Learn what languages are close to Turkish
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Intro |
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| Michael: What languages are similar to Turkish? |
| Dilek: And are they mutually intelligible? |
| Michael: At TurkishClass101.com, we hear these questions often. Here is a typical situation. Ben and Nilgun are friends. They are in a bookstore and Ben, a college student, picks up the Turkish Classic, "The Legend of the Thousand Bulls" or |
| Dilek: Binboğalar Efsanesi, |
| Michael: Ben finds it surprisingly hard to read. He turns to his friend and asks, |
| "Is this in Turkish?" |
| Ben Lee: Bu Türkçe mi? |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: Bu Türkçe mi? |
| Nilgun Nevsehirli: Hayır, bu Azeri Türkçesi. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: Bu Türkçe mi? |
| Michael: "Is this in Turkish?" |
| Nilgun Nevsehirli: Hayır, bu Azeri Türkçesi. |
| Michael: "No, it's in Azerbaijani." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: Turkish is an agglutinative language, which, in Turkish, is |
| Dilek: Eklemeli dil. |
| Michael: There are different languages which are in the same morphological group such as Japanese, |
| Dilek: Japonca, |
| Michael: Korean, |
| Dilek: Korece, |
| Michael: and Hungarian, |
| Dilek: Macarca. |
| Michael: Turkish is from the Ural-Altaic family, |
| Dilek: Ural-Altay ailesi |
| Michael: within the Altaic branch along with Mongolion and Tungusic languages from central Asia. |
| Michael: It is said that this language family got its name from the Altaic Mountains |
| Dilek: Altay Dağları |
| Michael: Around the 1000s, early Turks came from the Altaic Mountain region to Anatolia during the Turkic Seljuk Empire or |
| Dilek: Selçuklu İmparatorluğu |
| Michael: After the Seljuks, there were a lot of small Turkic states until the Ottoman Empire. After Turkish people were introduced to Islam, their language started to be affected by Arabic and Persian. Also, after the Ottoman Empire started to spread all over the Mediterean and the Balkans, Greek and other European languages got infused into Turkish as well. Today, more than 170 million people speak a Turkic language. Uzbek, |
| Dilek: Özbekçe, |
| Michael: Kyrgyz, |
| Dilek: Kırgızca, |
| Michael: and Azerbaijani |
| Dilek: Azerice. |
| Michael: All these languages are very similar to Istanbul Turkish. |
| Michael: Since geographical conditions are different, every language has been affected by neighboring languages. For example, the Russian Language has an important impact on these other Turkic languages, whereas, in Istanbul Turkish, Russian doesn't have an impact. |
| Michael: There are more than 35 Turkic languages in the world using different alphabets such as Perso-Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic. |
| Michael: Some of the Turkic languages are not widely spoken and therefore severely endangered. In different Turkic languages, although the sentence structure is different, it is not that hard to understand the other languages once you know Istanbul Turkish. For example, "new" in Istanbul Turkish is: |
| Dilek: yeni |
| Michael: and, in Uzbek, it is: |
| Dilek: yangi |
| Michael: In Azerbaijani, it is: |
| Dilek: yeni |
| Cultural Insight |
| Michael: Fun fact, in Azerbaijani, "the plane has landed" is translated as |
| Dilek: Uçak düştü, |
| Michael: which means "the plane has crashed" in Istanbul Turkish. Can you imagine a Turkish person waiting for a plane in Azerbaijan and hearing the announcement about the plane? In Istanbul Turkish, "the plane has landed" is |
| Dilek: Uçak indi. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Dilek: Hoşçakalın! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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