turkish Azerbaijani or Azeri. Turkish was always referred to as Turkish until the Soviet Union controlled Azerbaijan and they changed the name of that language as a way of trying to create an identity for those people that was separate from the people in Turkey. That was another divide and conquer tactic. Just from reading some comments around the Internet, the level of intelligibility between standard Turkish and Azeri Turkish varies from 60% to 90% but even for the people who understand less of it, it seems that they get used to it quite quickly and it's simply a matter of familiarity and a little bit of adjustment.

Speaker 2:          06:14          For example, one guy wrote in his comment that if a Turkish person takes an airplane to Azerbaijan, maybe in the morning he won't really understand very well, but by the afternoon he'll be completely fluent. And if that is the case, then I would definitely say that those are just two dialects of the same language. So let's look at some features of the Turkish language. Turkish is an a gluten native language. A glutenous of means that the words are comprised of pieces that all add to the meaning of the word. So whereas in English, you might express something with a few words. In Turkish, that might just be one word, or it might be fewer words, because instead of using an extra word, you just add an extra piece to the word you're already using, and that means you can sometimes get some surprisingly long words in Turkish. Let's look at an example of a gluten nation thought to be, yeah, it's hard to bscs Tattoo bscs Lik Tattoo bscs licked Larry [inaudible] that in. Then that'd be a sizzling that in done mish, so you can see that if we add a piece to the end of the word, we're adding to the meaning of the word. This way of attaching suffixes to the end of a word is also used to make plural forms possessive forums and to show grammatical case for announce. Let's look at an example for the plural form

Speaker 3:          07:25          bash, bash, lad, f, F, Lad.

Speaker 2:          07:29          Let's look at another example with possession this time,

Speaker 3:          07:32          Taser, Taser, Taser, Taser, knees.

Speaker 2:          07:39          Let's look at an example of the grammatical cases in Turkish. There are six grammatical cases in Turkish. And again, if you don't know what a grammatical case is, that means that the form of the noun changes depending on its function. In the sentence, the word we're using his tree arch, our June, uh, [inaudible], uh, [inaudible], uh, [inaudible] [inaudible]. So you can see that the form of that now changes depending on what function it fulfills in that sentence, how hard is Turkish to learn? Well, that depends on your native language. If your native language is an a gluten native language, or if you know another, a glutenous of language, then Turkish might seem more familiar to you. But if you have never spoken a language like that before, you might have to get used to a whole new way of thinking. But the good news is that Turkish grammar is very systematic and very consistent.

Speaker 2:          08:29          And so was the writing system. Turkish is almost entirely a phonetic language. That means that for each sound there is one letter. So when you read a word, you know how to pronounce it. And when you know how to say a word, you know how to write it. And as always, if you're deeply fascinated with the culture, then it doesn't matter if the language is challenging because you will be motivated enough to get past those challenges and you'll enjoy it every step of the web. So if you happen to be very interested in Turkey or in Azerbaijan or or other places where a tricky is just spoken, then don't hesitate to start learning the Turkish language. Thank you for watching the langue focus channel. What should the question of the day be? I can't decide between a couple. So I'll give you two choices. So people who speak Turkish or have studied Turkish, do you think that Azeri Turkish and Turkmen or the same language, dialects of the same language? How well do you understand each other? And another question that I'm curious about Turkish people. If you tried to read Ottoman Turkish from that period, how well do you understand it? Are there too many loan words, too much Persian and Arabic for you to understand more? Is it close enough that you can understand it? Let us know in the comments down below. Everyone else comment as you wish. Have a nice day.

Speaker 4:          09:58          Yeah.