The Turkish language reform: a catastrophic success

İsmail Aydıngün

The purpose of this article is to investigate the practice of replacing borrowings with words from Turkic dialects during the Language Reform initiated by Ataturk. The aim of the Ataturk's Language Reform was explained as revealing the beauty of the Turkish language and achieving its significance among the world languages. To realize this aim, it was planned to eliminate Arabic and Persian words, which were seen as foreign elements, from the language and to adopt and popularize Turkish words instead. In this study, Turkic words were suggested to be used instead of foreign words during the period of language reform, and events that occurred after the language reform were discussed. Recent research conducted in the Turkish Language Society is also mentioned. As a result, a proposal was put forward to develop a common language of communication in the Turkic world.

It is generally thought that in the land of Persia, nothing is spoken but Persian, and few are aware that Turkish is widespread throughout Iran. It is perhaps even more common than Persian, and many Iranians themselves, if asked if Turkish is spoken in their country, would reply, " Sure, in some provinces like Azerbaijan and Khamse, " and many of them would explain this by the proximity of these provinces to the Caucasus or to Ottoman territory. I have never seen, either among Iranians themselves or among foreigners who talk about Iran and its affairs, anyone who has discussed this, the truth of this matter. As for the Iranians, even those who speak Turkish claim that it is a foreign language which had penetrated their country during times of Turkish and Mongol rule and had spread and become popular at sword-point. They ceaselessly despise and loathe it and would love to eliminate it and wipe it out from their provinces and exchange it for sweet Persian. As for foreign books, the Orientalists who discuss Turkish and the peoples who speak it it limit their discussions to the Ottomans and the people of Turkestan and the Muslims of Russia known as the Tartars and rarely say a word about the Turkish speakers of Iran; and those who discuss Iran and the language spoken there talk about Persian and its dialects, such as Gilaki or Mazandarani or Lurish, etc., which are current in this or that province of that land. But as for Turkish, they neglect to mention it except rarely, when they say that it is popular particularly in Azerbaijan. Probably most of their information came from travelers or embassy staff or missionaries who generally witnessed nothing but the cities and provinces [sic], particularly the national and provincial capitals, and they rarely took the trouble to travel to the villages or the tent camps of the wandering tribes to discuss their languages or their other affairs. In addition, Persian includes works of art and the most precious literature, such as the poetry ofSàdi and Ferdawsi and the like. And so the commentators on Iranian affairs neglect to notice any other language spoken there, such as Turkish. Compared to Persian, Turkish is like a beautiful girl who sits idly beside an unveiled second wife who enchants the heart with her jewelry and bewitches the mind with her adornments. But we want to travel down this road not taken and open the gate never before opened. We do not claim that this article is perfect, nor do we attempt a thorough investigation. Rather, we are satisfied to limit our discussion and its subject matter to our travels in the provinces of Iran, and perhaps some of al-Irfan's readers will supply details to what we have summarized and perfect what we have left incomplete and call to our attention our errors. We have divided the article into four sections.

Turkic and Iranian speaking peoples have been living in vast parts of the Asia together or on neighbor geographies since at least end of the 6th century. The process of Turko-Iranian language contact began when Iranian speaking people Sogdians were incorporated into the First Turkic Khaganete and intensified after Islamization of Turks and Sogdians. Old Turkic dialects adopted many ‘general copies’ from Iranian languages especially from Sogdian and New Persian languages. In this study, approximately a hundred and twenty-four of ‘general copies’ will be enlisted and studied to provide some contribution to the field of Turko-Iranian language contact via Diwan Lugat al-Turk. Key words: Turko-Iranian language contact, general copies, Diwan Lugat at-Turk

Oxford LINGUISTICS The Turkish Language Reform A Catastrophic Success Geoffrey Lewis THE TURKISH LANGUAGE REFORM The Turkish Language Reform A Catastrophic Success GEOFFREY LEWIS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Geoffrey Lewis 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lewis, Geoffrey L. The Turkish language reform: a catastrophic success / Geoffrey Lewis, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). 1. Turkish language—Reform. 2. Turkish language—History. I. Title. PL115.L47 1999 494'-35—dc2i 99-24289 ISBN 0-19-823856-8 13579 10 8642 Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Bookcraft (BathJJJfiUJ^idsomer Norton Acknowledgements To all the many friends who supplied me with material, my deep gratitude. Most of them said that if I criticized the language reform too harshly they would not mind a bit. My especial thanks to Fuat M. Andie, Emre Araci, Cigdem Bahm, Ruth Davis, Sitki Egeli, fjiikrti Elchin, Selim ilkin, Iverach McDonald, Andrew Mango, Bengisu Rona, and Ali Suat Orguplii. Contents Abbreviations Note on the Text 1. Introduction 2. Ottoman Turkish 3. The New Alphabet 4. Atatiirk and the Language Reform until 1936 5. The Sun-Language Theory and After 6. Atay, Ata<;, Sayili 7. Ingredients 8. Concoctions 9. Technical Terms 10. The New Yoke 11. The New Turkish 12. What Happened to the Language Society References General Index Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes Abbreviations [A] ATD AKDTYK AODTC DLT [F] [G] JRAS [M] OT [P] TBMM TDK TDTC TL TTK Arabic Ataturk ve Turk Dili (Ankara: TDK, 1963) Atatiirk Kiiltiir, Dil ve Tarih Yiiksek Kurumu Ankara Oniversitesi Dil Tarih-Cografya Fakiiltesi Diwan Lugat al-Turk French Greek Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of London Mongolian Old Turkic Persian Tiirkiye Biiyuk Millet Meclisi Tiirk Dil Kurumu Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti Tiirk Lirasi (Turkish lira) Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Note on the Text Turkish words under discussion are in italic unless there is no possibility of con¬ fusion with a similar English word. Words from other languages, as well as book titles, are also shown in italic, likewise words of Arabic or Persian origin in some of the quotations, words of native origin being in roman. An [A], [P], [F], [G], or [M] after a word shows its origin as Arabic, Persian, French, Greek, or Mongolian respectively; [PA] after a two-word phrase means that the first word is of Persian origin, the second Arabic. Square brackets are also used (a) to enclose the author’s comments within translations of quotations, (b) to cite the original wording where the full text is not included (which happens rarely, only when there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the Turkish), and (c) round surnames later assumed by people who come into the story before the Surnames Law of 1934. Logic would demand that the founder of the Republic should be called Mustafa Kemal (or just Kemal, which he preferred) until the story comes down to the time of that law; nevertheless he is sometimes referred to anachronistically as Atatiirk, the name by which he is best remembered. In transliterations of Arabic and Persian words, c stands for the sound of English ch; d for English th in this; gfor English j; g for Arabic ghayn, the gargling sound of the Parisian and Northumbrian r, h for kh as in Bukhara; j for French j; s for English sh; t for English th in think. (In the Chaghatay passage quoted in Chapter 2 I have followed Levend’s transliteration; he uses f and $, not c and s.) While most references to Turk Dili, the Turk Dil Kurumu’s monthly journal, are by volume number and page, some give the number or date of the individual monthly part, because volume numbers were not always shown and because the pagination was not always cumulative, so that a volume may contain, say, a dozen pages numbered 27. The aim has been to make the references clear, though not necessarily consistent. A pair of forward strokes encloses a representation of pronunciation, for which ordinary characters, not the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, are used: /gyavur/. An asterisk preceding a word shows it to be a hypothetical form. OT stands for Old Turkic, Turkic (the current Turkish for which is Turk! [A]) being the unattractive but generally accepted term for the family of which Turkish, the language of Turkey, is a member. The term Old Turkic is properly applied to languages of the family from the eighth to the tenth century, while the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth century is Middle Turkic. I beg the reader’s indulgence if on occasion I have misapplied ‘OT’ to a Middle Turkic word. 1 Introduction This book has two purposes. The first is to acquaint the general reader with the often bizarre, sometimes tragicomic, but never dull story of the Turkish language reform. The second is to provide students of Turkish at every level with some useful and stimulating reading matter. With both purposes in mind, no word, phrase, or sentence of Turkish has been left untranslated, apart from names of books and articles, as it is assumed that the reader who wishes to chase up bibli¬ ographical references will understand the meaning of the titles. The second purpose accounts for the references to the author’s Turkish Grammar and for the abundance of footnotes and digressions. The language reform is not so well known abroad as other aspects of the Kemalist revolution because, having lasted for more than half a century, it is not the stuff of which headlines are made, but its effects are evident if we compare the Turkish of today with that of even thirty years ago. Not a few nations have gone in for linguistic engineering. By this I mean tinkering with language with the express purpose of changing people’s speech habits and the way they write. I am not referring to the introduction of new words for technical innovations such as vaccination, radar, or the modem, or to the creation of new non-technical words by individuals intending to amuse or to express ideas for which they find no words in the existing language. The names that come to mind in these last two categories are, on the one hand, Lewis Carroll, on the other hand, James Joyce, and, in the middle, the American Gelett Burgess, whom we have to thank for the word blurb. In his Burgess Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed (1914), he defines it as T. A flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial. 2. Fulsome praise; a sound like a publisher.’ An earlier (1906) success of his had been to popularize bromide, previously meaning a sedative, in the sense of a boringly trite remark. He gives as an example: ‘It isn’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing’, and points out that what makes it a bromide is not just its triteness but its inevitability. He was by no means the first such benefactor of human¬ ity; there was, for example, the unknown seventeenth-century genius who combined dumbstruck and confounded to make dumbfounded. Nor was he the last; the earliest recorded appearance in print of guesstimate, later guestimate, was in 1936, in the New York Times, and such inventions keep coming. During the Gulf War of 1991 we were reminded by an American general of the existence 2 Introduction of bodacious, apparently a combination of bold and audacious, first recorded in British English in 1845. These, however, are not what I intend by linguistic engineering. I mean the sort of deliberate campaign that has been carried out at various times by Germans, Swedes, Hungarians, Finns, and Albanians, among others, for nationalistic reasons, to purge their languages of foreign words and substitute native words for them. In lands of German speech the encroachment of French began at the end of the sixteenth century. The first stirrings of protest came a century later, although clearly with no effect on King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (1713-40), to judge by his celebrated declaration to his nobles: ‘Ich stabiliere die Souverainet6 wie einen Rocher de Bronze.’ The modern German vocabulary shows the results of another such campaign, with Fernsprecher and Kraftwagen replacing the international Telefon and Auto, though the latter two have staged a comeback. A movement to eliminate German and Latin words from Hungarian began in the second half of the eighteenth century and had consider¬ able success. The French Academy has long been fighting a losing battle against the inroads of Franglais. Attempts have been made to purge English too. Inwit was used for conscience in the Ancrene Riwle, written about 1230. In 1340 Dan Michel wrote his Ayenbite of Inwit, ayenbite being a Middle English translation of the late Latin remorsus ‘remorse’; James Joyce partially modernized it into agenbite in his Ulysses (1922). In the nineteenth century came the Saxonisms, native substitutes for words of Greek and Latin origin. Birdlore was invented in 1830 to replace ornithology, and folklore in 1846 to encapsulate ‘traditional beliefs, legends and customs of the common people’. Foreword for preface is first recorded in 1842. But nowhere has such a campaign been so long sustained and effective as in Turkey. The aim of the Turkish language reform was to eliminate the Arabic and Persian grammatical features and the many thousands of Arabic and Persian borrowings that had long been part of the language. It comprised two different phases of activ¬ ity: isolated attempts from the mid-nineteenth century on, undertaken mostly by private individuals and groups, and the government-inspired campaign that began around 1930. The latter could more accurately be termed a revolution than a reform, since ‘reform’ implies improvement. Dil devrimi (the language revolu¬ tion) is what Turks call it, but Western writers have always called it the language reform, and the practice is followed in this book. Although it is less accurate to call the proponents of dil devrimi ‘language reformers’ rather than ‘linguistic rev¬ olutionaries’, it is also less cumbersome. Why the subtitle ‘A Catastrophic Success’? The author recognizes that not every reader who knows the story will share his view, but some of them may do so by the time they have read to the end. There is no denying the success. An incon¬ trovertible proof is that Nutuk, Mustafa Kemal’s thirty-six hour Speech on the end of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish Republic, which he delivered over six days in 1927, became less and less comprehensible to the young until in Introduction 3 the early 1960s it had to be ‘translated into the present-day language’. A single paragraph is enough to show the extent of the changes that thirty odd years had wrought. First, Kemal’s own words: Muhterem Efendiler, inonu muharebe meydamm, ikinci defa olarak magluben terk ve Bursa istikametinde eski mevzilerine ricat eden du§mamn takibinde, piyade ve suvari firkalarimizin gosterdikleri $ayam tezkar kahramanhklari izah etmiyecegim. Yalniz, umumi vaziyeti askeriyeyi itmam i«jin musaade buyurursamz Cenup Cephemize ait mintakada cereyan etmi§ olan harekati huljisa edeyim. (Kemal 1934: ii. 106)1 Honoured gentlemen, 1 shall not give an account of the notable acts of heroism shown by our infantry and cavalry divisions in pursuit of the enemy, who, vanquished for the second time, was abandoning the inonu battlefield and retreating in the direction of Bursa, to its old positions. With your permission, however, to complete the general military picture let me summarize the movements which had proceeded in the region of our southern front. Here is the corresponding text in the 1963 version (Tugrul et al: ii. 427), with a translation using words of Anglo-Saxon rather than of Latin origin wherever possible, to try to convey the flavour of the neologisms: Saym baylar, Inonil Sava§ alamni ikinci kez yenilerek birakan ve Bursa dogrultusunda eski dayangalanna tfekilen du§manin kovalanmasmda piyade ve suvari tiimenlerimizin goster¬ dikleri amlmaya deger yigitlikleri anlatmayacagim. Yalniz, askerlik bakimmdan genel durumun a^iklanmasini tamamlamak i<;in, izin verirseniz, Giiney Cephemiz bolgesinde yapilan sava^lari ozetleyeyim. Distinguished sirs, I shall not tell of the noteworthy deeds of bravery done by our infantry and cavalry divisions in chasing the enemy, who, beaten for the second time, was leaving the inonu battlefield and withdrawing towards Bursa, to its old standings. With your leave, however, to fill out the sketch of the general situation from the military viewpoint, let me outline the struggles carried out in the section of our southern front. The neologism dayanga (here rendered ‘standing’), manufactured from dayanmak ‘to be based, to hold out’, was intended to replace mevzi in the sense of a position held by troops. It did not gain acceptance, has not replaced mevzi, and does not appear in recent dictionaries. Nor has a substitute been found for harekat, an Arabic plural still current for ‘troop movements’; the sava$lar of the text, ‘strug¬ gles’ or ‘battles’, does not convey Kemal’s meaning. For ‘permission’ in the final sentence, his musaade has been replaced by izin, which is equally Arabic but less obviously so. The language did not remain static after the 1960s. Not twenty years later, the need was felt for an even more up-to-date version. Nutuk-Soylev (Arar et al. 1986) gives the 1934 and 1963 texts in parallel, with some amendments to the latter, although, in the paragraph quoted above (at ii., 777 in Nutuk-Soylev), there happens to be only one c-hange from the 1963 version: Saym, now no more of an honorific than Mr, Mrs, Miss, or Ms, has been replaced by Saygtdeger ‘respectworthy’. ' The first publication was in the old alphabet (Ankara: Turk Tayyare Cemiyeti, 1927). 4 Introduction And consider this, from the introduction to the 1982 edition of a book first pub¬ lished in 1968 (Yiicel 1982), explaining why the author thought a revised version was necessary: ‘Bir kez, §imdi oldugu gibi o giinlerde de yazilarimi olduk^a ari bir Turk^e yazmama kar$in, on lie; yil onceki dilim bayagi eskimi§ goriindii bana’ (For one thing, although I wrote then as I do now, in quite a pure Turkish, my language of thirteen years ago seemed to me downright antiquated). What gives the success its catastrophic aspect is not just the loss of Ottoman Turkish—its time had long passed and only a fast-disappearing company of elderly Turks and the few foreigners who love the language for its own sake are shedding any tears over it—but also the loss of its natural development, the Turkish of the 1920s and 1930s, the language of Halide Edip Adivar, Sabahattin Ali, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, and Re§at Nuri Guntekin.2 The loss affects every Turk who now, in speaking or writing, gropes for the precise word to express the required meaning and does not find it, because it is as dead as Etruscan and has not been replaced. Moreover, many of the neologisms were constructed arbitrar¬ ily, with little or no regard for the rules and conventions of Turkish, with the result that any Turk with a feeling for language finds at least some of them excruciating and cannot bear to use or to hear them. Several of my friends cannot stand ileti$im for ‘communications’, while many more cannot abide the use of neden ‘from what?’ as a noun meaning ‘cause’. In 1984 I attended a lecture in Ankara by a social anthropologist. It was en¬ titled ‘Differing Mentalities and Culture’ and it was a good lecture, but I confess to having been more interested in the medium than the message. The speaker began by drawing a distinction between local cultures and universal culture. For ‘universal’ he first used the Ottoman ‘kulli’, and then, when a stirring in the audi¬ ence showed that it was not intelligible or not acceptable to everyone, he tried ‘tumel’, the neologism for ‘universal’ as a philosophical term. A similar reaction from the audience, and he said ‘iiniversel’. Later on he used ‘genel’ ‘general’. He did not try ‘evrensel’, the prescribed neologism for ‘universal, cosmic’, which was sub¬ sequently used by a questioner from the floor. After a while he took to rattling off three words for each concept: for example, when he wanted to express ‘causality’ he used the Ottoman borrowing from Arabic, the neologism which may be liter¬ ally rendered ‘ffomwhatishness’, and the French: ‘illiyet-nedenlilik-causalite’. How the language got into that state is the subject of this book. 2 Turkish cynics say that the young do not read works written more than ten years ago anyway, but this is belied by the number of ‘translations into modern Turkish’ and ‘simplified versions’ of standard authors to be seen in the bookshops. See, however, the quotation from Fuat M. Andie on page 143. 2 Ottoman Turkish By the beginning of the eleventh century, most of the ancestors of the present Turks of Turkey had become Muslim. It is evident that their introduction to Islam was due to peoples of Iranian speech, because the basic religious terms in Turkish come not from Arabic but from Persian or other Iranian languages: namaz ‘prayer’, orug ‘fasting’, peygamber ‘prophet’. The apparent exceptions, the Arabic hac or ziyaret for ‘pilgrimage’, are no exception, because those are the words used in Persian too. Once settled within the civilization of Islam, the Turks took into their language as much of the Persian and Arabic vocabularies as they needed, and more. As the perception that they were Turks was supplanted by an awareness that they were members of the Ommet-i Muhammed, the Community of Believers, so the tide of Arabic and Persian flowed. It was not just a matter of borrowing foreign words for foreign concepts. They had a perfectly good word for ‘city’, bahk, as in Marco Polo’s name for Pekin, Cambaluc—i.e. Hanbaltk ‘Emperor’s City’. By the fourteenth century they had abandoned it for gehir (Persian sahr), and kend (Sogdian knd), which forms the last element of the names Tashkent, Yarkand, and Samarkand. They had two words for ‘army’, gerig and sti, both of which were ousted from general use by asker, Arabic 'askar (originally the Latin exercitus), though ferig was preserved in Yenigeri ‘New Troops’, whence Janissary. Even the word for ‘fire’, od, gradually fell out of use; it survived in poetry until the early twentieth century but had hardly been used in prose for four hundred years, its place having been taken by a teg, Persian ates. This process had begun in the empire of the Seljuk Turks (1040-1157). Mehmet Fuat Kopruliizade (1928:10-11) wrote:1 Anadolu’da ... klasik Acem ^i’rini model ittihaz eden ‘Saray $airleri’ni daha Sel?ukiler saraymda gormege ba§hyoruz ... Iran tesiratimn miitemadi kuwetle nemasma ve Acem modellerinin taklidinde daimi bir terakki gosterilmesine ragmen, Tiirk^e yazan §airler ve muellifler, eserlerinde hemen umumiyetle: ‘Turkipe’nin Arap^a ve Acemce’ye nispetle daha dar, daha kaba, ifadeye daha kabiliyetsiz oldugunu, ve binaenaleyh kendi kusurlann bakilmamak lazim geldigini’ soyliiyorlar, hatta bazan zimni bir mazeret $eklinde ‘Arabi ve Farsi bilmeyen halkm anlamasi i(;in Tiirk<;e yazmaga mecbur olduklarim’ ilave ediyorlardi. Already at the Seljuk court in Anatolia we begin to see the ‘Palace poets’, who took classi¬ cal Persian poetry as their model... But almost all those poets and prose-writers who 1 This great historian of Turkish literature (1890-1966) changed his name to Mehmet Fuat Koprulu in compliance with the Surnames Law of 1934, which required every family to choose a Turkish surname; the zade (‘-son’) in his time-honoured patronymic was Persian. 6 Ottoman Turkish wrote in Turkish despite the continuing vigorous growth of Persian influences and a steady advance in the imitation of Persian models, used to say in their works that Turkish, in com¬ parison with Arabic and Persian, was limited, crude, and inexpressive, and that their own shortcomings must therefore be overlooked. They would sometimes even add as an implicit excuse that they were obliged to write in Turkish in order to be understood by the common people, who were ignorant of Arabic and Persian. Huge though the influx of Persian words was, a bigger invasion came from Arabic, and not only because as the language of the Koran it naturally became the language of religion and theology and because the Persian vocabulary was itself replete with Arabic borrowings, but also because when an Arabic word was bor¬ rowed it brought its whole family with it. This calls for a brief explanation, which Arabists may skip. Arabic words generally are based on triliteral roots—that is, roots consisting of three consonants, for example, K-T-B and J-B-R expressing the concepts of writing and compulsion respectively. These consonants are fitted into patterns of short and long vowels, sometimes with a doubling of the second or third consonant, sometimes with prefixes or infixes. Each pattern has a specific grammatical function: KaTaBa ‘he wrote’, KaTiB ‘writer’, maKTuB ‘written’; JaBaRa ‘he compelled’, JaBiR ‘compelling’, maJBuR ‘compelled’. Once one knows the patterns, learning a new root can increase one’s vocabulary by as many as a dozen new words. It was natural that the Turks should borrow so fundamental a word as Him: ‘knowledge’, more particularly‘religious knowledge’. So along came 'a/tm ‘scholar’ with its plural 'ulama', mcilum ‘known’, mu’allim ‘teacher’, talim ‘instruction’, istflam ‘request for information’, and lots more. And every new importation of a foreign word meant that the corresponding Turkish word was forgotten or became restricted to the speech of the common people. A good example is sin ‘grave, tomb’, found in popular poetry from the thirteenth to the twentieth century and still widely used in Anatolia, but hardly ever found in elevated writing, having long ago been supplanted by mezar [A]. But there was more to the rise of Ottoman than the suppression of native words. With the Arabic and Persian words came Arabic and Persian grammatical conventions. Turkish was born free of that disease of language known as gram¬ matical gender; Arabic was not. Further, whereas Turkish adjectives precede their nouns, Arabic and Persian adjectives follow them.2 Nor is that the whole story. When Persian took nouns over from Arabic, it usually took their plurals as well: with Him ‘knowledge, science’, came its plural 'uliim, which is grammatically 2 While students of Turkish may be cheered to find the occasional similarity with English, they should remember that Turkish adjectives invariably precede their nouns. In English, however, besides the locutions exemplified in ‘He is well versed in matters archaeological’ and ‘The boiler is in an out¬ building, not in the house proper’, we have such anomalies as ‘court martial’, ‘time immemorial’, ‘Princess Royal’, ‘Heir Apparent’, and ‘President Elect’, while Taw merchant’ and ‘rhyme royal’ still figure in the vocabularies of experts in jurisprudence and literature respectively. Ottoman Turkish 7 feminine. Moreover, in Persian an i (termed ‘Persian izafet’, from idafd [A] ‘attachment’) is interposed between a noun and its qualifier. Ab is ‘water’, sard ‘cold’, hayat ‘life’; ‘cold water’ is ab-i-sard and ‘the water of life’ is ab-i-haydt. The Arabic for ‘natural’ is tabti, the feminine of which is \abiiya. So in Persian ‘the natural sciences’ was ’ulum-i-fabiiya, and this became the Ottoman Turkish too (in modern spelling, uldm-i tabiiye). The New Literature movement at the end of the nineteenth century was known as Edebiyat-i Cedide; edebiyat ‘literature’ was feminine in Arabic, so cedid ‘new’, the Arabic jadid, was given the Arabic feminine termination, and noun and adjective were linked by the Persian izafet. One of the names of what we call the Ottoman Empire was ‘The Guarded Dominions’. ‘Dominion’ in Arabic is mamlaka, plural mamalik, which again is feminine. So mahriif, the Arabic for ‘guarded’, was put into the feminine form, mahru$a. In Arabic, ‘guarded dominions’ was therefore mamalik makru$a, but in Ottoman Turkish it became memalik-i mahrusa, for that was how it was done in Persian. Persianization continued unabated under the Ottomans. Although they did not go as far as their Seljuk predecessors in despising their mother tongue enough to make Persian their official language, the fifteenth century saw a huge increase in the Persian influence on Turkish writers of prose and poetry. They took Persian writers as their models and filled their works with Persian borrowings. Latifi (1491-1582) of Kastamonu relates that the poet and historian Leal! was sufficiently proficient in the Persian language to pass as a Persian. He moved from his native Tokat to the capital, where he became a literary lion and won the favour of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, but immediately lost it when it transpired that he was not a Persian but a Turk (Latifi 1314/1898: 289-90). True, Latifi was writing in 1546, almost a century after Leali’s time, and there is no guarantee that his account was factual, but it shows how depreciated at least one Turkish literary man, Latifi, felt vis-a-vis the Persians.3 The situation is thus summed up by Gibb (1900-9: i. 8): It is not too much to say that during the whole of the five and a half centuries [fourteenth to mid-nineteenth] covered by the Old School [of poetry], more especially the Third Period [the seventeenth century], every Persian and every Arabic word was a possible Ottoman word. In thus borrowing material from the two classical languages a writer was quite unre¬ stricted save by his own taste and the limit of his knowledge; all that was required was that in case of need he should give the foreign words a Turkish grammatical form. By this he meant that Turkish suffixes could be added to foreign words. As indeed they were, but not always in profusion; in classical Ottoman poetry one may see whole lines where the only indication that they are in Turkish and not Persian is 5 Of interest in this context is an observation on language in fourteenth-century England in the introduction (signed ‘H.M.’) to Maundeville (1886: 3): ‘In the days of Maundeville Latin, French and English were the three languages written in this country. Latin was then and long afterwards the common language of the educated, and it united them into a European Republic of Letters; French was the courtly language; English was the language of the people.’ 8 Ottoman Turkish a final -dir ‘is’ or -di ‘was’. Sometimes even that much is wanting. The three fol¬ lowing couplets, containing not one syllable of Turkish, form part of an ode in honour of Sultan Suleyman by Baki (1526/7-1600), the most highly esteemed poet of the classical age: Balani§In-i mesned-i §ahan-i tacdar Valani§an-i ma'reke-i 'arsa-i keyan Cem§id-i 'ay$ ii 'i§ret ii Dara-yi dar ii gir Kisra-yi 'adl ii re’fet u iskender-i zaman Sultan-i §ark u garb $ehin§ah-i bahr u berr Dara-yi dehr §ah Siileyman-i kamran. Seated above the thrones of crowned monarchs, High o’er the fray of battlefields of kings, Jamshid of feasting and carousing, Darius of war, Chosroes of justice and clemency, Alexander of the age, Sultan of east and west, King of Kings of sea and land, Darius of the time, King Suleyman, of fortune blessed.4 The mixture of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, which Turks call Osmanhca and we call Ottoman, was an administrative and literary language, and ordinary people must have been at a loss when they came into contact with officials. But while they must often have been baffled by Ottoman phraseology, they were capable of seeing the funny side of it. In the shadow theatre, the running joke is that Karagoz speaks Turkish while his sparring partner Hacivat speaks Ottoman. In the play Salmcak, Karagoz keeps hitting Hacivat. Hacivat asks him why, but receives only nonsensical answers sounding vaguely like his—to Karagoz—unintelligible ques¬ tions. Eventually he asks, ‘Vurmamzdan aksa-yi murad?’ (What is your ultimate object in hitting me?). To which Karagoz replies, ‘Aksaray’da murtad babandir’ (The turncoat at Aksaray is your father) (Kudret 1968-70: iii. 54.) A rough English parallel would be, ‘Explain your bellicose attitude.’—‘How do I know why he chewed my billy-goat’s hat?’ Following in the footsteps of Karagoz are today’s taxi-drivers who refer to their battery-chargers not as $arjdr, the French chargeur, but as carcur ‘chatter’.5 They are displaying not ignorance but a sense of fun, like those who in the days of the Democrat Party pronounced ‘Demokrat’ as ‘Demirkirat’ ‘Iron-Grey Horse’.6 The British sailors who served on the ship taking Napoleon to St Helena knew very well that her name was not Billy Ruffian; in calling her that, they were just cutting the fancy foreign Bellerophon down to size, like those people in England who used to Anglicize asparagus as sparrow-grass and hysterics as high strikes. In fact the 4 A translation of the whole ode will be found in Gibb (1900-9: iii. 147-51). 5 According to Erkilet (1952), soldiers were already saying carcur instead of $arjdr in the 1920s, though this was another kind of $arj6r, an ammunition-belt for machine-guns. (See p. 101 of the 1967 reprint.) 6 When the party was outlawed (see Chapter 12), its reincarnation, the Justice Party, chose as its logo the figure of a horse. Ottoman Turkish 9 Turkish vocabulary still includes not a few originally foreign words that the tongue of the people has converted into more Turkish shapes: from Persian, for example, gama$ir‘linen (jamesuy), gergeve‘frame’ (carcuba), gozde1 ‘favourite’ (guzide), koge ‘corner’ (gusa), gargamba ‘Wednesday’ (carsanbih), and merdiven ‘staircase’ (narduban); and, from Arabic, rahat lokum ‘Turkish Delight’ (rahat al-hulkum ‘ease of the gullet’), now abbreviated to lokum, mugamba ‘oilskin’ (muSammd), and maydanoz ‘parsley’ (mak.dunis). Maydanoz was transformed by some into midenuvaz [AP] ‘stomach-caressing’, a Persian compound that cannot be called a popular etymology; one is reminded of the English people who turned ‘Welsh rabbit’ into the more genteel-seeming ‘Welsh rarebit’. The essayist and novelist Peyami Safa (1899-1961) must have taken midenuvaz to be the correct form, for he wrote: Ge<;enlerde de bir muharrir arkada;tmiz, gazetesinde, turk<;ele$mi§ bir fransizca kelimeyi turkcpe imla ile yazdigtm ipn bana tariz etmi^ti. ‘Qkolata’ kelimesine ‘§okola’ve ‘§imendifer’ kelimesine ‘$6mendofer’ diyenler arasmda bulunmaktan tjekinirim. Bu yolun sonunda maydanoza ‘midenuvaz’ demek vardir. O fikmaza girmek istemem ben. (Safa 1970: 47) A writer friend recently took me to task in his newspaper for spelling a Turkicized French word in the Turkish way. I am reluctant to join the ranks of those who pronounce ‘pkolata’ as ‘§okola’ and ‘§imendifer’ as ‘§omend6fer’ [chemin defer]. What lies at the end of that road is pronouncing maydanoz as mideniivaz, a dead end which I have no wish to enter. On the theme of the bewilderment of ordinary people when confronted by speakers of Ottoman, there is the tale of the sartklt hoca (the turbanned cleric), who, wishing to buy some mutton, addresses a butcher’s boy with the words ‘Ey sagird-i ka§$ab, lahm-i ganemden bir kiyye bilvezin bana 'i(a eyler misin?’ (O apprentice of the butcher, wilt thou bestow on me one oke avoirdupois of ovine flesh?). The perplexed boy can only reply ‘Amin!’ (Amen!). On the other hand, there is the story of one occasion when the uneducated were not baffled by someone who spoke differently from them. It is said to have happened in 1876, at a time of rioting by the softas (students at the medreses (religious schools)), when the police were chasing a crowd of them. Despairing of outdistancing the pursuit, one softa had the bright idea of sitting down on the pavement. When the police asked him, ‘Which way did they go?’, he replied, giving full weight to the Arabic pronunciation of his words, as was second nature for a softa: ‘Ba'disi §u tarafa, ba'disi o tarafa’ (Some went this way, some that)—and was quite surprised to find himself in custody. Tahsin Banguoglu, having mentioned (1987: 325) that the poet and sociologist Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924) had wanted the new Turkish to be Istanbul Turkish as spoken by the intellectuals, adds a comment containing an interesting piece of information that the author has not seen recorded elsewhere: 7 Turkish for ‘in the eye’, an obvious popular etymology. 10 Ottoman Turkish Evet ama, o zaman aydinlarin konustugu Turk^e eski yazi dilinin 90k etkisinde kalmi$ bir Turk<;e idi. Onu da halk pek anlamiyordu. Halk buna istill&hi konu^ma derdi. Mesela ‘miidur bey, katibe bir ^ey soyledi, ama anlayamadim. istillahi konu§uyorlar.’ Yes, but the Turkish spoken by intellectuals at that time was a Turkish still very much under the influence of the old written language. And this the people did not understand very well. They called it ‘talking istillahi’. For example: The manager said something to the clerk, but I couldn’t understand it. They’re talking istillahi.’ Istillahi is another example of the phenomenon discussed above: giving a more familiar shape to high-flown words with which one does not feel at home, the word in this case being istilahi, the adjective of istilah. Isttlah paralamak (to tear technical terms to pieces), once meant talking over the heads of one’s hearers. The meaningless but Arabic-looking istillahi is made up of familiar elements: the first two syllables are in imitation of words such as istiklaTindependence’ and istikamet ‘direction’, while llah is from the Arabic name of God. As we might say, or might have said a generation or two ago, ‘They’re parleyvooing.’ Even before the rise of the Ottomans there had been expressions of dis¬ satisfaction with the dominance of Arabic and Persian.8 In 1277 Jjemsuddin Mehmed Karamanoglu, the chief minister of the ruler of Konya, decreed that thenceforth no language other than Turkish would be spoken at court or in gov¬ ernment offices or public places. Unfortunately he was killed in battle a few months later. Few Turks who write about the history of their language can forbear to quote the two following couplets from the Garipname (‘Book of the Stranger’) of the Sufi poet A§ik Pa§a (1272-1333).9 The purpose of the work is to illustrate Sufi doc¬ trine through discourses on passages from the Koran, tradition, and the sayings of Sufi masters. Turk diline kimesne bakmaz idi Tiirklere hergiz goniil akmaz idi Turk dahi bilmez idi bu dilleri Ince yoli, ol ulu menzilleri. None had regard for the Turkish tongue; Turks won no hearts. Nor did the Turk know these languages, The narrow road, those great staging posts. It is doubtful, however, whether every reader of these lines has a clear idea of their meaning. Of which languages was the Turk ignorant; what are the narrow road and those great staging posts? One scholar (Silay 1993) translates the fourth line as ‘these styles of elegant and elevated discourse’, which does no more than raise another question: what styles? The context makes it plain that A$ik Pasha is not talking about literary style. He has been discussing Koran 14. 4: ‘We have sent no messenger save with the language of his people.’ The Koran was revealed to the 8 A valuable source on this topic is Yavuz (1983). “ The relevant portion of the text is most readily accessible in iz (1967: i. 584-5). Ottoman Turkish n Arabs, in Arabic; neither Persians not Turks have had a prophet bearing them the revelation in their own tongues. Bu Garipname anin geldi dile Ki bu dil ehli dahi mana bile. Therefore has this Garipname been uttered That those who speak this tongue may also know the hidden wisdom. The identity of the languages in question is shown in a previous couplet: Cun bilesin citrnle yol menzillerin10 Yirmegil sen Turk u Tacik dillerin. To know all the staging posts of the road, Do not despise the Turkish and Persian languages. The languages of which the Turk was ignorant are Turkish and Persian, the impli¬ cation being that so far the language of religion has been Arabic, but Arabic is not the only language through which spiritual knowledge can be attained. Persian is the language of the Mesnevi of the great Sufi poet Jalal al-DIn RumI; the Turk should learn to read that language and his own, so that he can make use of the Mesnevi and of the Garipname. The road is the progress towards enlightenment, the staging posts are the stages in that progress. To Mir 'Ali Sir Neva! (1441-1501) of Herat in Afghanistan belongs the distinc¬ tion of having raised the Chaghatay dialect of Turkish to the status of literary lan¬ guage of Central Asia. In his Muhakamat al-Lugateyn (‘The Judgment between the Two Languages’) he sets out to demonstrate that Turkish is in no way inferior to Persian as a literary medium. At one point he says: Ve hiinersiz Tiirknin sitem-zarlf yigitleri asanlikka bola Farsi elfaz bile nazm ayturga me§gul bolupturlar. Ve fi’l-haklka ki§i yah§i mulahaza ve te'emmul kilsa, cun bu lafzda mun?a vus'at ve meydamda munp fiishat tapilur, kirek kim munda her suhan-guzarhg ve fasih-guffarhg ve nazm-sazhg ve fesane-perdazlig asanrak bolgay, ve vaki' asanrakdur. (Levend 1965-8: iv. 203) Among untalented Turks, would-be artistic young men have occupied themselves with verse composition using Persian vocabulary, as being the easy course. Truly, if one consid¬ ers and reflects well, since such scope and range are found in our own language, it follows that all eloquence and expression, all versification and story-telling, are bound to be easier in it and are in fact easier. Like seventeen others of the thirty-six Ottoman sultans, Selim I (1512-20) wrote poetry. Most of his was in Persian. On the other hand, his arch-enemy Shah Ismail of Persia (1501-24) wrote poems in Turkish, some of which, set to music, may still be heard today on Turkish radio. It has been suggested that his purpose was to endear himself to the Turcomans in his territories, but the simpler explanation is that he was a Turk by birth and that writing in his mother tongue came naturally to him. 10 In modern Turkish, the -in at the end of this line and the next would be -ini. See Lewis (1988: 41) and, for the -gil of yirmegil, ibid. (137). 12 Ottoman Turkish In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries came the school of Turki-i basit (‘plain Turkish’ poetry), associated with the names of Aydmli Visali, Tatavlah Mahremi, and Edirneli Nazmi, whom it did not outlive. Readers of poetry expected it to be in Ottoman, not kaba Tiirkqe (crude Turkish), whereas those whose everyday language was indeed kaba Turkge, while they might enjoy listening to poetry that they could understand, were not generally readers. Yet even such a dyed-inthe-wool Persianizing poet as Nabi (c.1630-1712), whom Gibb (1900-9: iii. 325) speaks of as ‘writing verses which can by courtesy alone be described as Turkish’, was moved to write: Ey §i’r miyanmda satan lafz-i garibi Divan-i gazel niisha-i kamus deguldiir. (Levend 1972: 78; Korkmaz 1985: 388) O you who sell outlandish words wrapped in poetry! A book of odes is not a copy of the dictionary! It will be seen that only three—ey, satan, deguldiir—of the eleven words in which Nabi expresses this laudable sentiment are Turkish. Indeed, long after Ottoman chroniclers had taken to writing in Ottoman instead of Persian, they persisted in using pure Persian for their chapter headings. The political changes introduced by the Tanzimat-i Hayriye, the ‘Propitious Regulations’ of 1839, and even more by the reform charter of 1856, gave hope that the manifold grievances of various sections of the Sultan’s subjects might be rectified. Some were, but by no means all. For our purposes it is enough to say that the spirit of the Tanzimat (the term applied to the period as well as to the reforms) gave rise to the first serious stirrings of Turkish nationalism and to a flowering of journalism, and from then on the tide of language reform flowed strongly. A newspaper proprietor or editor does not have to be as devoted to the ideal of a well-informed public as the pioneers of Turkish journalism were (most if not all of them were driven into exile at some time in their careers), or indeed devoted to any ideal at all, to see the necessity of making the language of his paper understandable by as many people as possible; if he fails to see it, he will soon be enlightened by his circulation manager. The father of Turkish journalism was the writer and poet Ibrahim §inasi (?i824-7i), co-founder in i860 with Agah Efendi (1832-85), a civil servant and diplomat, of Terceman-i Ahval, founded in 1861, the second non-official newspaper to be published in the country (the first was the weekly Ceride-i Havadis, started in 1840 by an Englishman, William Churchill).11 §inasi declared the paper’s policy in his first editorial (Levend 1972: 83): " For a concise history of the Turkish press, see The Encyclopaedia of Islam (1960), ii. 465-6, 473-6. As for Churchill, see Kologlu (1986), an entertaining account of how, despite being miyop (short-sighted), he went out pigeon-shooting one Sunday afternoon in May 1836 and wounded a shepherd boy and a sheep. There were diplomatic repercussions. An earlier account was Alric (1892). Ottoman Turkish 13 Ta’rife hacet olmadigi uzre, kelam, ifade-i meram etmege mahsus bir mevhibe-i kudret oldugu misillii, en giizel icad-i akl-i insani olan kitabet dahi, kalemle tasvir-i kelam eylemek fenninden ibaretdir. Bu i’tibar-i hakikate mebni giderek, umum halkm kolaylikla anlayabilecegi mertebede i§bu gazeteyi kaleme aimak multezem oldugu dahi, makam munasebetiyle §imdiden ihtar olunur. There is no need to explain that, while speech is a divine gift for the expression of thought, writing is the finest invention of the human intelligence, consisting as it does in the science of depicting speech by means of the pen. Proceeding from a regard for this truth, editor¬ ial notice is hereby given that it is a bounden duty to write this newspaper in a way that will be easily understood by the public at large. Among the other pioneers were Namik Kemal (1840-88), a selfless patriot and distinguished writer in many fields, and his friend the great statesman Ziya Pasha (1825-80). This is from Namik Kemal’s article ‘Observations on Literature in the Ottoman Language’: istanbul’da okuyup yazma bilenlerden dahi belki onda biri, sebk-i ma’ruf uzre yazilmi§ bir kagiddan ve hatt& kafil-i hukuku olan kanun-i devletten bile istifade-i merama kaadir degildir. C)unki edebiyatimiza §ark u garbin bir ka? ecnebi lisamndan mustear olan §iveler galebe ederek lttinld-i ifadeye halel vermi§ ve edevat ii ta’birat u ifadat-i takrirden biitiin btitun ayrilmis olan uslub-i tahrir ise bayagi bir ba§ka lisan hukmune girmi^tir... Elfazda garabet o kadar mu’teberdir ki, mesela Nergisi gibi milletimizin en me§hur bir te’lif-i edibanesinden istihrac-i meal etmek, bize gore ecnebi bir lisanda yazilmi§ olan Giilistan’i anlamaktan mu§kildir. Turk<;enin ecza-yi terkibi olan U9 lisan ki, telaftuzda olduk^a ittihad bulmu;ken tahrirde hala hey’et-i asliyyelerini muhafaza ediyor. Akaanim-i selase gibi sozde guya muttehid ve hakikatte zidd-i kamildir.12 Even of literates in Istanbul, perhaps one in ten is incapable of getting as much as he would like from a normally phrased note or even from a State law, the guarantor of his rights. The reason is that our literature is swamped with locutions borrowed from several foreign tongues of east and west, which have damaged the flow of expression, while the style of composition has become totally detached from the particles and terms and forms of dis¬ course and has fallen, to put it plainly, under the domination of another language. So prevalent is foreignness in our vocabulary that it is harder, in my view, to extract the meaning from one of our nation’s best-known literary compositions, for example that of Nergisi, than to understand the Gulistan, which is written in a foreign language. While the three languages of which Turkish is compounded have attained a certain unity in speech, they still preserve their original forms in writing. Like the three persons of the Trinity, they are said to be united but are in fact the reverse of integrated. The poems of Nergisi (d. 1635) are more intelligible than his prose works. Gibb (1900-9: iii. 208-9) refers to him when speaking of Veysi’s Life of the Prophet ‘[It] is written in the most recherche Persian style, and shares with the prose Khamsa of Nergisi [sic] the distinction of having been gibbeted by Ebu-z-Ziya Tevfiq Bey, one of the most stalwart champions of the Modern School, as a composition the continued study of which will land the nation in disaster.’ The Gulistan of Sa'di 12 Tasvir-i Efk&r, 416,16 Rebiyulahir 1283/29 Aug. 1866; Levend (1972:113-14). 14 Ottoman Turkish (?i2i3-92), in a mixture of verse and rhymed prose, is regarded as one of the masterpieces of Persian literature. One might think that Namik Kemal was exag¬ gerating, but in his day Arabic and Persian were a regular part of secondary edu¬ cation (and remained so until 1 October 1929). Anyone who has learned Persian, which is not a challenging language, can understand the Gulistan, but Nergisi’s convoluted Ottoman prose presents much greater difficulty. Ziya Pasha wrote the following in an article in Hurriyet, the newspaper he and Namik Kemal founded while exiles in London: Elyevm resmen ilan olunan fermanlar ve emirnameler ahad-i nas huzurunda okutuldukta bir $ey istifade ediliyor mu? Ya bu muharrerat yalmz kitabette melekesi olanlara mi mahsustur? Yoksa avam-i nas devletin emrini anlamak i<;un miidur? Anadolu’da ve Rumeli’de ahad-i nastan her $ahsa, devletin bir ticaret nizami vardir ve a’^ann suret-i miizayede ve ihalesine ve tevzi-i vergiye ve ?una buna dair fermanlan ve emirnameleri vardir deyii sorulsun, goriiliir ki bi(;arelerin birinden haberi yoktur. Bu sebebdendir ki hala bizim memalikte Tanzimat nedir ve nizamat-i cedide ne turlu islahat hasil etmi^tir, ahali bilmediklerinden ekser mahallerde miitehayyizan-i memleket ve zaleme-i viilat ve me’murin ellerinde ve adeta kable’t-Tanzimat cereyan eden usul-i zulm ii i’tisaf altinda ezilir ve kimseye derdini anlatamazlar. Amma Fransa ve Ingiltere memalikinden birinde me’murun birisi nizamat-i mevcude hilafinda ciiz’i bir hareket edecek olsa avam-i nas derhal da’vaci olur.13 Today, when decrees and orders are read out in the hearing of the common people, can anything be made of them? Are such compositions meant exclusively for those with a mastery of the written word, or is it intended that ordinary people should understand what the State commands? Try talking to any commoner in Anatolia and Rumelia about a com¬ mercial regulation, or the decrees and orders relating to the auctioning and awarding of the right to collect tithes, or establishing the amount of tax due from each household, or any matter at all; you will find that none of the poor creatures knows anything about any one of them. This is why dwellers in our territories still do not know what the Tanzimat is and what kind of reforms the new regulations have given rise to, and in most places there¬ fore suffer oppression at the hands of local dignitaries, tyrannical governors and officials, under the same bullying system and with all the injustices that prevailed in pre-Tanzimat times. Nor is the population able to tell anyone its troubles, whereas if an official in any of the French or English realms were to infringe the current regulations in the slightest degree, the commoners would immediately have the law on him. Two lines from Chesterton’s ‘The Secret People’ come irresistibly to mind: We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet. Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street. Ali Suavi (1837-78) was one of the first to take a nationalist stand in the matter of language: he urged the avoidance of non-Turkish words for which there were good Turkish equivalents and, like Suleyman Pasha and §emsettin Sami after him, 13 Hiirriyet (London), 20 Cemadi’l-iikl 1285/7 Sept. 1868; Levend (1972:119). Ottoman Turkish 15 spoke out against calling the language Ottoman. He went further than §inasi, who did not explicitly advocate the use of Turkish in preference to non-Turkish words. This is how he ended the introductory editorial he wrote for his newspaper Muhbir (1 (1867); Levend 1972: 115): ‘Tasrihi caiz olan her$ey’i, Asitane’de kullanilan adi lisan ile ya’ni herkesin anhyabilecegi ifade ile yazacaktir’ (Every¬ thing which can legitimately be expressed, [this journal] will write up in the ordi¬ nary language used in the capital; that is to say, in terms that everybody will be able to understand). Although the new newspapers and magazines frequently carried articles urging the use of simple Turkish, they tended to urge it in very complicated language. The domestic news sections of the newspapers went on for many years under the heading Havadis-i Dahiliye, because havadis ‘news’ is an Arabic feminine, so dahili ‘internal’ had to be in the feminine too, not forgetting the Persian -i. As late as 1896, a contributor to the newspaper Izmir wrote an article appealing for the use of straightforward Turkish, one paragraph of which should suffice to prove this point (Levend 1972:275). The Persian izafet compounds (which is what the writer meant by ‘unfamiliar and ponderous foreign locutions’) are identifiable in the modern transcription by the -i or -1. Words in italic are of non-Turkish origin. ‘Safvet-i ifademizi ihlal eden elfaz-i gayr-i me’nuse ve sakile-i ecnebiyyeye mukabil servet-i mevcude-i lisaniyyemizden istifade etmi$ olsak, daire-i safvet-i ifadeyi, binaenalyh daire-i terakkiyi tevsi’ etmi$ oluruz’ (Had we made use of our existing linguistic wealth instead of the unfamiliar and ponderous foreign locutions that corrupt our purity of expression, we would have broadened the compass of purity of expression and consequently the compass of progress). Ahmet Midhat (1844-1912), most prolific of Turkish journalists,14 wrote this in 1871, with not a single Persian izafet: En ewel kalem sahiblerine §unu sormak isterim ki, bizim kendimize mahsus bir lisanimiz yok mudur? Tiirkistan’da soylenmekte bulunan Tiirk<;eyi gosterecekler, oyle degil mi? Hayir, o lisan bizim lisanimiz degildir. Bundan alti yedi asir mukaddem bizim lisanimiz idi, fakat §imdi degil. O Tiirk^e bizim lisanimiz olmadigi gibi Arabi ve Farisi dahi lisanimiz degildir. Amma denilecek ki, bizim lisanimiz her halde bunlardan haric olamiyor. Haric olamadigi gibi dahilinde de sayilamiyor. Tiirkistan’dan bir Turk ve Necid’den bir Arab ve §iraz’dan bir Acem getirsek, edebiyyatimizdan en giizel bir par^ayi bunlara kar§i okusak hangisi anlar? §ubhe yok ki hit; birisi anhyamaz. Tamam, i§te bunlardan hi<^ birisinin anliyamadigi lisan bizim lisammizdir diyelim. Hayir, am da diyemeyiz. Qiinki o pa^ayi bize okuduklari zaman biz de anhyamiyoruz ... Pek a’la, ne yapalim? Lisansiz mi kalalim? Hayir, halkimizm kullandigi bir lisan yok mu? I§te am millet lisam yapalim ... 14 Ahmet Midhat’s work was more remarkable for its extent than for its originality. His output, of close on 200 books and countless articles, won him the appellation ‘kirk beygir kuwetinde bir makina’ (a forty-horsepower engine). Nevertheless he was an effective and widely read popularizer of new ideas. Over half of Turk Dili, 521 (May 1995) was devoted to him. l6 Ottoman Turkish Arabia ve Fars^anm ne kadar izafetleri ve ne kadar sifatlari varsa kaldiriversek, yazdigimiz §eyleri bugun yediyiiz ki§i anhyabilmekte ise yarin mutlaka yedi bin ki$i anlar. (Basiret, 4 Apr. 1871; Levend 1972:123) The first thing I should like to ask our writers is, don’t we have a language of our own? They will point to the Turkish spoken in Turkestan, won’t they? No, that is not our language. It was, six or seven centuries ago, but not now. That Turkish is not our language, nor are Arabic and Persian our language. But some will say, surely our language cannot lie outside these? It cannot lie outside them and it cannot be considered as inside them. If we were to bring a Turk from Turkestan, an Arab from Nejd, and a Persian from Shiraz, and read in their presence some exquisite passage from our literature, which of them would understand it? There is no doubt that none of them would. All right, let us say that this language which none of them can understand is our language. No, we cannot say that either, because when they read that passage to us we cannot understand it... Very well, what are we to do? Are we to be left without a language? No! There is a lan¬ guage that our people speak, isn’t there? Let us make that the national language ... If we were to sweep away all the izafets and all the adjectives there are in Arabic and Persian, if seven hundred people today understand what we write, tomorrow it will surely be seven thousand. Ahmet Midhat lived to see his wish well on the road to fulfilment. People who had been used to calling the natural sciences ulum-i tabiiye came to see that there was no harm in using the Turkish plural instead of the Arabic, dropping the Persian i and the Arabic feminine ending of the adjective, and putting the adjec¬ tive first: tabii ilimler. Even so, M. A. Hagopian found it necessary to devote over 40 per cent of his Ottoman-Turkish Conversation-Grammar (1907) to the grammar of Arabic and Persian. Suleyman Pasha (1838-92) deserves the palm for being the first Turk to publish a grammar of Turkish and to name it accordingly: tlm-i Sarf-i Ttirki (1874). Credit is also due to Abdullah Ramiz Pasha, whose Lisan-i Osmani’nin Kava’idini Havi Emsile-i Ttirki (‘Paradigms of Turkish, Containing the Rules of the Ottoman Lan¬ guage’) had appeared in 1868. In 1851, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (1825-95) and Fuad Efendi, later Pasha (1815-68), had published Kavaid-i Osmdniye (‘Ottoman Rules’), a grammar that went through a number of editions. The 1875 edition was named KavA’id-i Ttirkiye (‘Turkish Rules’). Article 18 of the Constitution of 1876 named the official language as Turkish, not Ottoman: ‘Teb&’a-i Osmaniyenin hidemat-i devlette istihdam olunmak iqn devletin lisan-i resmisi olan Tiirk^eyi bilmeleri §arttir’ (A prerequisite for Ottoman subjects’ employment in State service is that they know Turkish, which is the official language of the State). Jjemsettin Sami (1850-1904), famous for his excellent dictionary Kamus-i Ttirki (1316/1901) (though it is not as comprehensive as Redhouse (1890)), was of Suleyman Pasha’s way of thinking. The following extracts are from his article ‘Lisan-i Tiirki (Osmani)’, published in an Istanbul weekly in 1881. Ottoman Turkish V Osmanli lisani ta’birini pek de dogru gormuyoruz... Asil bu lisanla mutekellim olan kavmin ismi ‘Turk’ve soyledikleri lisamn ismi dahi ‘lisan-i Turk!’ dir. Cuhela-yi avam indinde mezmum addolunan ve yalmz Anadolu koylulerine ltlak edilmek istenilen bu isim, intisabiyle iftihar olunacak bir biiyiik iimmetin ismidir. ‘Osmanli’ ile ‘Turk’ isimleri beynindeki nisbet, tipki ‘Avusturyali’ ile ‘Alman’ isimleri beynindeki nisbet gibidir. ‘AvusturyalT unvani Avusturya devletinin taht-i tabiiyyetinde bulunan kaffe-i akvama ve onlarm biri ve Ummet-i hakimesi olan Avusturya Almanlanna ltlak olundugu halde, ‘Alman’ ismi bu iimmet-i azimenin gerek Avusturya’da, gerek Prusya ve Almanya’da ve gerek Isvi<;re ve Rusya ve sair taraflarda bulunan kaffe-i akvam effadina ltlak olunur. Devlet-i Osmaniyyenin zir-i tabiiyyetinde bu lunan kaffe-i akvam effadina dahi ‘Osmanli’ denilup, ‘Turk’ ismi ise Adriyatik denizi sevahilinden (Jin hududuna ve Sibirya’nm i<; taraflarina kadar miinte^ir olan bir ummet-i azimenin unvamdir. Bunun i^iin, bu unvan,.. . mtistevcib-i fahr ii mesar olmak lktiza eder. Memalik-i Osmaniyye’de soylenilen lisanlann ciimlesine ‘elsine-i Osmaniyye’ denilmek caiz olabilirse de, bunlarin birine ve hususiyle ekseriyyet-i etrafi bu memalikin haricinde olup bu devletin teessusunden 90k daha eski bulunan bir lisana ‘lisan-i Osmani’ denilmek tarihe ve ensab-i elsineye asla tevafuk etmez... Bana kalirsa, o aktar-i ba’ideki Turklerin lisaniyle bizim lisammiz bir oldugundan, ikisine de ‘lisan-i Tiirkl’ ism-i mu^tereki ve beyinlerdeki farka da riayet olunmak istenildigi halde, onlarinkine ‘Tiirki-i parks’ ve bizimkine ‘Tiirki-i garbi’ unvani pek miinasibdir .. ,15 1 do not think the term ‘the Ottoman language’ is quite correct... The name of the people who speak this language is really ‘Turks’ and their language is Turkish. This name, which is regarded as a reproach by the ignorant masses and which some would like to see applied only to the peasants of Anatolia, is the name of a great community which ought to take pride in being so termed. The relationship between ‘Ottoman’ and ‘Turk’ is just like that between ‘Austrian’ and ‘German’. ‘Austrian’ is applied to the totality of peoples who are sub¬ jects of the Austrian State, among them the Germans of Austria, the dominant commu¬ nity. ‘German’ is applied to all members of this great community, both in Austria and in Prussia and Germany, as well as in Switzerland, Russia and elsewhere. So, too, members of all the peoples subject to the Ottoman dynasty are called Ottomans, while ‘Turk’ is the title of a great community extending from the shores of the Adriatic to the borders of China and the interior of Siberia. This title, therefore ... should be a reason for pride and joy. Though it may be permissible to give the name ‘the Ottoman languages’ to the totality of languages spoken in the Ottoman dominions, it is quite inconsistent with history and the relationships of languages to apply the name ‘the Ottoman language’ to one of them, par¬ ticularly one whose boundaries for the most part lie beyond those dominions and which antedates by far the foundation of this State ... As I see it, since the language of the Turks in those distant regions is one with ours, it is perfectly proper to give them the common name of Turkish and, in cases where it is desir¬ able for the difference between them to be observed, to call theirs Eastern Turkish and ours Western Turkish ... Part of the reaction to the repressive regime of Sultan Abdulhamid (1876-1909) was manifested in the imitation of Western, particularly French, literary works, their content as much as their form, notably by the Servet-i Ftinun school. Despite its modernist pretensions, this famous journal (‘The Riches of Science’) 15 Hafta, 12,10 Zilhicce 1298/4 Nov. 1881. Full text in Levend (1972:130-4). i8 Ottoman Turkish represents a blind alley, even a U-turn, on the road to making the written lan¬ guage more accessible to the general public. It began its career in 1891 as the weekly magazine of the Istanbul evening newspaper Servet. Between 1895 and 1901, when the government closed it down, it was the hub of a circle of young French-oriented writers who became known as the Edebiyat-i Cedideciler, the exponents of the new literature. The precious style adopted by many of them repelled the common reader. Persuaded as they were that Turkish was incapable of being a literary medium without the aid of Arabic and Persian, they were wedded to the Persian izafet compounds and, not content with those current in the literary language, created new ones. Among their favourites were: $ebnem-i zevk u tesliyet ‘the dew of pleasure and consolation’, hadika-i sukun ‘garden of tranquillity’, and melal-i mesd‘evening melancholy’ (Levend 1972:349). At the same time they liked to show how Westernized they were by using caiques, literal translations of French expres¬ sions, such as ilAg aimak ‘to take medicine’ instead of the normal Hag yemek. One of their number, the novelist Halit Ziya U$akhgil (1866-1945), wrote this in his memoirs forty years on: Bu maraz hadisesi, refiklerimin affedeceklerine, hatta benimle beraber i’tiraf eyliyeceklerine kanaatle soyliyecegim, zinet ve san’at ibtilasiydi... oyle ki o tarihten uzakla^tikqa hele bugiin ben bizzat bunlan tekrar okurken sinirlenmekten hall kalmiyorum. (U^akligil 1936: iv. 141; Levend 1972: 238) This disease—and I shall say this in the conviction that my old colleagues will forgive me and may even join in my confession—was an addiction to ornateness and artifice... so much so that the further I am removed from that time, and especially at the present day, the more irritated I become on re-reading what I wrote then. During the 1897 war with Greece, the poet Mehmet Emin [Yurdakul] (1869-1944) published his Tiirkge §iirleri. The title is significant: these were Turkish poems, not Ottoman poems. The first, ‘Anadoludan bir ses yahut Cenge giderken’ (‘A Voice from Anatolia, or Going to War’), began: Ben bir Turkiim: dinim, cinsim uludur: Sinem, dziim ate$ ile doludur: insan olan vatammn kuludur: Turk evladi evde durmaz; giderim! I am a Turk, my faith and my race are great; My breast and soul are full of fire. He who serves his native land—he is a man; The sons of Turks will not stay at home; I go! It won him the appellation Turk §airi, meaning not just ‘the Turkish poet’ but ‘the “Turk” poet’. The language of the poem, for the most part simple Turkish, the words ‘Ben bir Turkiim’, and above all his use of the syllabic metres of popular verse rather than the Arabo-Persian quantitative metres of classical poetry, were a slap in the face for the intellectuals who saw themselves as Ottomans, in Ottoman Turkish 19 particular for the elitist Edebiyat-i Cedideciler. They retorted that he was no poet but a mere versifier and that not all the words he used would be intelligible to the common people. There was some justice in these criticisms: ceng [P], for example, was a distinctly high-flown way of saying ‘war’. But the common people admired him as a literary man who was not too proud to declare himself a Turk like them. Turk Dernegi, the Turkish Association, was the first nationalist cultural orga¬ nization to be formed, in January 1908, one of its founders being Ahmet Midhat (Tunaya 1984: i. 414-15; Levend 1972: 301). Its sixty-three members were far from having a shared view about the future of the language. Some of them were Simplifiers (Sadele$tirmeciler), who favoured eliminating non-Turkish elements and replacing them with native words current in speech. Some were Turkicizers (Tiirkfeciler), who believed that new words should be created by means of the regular Turkish suffixes and that Arabic and Persian words current in popular speech should be counted as Turkish. Then there were the Purifiers (Tasfiyeciler), who did not object to the Turkicizers’ view on the latter point but advocated bor¬ rowing words and suffixes from other dialects. Their leader Fuat Koseraif was not averse to inventing where necessary; according to Ziya Gokalp, he favoured taking suffixes over from Kirghiz, Uzbek, or Tatar, or even creating them from whole cloth (‘busbiitiin yeniden yaratilacak’): the adjective suffix-i could be replaced by -ki/ki/gi/gi, so that hayati ‘vital’ would become hayatkt, and edebi ‘literary’ would become edebgi. Unfortunately for anyone trying to sort out the various groups, their contemporaries outside the Dernek tended to call them all Purifiers, which Gokalp (1339/1923:114-15) found confusing.16 Others could not stomach the idea of abandoning even the Persian izafet, and came out strongly against those who would turn Ottomans into Buharah (people of Bukhara). Two prominent members, Mehmet Emin and Halit Ziya, held diametrically opposite views on the course the language ought to take. While the Association was being established, the latter contributed an article to Servet-i Ftinun in which he poured scorn on those wishing to expel from the language words of non-Turkish ancestry for which Turkish synonyms existed. The first word or phrase in the first two pairs in the following quotation is Arabic, the second Persian; in the others the order is reversed: Yak, maksud, zaten bizde Turk^e olarak muradifleri mevcud olan kelimeleri atmaksa, mesela lisanda gune§ var diye ufk-i edebimizden ‘$ems u hur§id’ i silmek, yildiz var diye ‘nucum u ahter’ i sondiirmek, goz var diye ‘<;e§m u dide’ yi, ‘ayn u basar’ 1 kapamak, yol var diye ‘rah u tarik’ i seddetmek, su var diye ‘ab u raa’ yi kurutmak kabilinden ameliyati tahribe karar vermekse, buna bir israf-i bihude nazari iie bakmak tabiidir. Bu mutalaaya serdedilen yegane i’tiraz: lisani sadele^tirmek, onu seviye-i irfan-i halka indirmek i<;un bu fedakarliga iiizurn var soziinden ibarettir. Fakat lisan seviye-i irfan-i halka inmez, seviye-i irfan-i halk lisana yiikseltimege <;ah§ihr. (Levend 1972: 305) 16 He always spelled his second name as two words: Gok Alp (Sky Hero). 20 Ottoman Turkish No, if the purpose is to discard the words we have with Turkish synonyms, and to decide on such destructive surgery as effacing ferns and hurfid from our literary horizon because we have giinef ‘sun’, extinguishing nticum and ahter because we have yildiz ‘star’, closing fefm u dide and ayn u basar because we have gbz ‘eye’, blocking rah and tarik because we have yol ‘road’, drying up ab and ma because we have su ‘water’, one cannot but regard it as wanton waste. The sole objection raised to this observation consists in the assertion that this sacrifice is necessary in order to simplify the language, to lower it to the cultural level of the people. But the language does not descend to the cultural level of the people; one endeavours to elevate the cultural level of the people to the language. The majority of the membership must have been of Halit Ziya’s way of think¬ ing, for this was how the Association’s official attitude was set forth in its journal, which shared its name: Osmanli lisammn Arabi ve Farsi lisanlarmdan ettigi istifade gayr-i munker bulundugundan ve Osmanli Tiirk^esini bu muhterem lisanlardan tecrid etmek hiijbir Osmanlimn hayalinden bile ge^miyeceginden, Turk Dernegi, Arabi ve Farsi kelimelerini butiin Osmanhlar tarafindan kemal-i siihuletle anla§ilacak vechile §ayi’ olmu$lanndan intihab edecek ve binaenaleyh mezkur Dernegin yazacagi eserlerde kullanacagi lisan en sade Osmanli Turk9esi olacaktir. (Levend 1972: 301) Since the benefit that the Ottoman language has derived from the Arabic and Persian lan¬ guages is undeniable, and since no Ottoman would even dream of dissociating Ottoman Turkish from these revered languages, the Turkish Association will select Arabic and Persian words from among those that have gained currency enough to be understood with total ease by all Ottomans. Consequently, the language that the Association will use in works it produces will be the simplest Ottoman Turkish. All very fine for the Ottomans, but not much use to those inhabitants of Turkey who, not presuming to lay claim to that designation, humbly thought of them¬ selves as Turks. Mehmet Emin for one could scarcely have approved. Clearly the disparity of opinions did not augur well for the prospects of the Association, which by 1913 had indeed ceased to exist. The exponents of simple Turkish still had far to go, not having yet grasped the principle expressed in St Luke’s ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ At this range it is impossible to say whether or not the drafter of the following ‘Decision on the Purification of the Language’, quoted in the press in November 1909 (Levend 1972: 313), had his tongue in his cheek. Again, the words in italic are of non-Turkish origin: Levazimat-i umumiyye dairesi ta’yinat kismi ma’riferiyle terkim ve tevzi’ edilmekte olan matbu pusulafora enva’-i muayyenati miibeyyin olmak iizere dercolunmakta olan 'ndn-t aziz', ‘guff, ‘erf,‘jaV ve'hatab’ kelimderinin yerlerine, ba’dema ‘ekmek’, ‘et’,‘pirinf’,‘arpa’ve ‘odun’ yazilmasi karargir olmu$tur. It has been decided that the words ‘ndn-t aziz' [PA] ‘precious bread’,17 guff [P] ‘meat’, 'erf [A] ‘rice’, 'faY [A] ‘barley’, and hatab’ [A] ‘firewood’, which are included on the printed slips 17 The adjective ‘precious’ does not denote a particular type of loaf; it was a stock epithet of bread. Ottoman Turkish 21 drawn up and distributed by the rationing section of the Department of the CommissariatGeneral to indicate the various kinds of rations, shall henceforth be replaced by ‘ekmek’, ‘et’, ‘pirinf [P], ‘arpa’, and'odun’. But one doubts that members of the Ottoman Parliament had their tongues in their cheeks one month later, when stating their objection to the proposed wording of their response to the Speech from the Throne: ‘Ariza-i te$ekkiiriyyenin uslub-t tahrin pek edibane ve Meclis-i Mill?ye yaki§miyacak derecede tefiihat ve elfaz-t rengin ile mahmuT (The style of composition of the Grateful Submission is very literary and laden with similes and ornate locutions to an extent unbecoming the National Assembly) (Levend 1972:313). On the other hand, the poet Mehmet Akif was not happy with the results of purification as exhibited in the newspaper Ikdam in 1910: bir takim makaleler goruluyor ki Turk<;e kelimelerin yamba§larinda Arap<;alari olmasa zavalli ummet-i merhume hii^bir §ey anlamiyacak! Meclis yerine ‘kuriltay’,18 meb’us yerine ‘yalva<;’, a’yan yerine ‘aksakal’, hal yerine ‘idemuk’, can yerine bilmem ne!... Gazetelerde zabita vukuati oyle agir bir lisanla yazthyor ki avam onu bir dua gibi dinliyor: ‘Mehmet Bey’in hanesine leylen furce-yab-i duhul olan sank sekiz adet kall<je-i giran-baha sirkat etmi§tir’ deyiip de ‘Mehmed Bey’in bu gece evine hirsiz girmi§ sekiz hall ^almi$’ dememek adeta maskaraliktir. Avam in anhyabilecegi mean! avamtn kullandigi lisan ile eda edilmeli ... (Sirat-i Mustakim, 4/92, 9 Apr. 1910; Levend 1972: 311-12) One sees many articles of which the unfortunate public—God have mercy on them— would understand nothing were it not for the Arabic equivalents given alongside the Turkish words! Kuriltay for meclis ‘Parliament’, yalvaf for meb’us ‘Deputy’, aksakal ‘grey¬ beards’ for a’yan ‘notables’, idemuk'9 for hal ‘situation’, and I don’t know what for can ‘soul’! ... The police reports in the newspapers are couched in language so abstruse that ordi¬ nary people listen to them as if they were religious formulas. To say‘Depredators who nocturnally effected an opportunist entry into Mehmed Bey’s domicile purloined costly tapis eight in number’, and not to say ‘Last night burglars broke into Mehmed Bey’s house and stole eight rugs’ is not far short of buffoonery. Concepts for ordinary people to be able to understand should be expressed in the language used by ordinary people... By the end of the nineteenth century some, and by the First World War most, Turkish writers were making a conscious effort to avoid Persian constructions except in stock phrases. They were also ceasing to think of their language as Qttoman, and after 1918 few went on thinking of themselves as Ottomans. Article 7 of the 1908 political programme of the Society for Union and Progress (‘the Young Turks’) ran: ‘Devletin lisan-i resmisi Tiirk^e kalacaktir. Her nevi muhaberat ve muzakerati Tiirk^e icra olunacaktir’ (The official language of the State will remain Turkish. Its correspondence and deliberations of every kind will be conducted in Turkish) (Tunaya 1952: 209). In 1920, while the War of Independence was still raging and the Sultan’s government still ruled in 18 In Levend. kuriltay is misspelt kurultay. 19 The author has so far failed to track down this word, even in that wonderful ragbag Dergisi (1934). Tarama 22 Ottoman Turkish Istanbul, schoolteachers had been instructed by the Ankara government’s Ministry of Education to collect pure Turkish words in colloquial use that had so far eluded the lexicographers. But the non-writing classes took a good deal longer to adjust to the new situa¬ tion. The author was told by Fahir iz that, during his military service in the neigh¬ bourhood of Erzurum just before the Second World War, he had got into conversation with a shepherd, whom he shocked by using the words ‘Biz Tiirkler’ (We Turks). ‘Estagfurullah!’ was the reply, ‘Ben Turkiim, zat-x aliniz Osmanhsmiz’ (Lord have mercy! fm a Turk; Your Excellency is an Ottoman). Somewhat more effective than Turk Dernegi was the literary group that called itself and its journal Geng Kalemler (The Young Pens), formed in Salonica (Selanik) in April 1911 (Levend 1972:313-30). Its members were also known as Yeni Lisancilar, the exponents of the new language. Most influential among them were Ziya Gokalp and the short-story writer Omer Seyfettin (1884-1920). The latter was the author of an article entitled ‘Yeni Lisan’ and signed only with a question mark, attacking the Edebiyat-i Cedide, the ‘new literature’ of the Serveti Fiinun group, and the even shorter-lived group known as Fecr-i Ati (the Coming Dawn), which formed round Servet-i Fiinun on its reappearance after the Young Turk revolution of 1908. ‘Bugunkiilerin diinkuleri taklid etmekten vazge^tikleri dakika hakiki fecir olacak, onlarm sayesinde yeni bir lisanla terenntim olunan mill! bir edebiyat dogacaktir ... Milli bir edebiyat viicuda getirmek i<;in ewela milli lisan ister’ (The true dawn will break at the moment when today’s people stop imitating yesterday’s. Thanks to them a national literature will be born, hymned in a new language... To bring a national literature into being requires first a national language). He went on to give his recipe for that future national language. In something of a purple passage, he stated his objections to replacing current words of Arabic and Persian origin with native words or with borrowings from further east: Dernegin arkasina takilup akim bir irticaa dogru, ‘Buhara-yi ?erif’deki henuz mebnai bir hayat sixren, miidhi? bir vukufsuzlugun, korkun^ bir taassubun karanhklan i<;inde uyuyan bundan bir duziine asir ewelki giinleri ya?iyan kavimda?larimizm yanma mi gidelim? Bu bir intihardir. Bu serf ate?li toplarimizi, makineli tufenklerimizi birakip yerine; du?manlarimiz gelince—kavimda?larirmz gibi—uzerlerine atacagimiz sulari kaynatmaga mahsus <;ay semaverleri koymaga benzer. Hayir. Be? asirdan beri konu?tugumuz kelimeleri, me’nus denilen Arabi ve Farsi kelimeleri mumkin degil terkedemeyiz. Hele aruzu atup Mehmed Emin Bey’in vezinlerini hiifbir ?air kabul etmez. Konu?tugumuz lisan, Istanbul Turk<;esi en tabii bir lisandir. Kli$e olmu? terkiblerden ba?ka luzumsuz zinetler asla mukalememize giremez. Yazi lisam ile konu?mak lisanim birleftirirsek, edebiyatimizi ihya veya icad etmi? olacagiz ... Lisammizda yalmz Turkce kaideler hiikmedecek; yalmz Ttirkce, yalmz Tiirkce kaideleri. (Genf Kalemler (Apr. 1911); Levend 1972: 314-15) Are we to tag along behind the Turk Dernegi and head for a sterile reaction, joining our fellow members of the Turkish community who still lead a basic existence in ‘Bukhara the Ottoman Turkish 23 Noble’, slumbering in the darkness of a dreadful ignorance and horrendous fanaticism, living the life of a dozen centuries ago? That would be an act of suicide. It would be like abandoning our quick-firing artillery and machine-guns and instead, when our enemies arrive, doing as the fellow-members of our people do and putting on the samovars expressly intended to boil the water we’re going to throw over them. No, it is impossible; we cannot forsake the Arabic and Persian words, the words we call familiar, that we have spoken for five centuries. Certainly no poet will renounce the classical prosody and accept Mehmet Emin Bey’s metres. Istanbul Turkish, the language we speak, is a most natural lan¬ guage. Stereotyped izafet compounds aside, the unnecessary trimmings can never enter our speech. If we unify the language of writing and the language of speaking, we shall have revived our literature or produced a new literature ... In our language, only Turkish rules will hold sway; only the Turkish language and only the rules of Turkish. The spectre of Turk Dernegi’s failure must have been before his eyes as he wrote that equivocal statement, which in no way justified the term ‘new language’. Sjemsettin Sami had been far more radical thirty years before. Most of the literary establishment were less receptive than Omer Seyfettin to suggestions that the language needed to be reformed; this may have been due to their love of Ottoman for its own sake or as a badge of rank distinguishing them form the commoners. Suleyman Nazif (1870-1927), editor of Yeni Tasvir-i Efkar, published an open letter by way of a rejection slip to a writer who had sent him an article on language. Having said that, if he were the proprietor of the news¬ paper, he would never open its pages to an article that advocated simplifying the language, he went on: Lisanim seven bir Osmanli Tiirk’ii, hi<;bir vakit ‘hatavat-i terakki’ makamina ‘ilerleme adimlari’m ls’ad edemez, boyle yaparsak lisanin kabiliyyet ve letafetini eiimizle mahvetmi§ oluruz ... Lisam sadele$tirmek, bizi yedi asir geriye ve dort be§ bin kilometre uzaga atmaktir ... Tekrar ederim ki biz bugun Buharali degiliz ve olamayiz. O maziyi iadeye ?ali$mak miihlik bir irtica’dir. (Yeni Tasvir-i Efkar, 12 July 1909; Levend 1972: 305-6) An Ottoman Turk who loves his language can never elevate ilerleme adimlari [going-ahead steps] to the status of hatavdt-i terakki [progressive paces]. If we do that, we thereby destroy the capacity and subtlety of the language with our own hands ... To simplify the language is to throw us seven centuries back and four or five thousand kilometres distant... I repeat: today we are not and cannot be Bukharans. Trying to bring back that past is a destructive piece of reaction. Interestingly, the cudgels were taken up on behalf of simplification by an easterner; not a Bukharan but a man from Kazan, Kazanli Ayaz. Bizim meslegimiz avam tarafdan bulunmak oldugundan, biz biitiin efkar-i siyasiye ve ictimaiye avama anlatmak tarafindayiz. Bizce bu meslek bir lisan i<;iin degil, butiin mesail-i hayatiye iyiindur ... Memleketin lslahi, milletin teceddudii butiin efrad-i millet efkarinm teceddudu ile hasil olacagindan bizim nokta-i nazarimizdan milletini seven her Turk 24 Ottoman Turkish yazdigi her makaleyi Anadolu Tiirklerinin anlayacagi bir lisanla yazmasi lazim gelir. (Servet-i Fiinun, 9 July 1325/22 July 1909; Levend 1972: 307) Given that our vocation is to take the side of the common people, we are for acquainting them with all political and social thinking. In my view this vocation does not relate to a language but to all vital problems ... As the reformation of the country and the renewal of the nation will come about with the renewal of the thinking of every member of the nation, from our point of view every article written by any Turk who loves his nation must be in a language that will be understood by the Turks of Anatolia. One of the few who joined him was Celal Sahir [Erozan] (1883-1935), a poet of the Fecr-i Ati school, who followed Mehmet Emin in making the transition from Arabo-Persian prosody to Turkish syllabic metre, in which he produced some attractive love-poetry: §imdi lisanda teceddud husulti i^in <fali$mak isteyenlerin ilk adimi bu kavaid-i ecnebiyyeyi tard ve imha olmalidir. Bizim kelimeye ihtiyacimiz var. Peki, fakat yalniz kelimeye, muffed kelimelerle miifredlerinden ayri, mustakil bir ma’na ifade eden cemi’ kelimelere, her kelimenin cem’ine, tesniyesine degil, hele terakibe W9 degil... Hele lisam sadele$tirmenin bizi yedi astr geriye atmak oldugunu hi<; kabul edemem. (Servet-i Fiinun, rj May 1326/9 June 1910; Levend 1972: 309) The first step taken by those wishing to work for renewal in the language should be to cast out and eliminate these foreign rules. We need words. Very well; but only words: the singular forms of words and those plurals which express independent meanings, distinct from their singulars,20 but not the plural or the feminine of every word and above all not izafet compounds ... In particular I cannot accept that simplifying the language means throwing us seven centuries back into the past. To leave for a moment the views of established literary figures of the old days, here is a reminiscence of the economist Fuat Andie about his generation’s view in the 1940s of what the language of the future ought to be. It centres on a verse by Kemalpa§azade Sait, alias Lastik (‘Galoshes’) Sait, who held several senior posts in government service but was best known as a writer of articles on literature for the newspapers Tarik and Vakit, and as a minor poet. The reason for his nickname was that he was reputed never to take off his galoshes even in summer.21 He engaged in often vitriolic polemics on literature and language with Namik Kemal, Ahmet Midhat, and the poet Abdulhak Hamid (1851-1937). The language of his writings was pure Ottoman; does the verse express his real opinion or was it meant sarcastically? Probably the former; he habitually wrote in Ottoman, because in those days it was the only way to write formally, but this time he was rebelling. At any rate, the boys of Fuat Andie’s generation took it seriously. And here it is: 20 The reference is to words like the Arabic ajza, plural of juz' ‘part’; its Turkish form ecza means not ‘parts’ but ‘chemicals, drugs’, whence eczact ‘pharmacist’. See Lewis (1988: 27). 21 I am indebted to Professor Andie, both for drawing my attention to Lastik Sait and for explain¬ ing the origin of his nickname. Ottoman Turkish 25 Araptpa isteyen urbana gitsin Acemce isteyen Irana gitsin Frengiler Frengistana gitsin Ki biz Tiirkuz bize Tiirld gerek. Let the one who wants Arabic go to the Beduin; Let the one who wants Persian go to Iran; Let the Franks go to their own land. For we are Turks; we must have Turkish. The class used to add a fifth line: ‘Bunu bilmeyen ahmak/e$$ek demek’ (Anyone who doesn’t know this, it means he’s a silly fool/donkey).22 To revert to the grown-ups: Ziya Gokalp believed that, if the Turks were to equip themselves with the vocabulary necessary for coping with the advances of science and technology, the natural way was to follow the example of the Western nations. Just as they had recourse to Greek and Latin, the classical languages of their culture, so the Turks should go back to Arabic and Persian. In practice, he based his creations on Arabic, less frequently Persian, while using the Persian izafet to make compounds. From ruh ‘soul, spirit’ he made ruhiyat23 for ‘psychology’; from badf ‘floweriness of style’, bedii for ‘aesthetic’ (though in Arabic badii means ‘rhetorical’) and bediiyat for ‘aesthetics’. From the Arabic sa'n, ‘matter, affair’, he made $e’ni ‘pragmatic’ and $eniyet ‘reality’. These two never won much currency, partly because ‘pragmatic’ does not figure in everyone’s vocabulary, and mostly because Turks in general did not distinguish between Arabic 'ayn, the pharyngal gulp, and hamza, the glottal stop, or attempt to pronounce either of them, so that except to a few pedants Ziya Gokalp’s $e’ni ‘pragmatic’ sounded exacdy like §eni, the Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic /anf ‘abominable’. His most successful coinage was a word for ‘ideal’. Until his time, the dictionary equivalent had been gaye-i emel ‘goal of hope’ or gaye-i hayal ‘goal of imagina¬ tion’, though probably most people who talked about ideals used the French ideal. He invented mefkure (together with mefkureviyat for ‘ideology’), based on the Arabic fakara ‘to think’, which was enthusiastically adopted, surviving long after Tarama Dergisi (1934) came up with iilkii-, indeed, recent dictionaries still use it to define iilkii. It survives in another aspect too: in Turkish cities you will see apart¬ ment blocks named Mefkure, as well as Ulkii and Ideal. ‘After all that, Gokalp (1339/1923: 28) might be accused of inconsistency for writing: ‘Lisamn bir kelimesini degi$tiremeyiz. Onun yerine ba$ka bir kelime icad edip koyamayiz’ (We cannot change a word of the language. We cannot invent and substitute another word for it). His creations, however, were intended to express concepts for which no words yet existed. 22 Andie writes, ‘The fifth line may or may not belong to him. When I was in high school it was a pastime among us to add one or two lines to well-known poems. I do not know for sure whether the fifth line belongs to me or to Lastik Sait’ (Letter to the author, 13 Apr. 1997). The student should bear in mind that e$ek is more offensive than ‘donkey’, and that e$$ek is more offensive than e$ek. 21 For the -iyat, sometimes transcribed as -iyat or -iyyat, see Lewis (1988: 27). 26 Ottoman Turkish He tells how deeply impressed he was in 1897 at hearing how private soldiers coped with the Ottoman terms for first and second lieutenant. ‘Lieutenant’ in Arabic was mulazim, ‘first’ was awwal, and ‘second’ was tani. Put together in accordance with the rules of Persian and pronounced in accordance with the rules of Turkish, that made ‘mulazim-i ewel’, ‘miilazim-i sani’. The soldiers, however, put the adjectives first, saying ‘ewel mulazim’, ‘sani mulazim’. This led him to the following conclusion: ‘Tiirk<;eyi islah i<;un bu lisandan biitiin Arabi ve Farsi kelimeleri degil, umum Arabi ve Farsi kaideleri atmak, Arabi ve Farsi kelimelerden de Tiirk^esi olanlari terkederek, Tiirk^esi bulunmayanlari lisanda ibka etmek’ (The way to reform Turkish is not to throw all the Arabic and Persian words out of this language but to throw out all Arabic and Persian rules and abandon all the Arabic and Persian words which have Turkish equivalents, letting those with no Turkish equivalents survive in the language) (Gokalp 1339/1923:12). A line from his poem ‘Lisan’,24 ‘Tiirk^ele^mi^ Turk^edir’ (What has become Turkish is Turkish), has often been quoted by those unwilling to see the loss of any Ottoman word. Later on in the same book he states his first principle of Lisani Turkfiiluk (Linguistic Turkism): ‘Milli lisanimizi vucude getirmek i<;in, Osmanli lisanim hiq: yokmu§ gibi bir tarafa atarak, halk edebiyatina temel vazifesini goren Turk dilini ayniyle kabul edip Istanbul halkimn ve bilhassa Istanbul hammlarmin konu$tuklari gibi yazmak’ (For the purpose of creating our national language, to accept as it stands the Turkish tongue, which serves as the basis for popular liter¬ ature, and to write as Istanbul people speak, especially Istanbul ladies, discarding the Ottoman language as if it had never been) (Gokalp 1339/1923:121). The word halk is ambiguous nowadays and no doubt was in Gokalp’s time too; whereas in political speeches it connotes the citizen body, the sovereign people, in common parlance it means the proletariat. Gokalp was certainly using it in the first sense, but the question is, what then did he mean by ‘hammlar’? Female res¬ idents of Istanbul, or Istanbul ladies as distinct from Istanbul women? We must assume the latter; at all events, his first principle was never put into effect. Nor was another of his pronouncements: ‘Istanbul Tiirk^esinin savtiyati, $ekliyati ve lugaviyati,25 yeni Tiirk<;enin temeli oldugundan, ba§ka Turk leh^elerinden ne kelime, ne siyga ne edat, ne de terkib kaideleri almamaz’ (As the basis of the new Turkish is the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Istanbul Turkish, neither words nor moods and tenses nor suffixes nor rules of syntax may be taken from other Turkish dialects) (Gokalp 1339/1923: 122). While later reformers did not adopt moods and tenses or rules of syntax from other dialects, they adopted words and suffixes in full measure, as we shall see. 24 Published in Yeni Hayat in 1918, reproduced in Levend (1972: 332-3). 25 The three preceding nouns were coined by Gokalp from Arabic roots. 3 The New Alphabet Turkish writers on dil devrimi (language reform) do not usually deal with the change of alphabet, which for them is a separate topic, harf devrimi (letter reform). A brief account of it is given here for the sake of completeness, since the two reforms are obviously linked, arising as they did from the same frame of mind. The purpose of the change of alphabet was to break Turkey’s ties with the Islamic east and to facilitate communication domestically as well as with the Western world. One may imagine the difficulty of applying the Morse Code to telegraphing in Ottoman. Its intrinsic beauty aside, there is nothing to be said in favour of the AraboPersian alphabet as a medium for writing Turkish.1 All of its letters, including alif, the glottal stop, are consonants, some representing sounds not existing in Turkish and one, k, which may represent Turkish g, k, n, or y. The sound of n indicated by the Arabo-Persian k was originally /ng/, pronounced as in English singer, in scholarly transcriptions of old texts it is usually shown by n. It occurs in such Ottoman spellings as kwkl for goniil ‘soul’, and dkz or dkyz for deniz'sea’. It is still heard in some Turks’ pronunciation of sonra ‘after’. With the addition of diacrit¬ ics above or below the letters, the three vowels a, i, and u can be indicated, whereas Turkish needs to distinguish eight. The Arabic letters alif, waw, and yd were employed in Arabic and Persian to show a, u, and i respectively. In Turkish they were used to indicate ale, oldlulii, and i/ay/ey respectively. An initial a or e was indicated by alif (henceforth shown as ?), medial or final a also by alif, and e by h, which is similar to the function of English h in ‘Ah!’ and ‘Eh?’: kaynana ‘motherin-law’ was written qyn?n?, yaparsa ‘if he does’ as y?p?rsh, ise ‘if it is’ as ?ysh, istemedigin ‘which you do not want’ as ?sthmhdykk. ' Many equivocal readings were possible. Thus ?wlw in an Ottoman text may be read as Turkish ulu ‘great’ or ulu [A] ‘possessors’, olu ‘dead’, evli ‘married’, avlu ‘courtyard’, avh ‘stocked with game’; dwl may represent dol ‘progeny’, dul ‘widowed’, or diivel [A] ‘States’, while kl can be gel ‘come’, gill ‘smile’, kel ‘scabby’, kel [A] ‘lassitude’, kill ‘ashes’, kiil [A] ‘all’, gil [P] ‘clay’, or giil [P] ‘rose’. Only the context and a sufficient grasp of the vocabularies of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic can make clear which of the possible readings is intended. Problems often arise in Ottoman texts because scribes and printers were not always careful about word 1 ‘Arabo-Persian’ rather than ‘Arabic’, because it includes three letters, p, c, and J, that were added to the Arabic alphabet in order to represent the three Persian sounds not occurring in Arabic. 28 The New Alphabet divisions; the letters bwsnh, for example, could stand for bu sene ‘this year’ or Bosna ‘Bosnia’. In the article ‘Turks’ in the thirteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926), Sir Charles Eliot, after mentioning the ambiguities of this alphabet, shrewdly observes: ‘The result is that pure Turkish words written in Arabic letters are often hardly intelligible even to Turks and it is usual to employ Arabic synonyms as much as possible because there is no doubt as to how they should be read.’ An example of what he had in mind is shown by the words mhmd p?s? ?wldy, which may be read as ‘Mehmed pa$a oldu’ (Mehmed became a pasha) or ‘Mehmed Pa$a 6ldu’ (Mehmed Pasha died). If you meant the former, you would resort to a cir¬ cumlocution such as ‘Mehmed was elevated to the rank of Pasha’. If you meant the latter, you would write ‘Mehmed Pasha departed this world and journeyed to Paradise’, ‘Mehmed Pasha attained God’s mercy’, or at the very least ‘Mehmed Pasha expired’. The case for modifying the Arabo-Persian alphabet had been put forward as early as 1851, by Ahmed Cevdet, and thereafter various others tried their hands at the problem. In May 1862, in an address to the Ottoman Scientific Society (Cemiyet-i ilmiye-i Osmaniye), of which he was the founder, Antepli Miinif Pasha blamed the paucity of literates on the deficiencies of the alphabet. He instanced the letters ?wn, which could be read as on ‘ten’, un ‘flour’, or tin ‘fame’. This last was properly written ?wk (the k representing n); he could, therefore, also have cited evin ‘of the house’, as well as bn ‘front’, similarly written ?wk but, like tin, popularly misspelt with n instead of k. He saw two possible solutions, the first being to write and print with full pointing, using the three diacritics inherited from Arabic and five newly devised as required by the phonology of Turkish. The second solution, which he favoured, was to stop joining the letters of words and to write or print them separately, with the neces¬ sary diacritics on the line rather than over or under it (Bulu$ 1981: 45-8, citing Miinif Pasha 1974). In 1863 the Azerbaijani dramatist and political scientist Feth-Ali Ahundzade came to Istanbul with a proposal for the addition of some new letters to indicate the vowels. He was well received and the Grand Vizier passed his proposal to the Ottoman Scientific Society for consideration. While they conceded its merits, their verdict was unfavourable, because of ‘mticerred icrasmda derkar olan mii$kilat-i azime’ (the great difficulties which are evident simply in its implementation) and ‘eski asar-i Islamiyenin nisyamm da miieddi olacagmdan’ (because it would conduce to the oblivion of ancient Islamic works) (01kiita$ir 1973:18-19). In the Constitutional period, the time between 1908 and 1918, those intellectu¬ als who saw modification as essential were agreed that the letters must be written, or at least printed, separately, so that students and compositors alike might be spared having to deal with three or four forms for each letter.2 In the Kamus 2 Most Arabo-Persian letters have three forms, depending on whether they are initial, medial, or final. Some have a fourth, used when the letter stands alone. The New Alphabet 29 (1316/1901), §emseddin Sami used three diacritics over the letter waw to show the sounds of 0, it, and 0, while the bare letter denoted u. The only scheme to be given a prolonged trial was the one sponsored by Enver Pasha from 1913 onwards, with the backing of his Ministry of War and, it is said, with strong-arm tactics to silence any critics. The principle was to use only the final forms of the letters, with no ligatures. The vowels were shown by variegated forms of alif, waw, and yd, written on the line with the consonants. The result was far from pretty.3 The system was variously known as huruf-u munfastla (disjointed letters), hatt-t cedid (new writing), Enverpa^a yaztsi (Enver Pasha writing), and ordu elifbast (Army alphabet). Originally intended to simplify the work of military telegraphists, its use was extended to official correspondence within the ministry. There is some evidence (TTK1981:56-7) that the experiment was abandoned before the end of hostilities, though Enver published Elifba, a reading book to teach his system, as late as 1917. Ru$en E$ref [Onaydin] (1954: 28-9) recalled that Kemal had spoken to him about it in late 1918 as being still in use: iyi bir niyet; fakat yarim if; hem de zamansiz!... Harp zamam harf zamani degildir. Harp olurken harfle oynamak sirasi midir? Ne yapmak i<;in? Muhaverat ve muhaberat teshil i<;in mi? Bu fimdiki $ekil hem yazmayi, hem okumayi, hem de anlamayi ve binaenaleyh anlafmayi eskisinden fazla geciktirir ve giifleftirir! Hiz istiyen bir zamanda, boyle yavaflatici, zihinleri yorup fafirtici bir tefebbiise girifmenin maddi, ameli ve milli ne faydasi var?... Sonra da mademki bafladm, cesaret et; §unu tarn yap; medeni bir fekil alsm, degil mi Efendim? The intention is good, but it’s a half-baked job as well as untimely. Wartime isn’t letter time. When there’s a war on, is it the occasion to play about with letters? What for? To facilitate dialogue and communications? The present system makes writing and reading and comprehension and consequently mutual understanding slower and harder than the old system. At a time when speed is of the essence, what material, practical, or national advan¬ tage is there in embarking on an enterprise like this, which slows things down and wearies and befuddles people’s minds? Besides, once you’ve started, have courage; do the job properly so that it takes a civilized shape. Is that no so? Atatiirk’s right-hand man Ismet [Inonti] later bore witness to the trouble caused during the war by Enver’s experiment. It had fallen to him to talk the Deputy Chief of the General Staff out of insisting that documents presented for his approval must be in two copies, one in normal writing for him to read and one in Enver Pasha writing for him to sign (Arar 1981:150-1). Simultaneously with Enver’s efforts to propagate his alphabet, a number of journalists and literary figures were urging the adoption of the Latin letters. It was a topic of conversation among Ottoman officers during the Gallipoli campaign.4 This idea had a long past. Ahundzade had come round to it when his suggestion 3 A sample will be found in Olkutajir (1973: 27). 4 Verbal communication to the author in 1972 from Mr Taufiq Wahby. 30 The New Alphabet for improving the Arabic script had been turned down.5 The lexicographer §emseddin Sami and his brother Abdul Bey devised an alphabet of thirty-six Latin and Greek letters for their native Albanian, a language to which the Arabic alpha¬ bet could do no more justice than it could to Turkish. It was called the A-be-ya after the names of its first three characters. On 29 January 1910 Hiiseyin Cahit [Yal^in], a member of the Servet-i Fiinun group and editor of the newspaper Tanin, published an article entitled ‘Arnavut Hurufati’ (‘The Albanian Letters’), in which he commended their initiative and declared that the Turks would do well to follow it. A request from a group of Albanians for a fetva6 on the subject elicited the response that it would be contrary to the Sacred Law for the Koran to be written in separated Arabic letters and for the Latin letters to be taught in Muslim schools (Levend 1972: 363-4). In the spring of 1914 a series of five unsigned articles appeared in a short-lived weekly published by Kili^zade Hakki and dedicated to free thought, variously entitled Hurriyet-i Fikriyye, Serbest Fikir, and Uluwet-i Fikriyye. These articles urged the gradual adoption of the Latin alphabet and prophesied that the change was bound to come. The writer propounded a problem, and invited a reply from the §eyhiilislam or the Fetva Emini:7 Fransizlar Islamiyetin esaslarini pek makul bularak millet<;e ihtida etmek istiyorlar! Acaba onlan Miisluman addedebilmek i<;in o pek zarif dillerinin Arap harfleriyle yazilmasi $art-i esasl mi ittihaz edilecek? ‘Evet’ cevabini beklemedigim halde ahrsam kemal-i cesaretle ‘Siz bu zihniyetle diinyayi Miisluman edemezsiniz’ mukabelesinde bulunurum, ‘Hayir, beis yok’ cevabim alirsam: ‘Biz Turklerin de Latin harflerini kullanmamiza musaade bah§ eder bir fetva veriniz’ ricasim serdedecegim. Hayir, Fransizlar ne kadar az Arap iseler, biz de o kadar az Arabiz. The French, finding the principles of our religion very reasonable, wish to convert eti masse to Islam! Before they can be accepted as Muslims, will it be obligatory for that very elegant language of theirs to be written in the Arabic letters? I do not expect the answer to be ‘Yes’, but if it is 1 shall make so bold as to reply, ‘With this mentality you cannot make the world Muslim.’ If I am given the answer ‘No, there is no harm in it’ I shall make this request: ‘Give a fetva permitting us Turks also to use the Latin letters.’ No, we are no more Arab than the French are. Kili^zade Hakki subsequently revealed that it was because of these articles that the Minister of the Interior closed the weekly down (01kiita$ir 1973: 39-41.) The subject had long interested Mustafa Kemal. Ru$en E$ref recalled his saying 5 Levend (1972: 156) states that Ahundzade produced a Slav-based alphabet, but gives no details. Nor does Algar (1988), though he mentions his proposals for the reform of the alphabet and cites Muhammedzade and Arasli, Alefba-yt Cedid ve Mektubat (Baku, 1963), 3-39,234-5, not available to the present writer. 6 Arabic fatwa. In spite of the case of Salman Rushdie, which has familiarized the world with this word, it does not mean a sentence of death but a mufti’s opinion on a point of law, with no executive force. 7 These two officials were respectively the chief of the religious hierarchy and the head of the office that issued fetvas. The New Alphabet 31 in 19x8 that it had been a preoccupation of his between 1905 and 1907, when he was in Syria (Onaydin 1954: 29.) Halide Edip Adivar (1962: 264) remembered a conversation with him in June 1922 on the same theme, in which he spoke of the possibility of adopting the Latin letters, adding that it would require rigorous measures: ‘Hatta o gun, latin harflerini kabul imkamndan bahsediyor, bunu yapmak icpin siki tedbirler gerektigini de ilave ediyordu.’ Agop Dila^ar (1962: 41) tells of showing him, ‘sometime between 1916 and 1918,’ a copy of Nemeth’s (1917), Turkische Grammatik, which printed the Turkish in a Latin transcription with i and s for what are now written f and f, the Greek y for the sounds now represented by g, and % for the Arabic and Persian h Kemal did not like it much. While he was military attache in Sofia just before the First World War, he corresponded with his friend Madame Corinne in Istanbul in Turkish, written phonetically with French spelling. Here is part of a letter dated 13 May 1914, followed by the same passage in modern orthography and the English of it: Dunya inssanlar idjin bir dari imtihandir. Imtihan idilfene inssanin hire 9uale moutlaka pike mouvafike djevabe vermessi mumqune olmaya bilire. Fekate duchunmilidir qui heuquume djivablarin heiiti oumoumiyissindine hassil olan mouhassalaya gueuri virilir.8 Diinya insanlar i<pn bir dar-i imtihandir. imtihan edilen insamn her suale mutlaka pek muvafik cevap vermesi miimkun olmayabilir. Fakat du$unmelidir ki, hukum, cevaplarin heyet-i umumiyesinden hasil olan muhassalaya gore verilir. For human beings, the world is an examination hall. It may not be absolutely possible for the examinee to give a very appropriate answer to every question. But he must bear in mind that the verdict is given in accordance with the result deriving from the answers taken as a whole. A comparison of the lengths of the first two paragraphs above reveals one reason for some people’s antagonism to the idea of switching to the Latin alpha¬ bet: the French spelling takes up more room than the old letters (and the new). In those days, French was the European language most widely known among Turks and it was generally assumed that a new Latin alphabet would involve apply¬ ing French orthography to Turkish words: the six letters of gueure for the four of kwrh (gore), the nine of tchodjouk for the four of £jwq (9001k), or the five of th® alternative spelling cwjwq. The editor of Resimli Gazete, Ibrahim Alaaddin [Govsa], who was against change, generously published, on 22 September 1923, an article by Hiiseyin Cahit, who was for it. ibrahim Alaaddin prefaced it with a response,9 headed ‘Latine houroufati ile Turkdje yazi yazmak mumkinmidir!’ (Is it possible to write Turkish with Latin letters!). That took forty-seven characters, whereas the Arabo-Persian alphabet would have needed only thirty-nine: l?tyn 8 The version given here is based on a collation of the texts in Ozgu (1963:25-6) and Korkmaz (1992: 6). Note the spellings idilene, fekate, heuquume, virilir, which reflect Kemal’s own pronunciations: /idilen/ for edilen, /fekat/ for fakat, /hokum/ for hukum, /virilir/ for verilir. 9 For the texts of Huseyin Cahit’s article and Ibrahim Alaaddin’s response, see Olkuta$ir (1973: 45-52)- 32 The New Alphabet hrwftty ?ylh twrkch y?zy y?zmq mmknmydr. (The new alphabet can do it in forty-three: Latin hurufati ile Turk<;e yazi yazmak mumkiin mudiir.) A year before that, at a meeting with representatives of the Istanbul press in September 1922, Kemal had been asked by Huseyin Cahit, ‘Why don’t we adopt Latin writing?’ He replied, ‘It’s not yet time.’ His answer is understandable if one remembers that this was the period of the first Grand National Assembly, some fifty members of which were hocas, professional men of religion, in addition to eight dervish sheikhs and five men who gave their occupation as ‘tribal chief’. At the Izmir Economic Congress in February-March 1923, three workers’ dele¬ gates put forward a motion in favour of adopting the Latin letters. The chairman, General Kizim [Karabekir], ruled it out of order as damaging to the unity of Islam, and went on to make a speech in which he said: ‘derhal butun Avrupa’mn eline giizel bir silah vermi$ olacagiz, bunlar alem-i Islama kar$i diyeceklerdir ki, Ttirkler ecnebi yazisim kabul etmi$ler ve Hiristiyan olmu$lardir. l$te du$manlarimizin $ali$tigi §eytanetkarane fikir budur’ (we shall at once have placed a splendid weapon in the hands of all Europe; they will declare to the Islamic world that the Turks have acepted the foreign writing and turned Chris¬ tian. The diabolical idea with which our enemies are working is precisely this).10 In an article in the journal Hur Fikir of 17 November 1926, Kili<;zade Hakki made the point that the sacred nature of the Koran did not extend to the alphabet in which it is written. The title of the article sums up his argument very neatly: ‘Arap Harflerini de Cebrail Getirmemi$ti ya’ (Gabriel didn’t bring the Arabic letters too, you know) (Levend 1972:397). This argument was, however, a little disingenuous, in that it ignored one of the main worries of the defenders of the Arabo-Persian alphabet: if it were replaced by a Latin-based alphabet, the numer of Turks able to read the Koran—whether or not they understood it—would inevitably diminish, because one alphabet is as much as most people can be expected to learn in a lifetime. On 20 May 1928 the Grand National Assembly voted to accept the international numerals.11 During the debate, a member asked whether the international letters might be accepted as well. The Minister of Education replied that the government had been giving the matter its attention and that the question would naturally be resolved within the principles accepted by the civilized world, but that time was needed. ‘Onun i^in bu i$de biraz ge$ kaliyorsak, te$kil ettigimiz komisyonun, encumenin faaliyetinin neticesine muntazir oldugumuzdandir’ (So if we are a little late in this matter, it is because we are awaiting the result of the activity of the commission, the committee, we are forming). It is clear from the Minister’s imprecision about the designation of the body he was talking about that at the time he spoke it did not yet exist. 10 For the full text, collated from reports in three daily newspapers of 3 Mar. 1923, see Yorulmaz (1955: 90-3). See also Levend (1972: 392-3). 11 By this was meant what we call the Arabic numerals and the Arabs call the Indian numerals. The New Alphabet 33 Three days later, however, it did, when the Council of Ministers set up the Dil Enciimeni, ‘to think about the manner and feasibility of applying the Latin letters to our language’. Its nine members included Falih Riflu [Atay], Ru$en E$ref [Onaydm], Yakup Kadri [Karaosmanoglu], and Fazil Ahmet [Ayka^]. The first act of the new body when it met on 26 June 1928 was to divide itself into two, one for the alphabet and one for grammar (Levend 1972: 400-1). Kemal attended the meetings of both whenever he had time. The Alphabet Commission rejected in principle the idea of a transliteration alphabet, because they did not wish Arabic and Persian pronunciations (as in the story of the softa told in Chapter 2) to be perpetuated; they wanted them assimilated to Istanbul speech patterns. The longest discussions took place over the question of how to show the palatalized sounds of k, g, and / before back vowels. Before front vowels, as in iki‘two’ and gelmek'to come’, this happens auto¬ matically.12 Before back vowels there is no palatalization in native words13 but there is in Arabic and Persian borrowings, as is seen in the English spelling Kiazim of the name appearing as Kazim (/k'azim/) in modern Turkish spelling, and Byron’s Giaour for what is now written gavur (/gyavur/) ‘infidel’. The Commis¬ sion’s proposal in its report, published early in August, was to write an h after the consonant, as in Portuguese (velholveVul, Senhorlsen?or/), so khatip for what is now written kdtip ‘clerk, secretary’. Another proposal was to use q to show the sound of palatalized k.H Many people preferred the latter alternative. Atay’s (1969: 441) account of how it came to be quashed is so circumstantial that one feels it must be true: Ben yeni yazi tasansim getirdigim gtintin ak$ami Kazim Pa$a (Ozalp) sofrada: —Ben adimi nasil yazacagim? ‘Kti’ harfi lazim, diye tutturdu. Atatiirk de: —Bir harften ne <pkar? Kabul edelim, dedi. Boylece arap kelimesini turk<;ele$tirmekten ahkoymu$ olacaktik. Sofrada ses <;ikarmadim. Ertesi gtinti yamna gittigimde meseleyi yeniden Ataya a^tim. Atatiirk el yazisi majuskullerini bilmezdi. Kti<;tik harfleri btiytiltmekle yetinirdi. Kagidi aldi, Kemal’in ba§ harfini ktiipik (kti) min buyiiltulmiifu ile, sonra da (k) mn btiytiltulmti$ti ile yazdi. Birincisi hi^ ho§una gitmedi. Bu yiizden (kti) harfinden kurtulduk. Bereket Atatiirk (kti) ntin majtisktiltinti bilmiyordu. Qtinkti o (K)mn btiytilttilmti$tinden daha gtisterifli idi. A? table on the evening of the day when I brought the draft proposals for the new writing, Kazim [Ozalp] Pasha grumbled, ‘How am I going to write my name? We must have a q! I! See Lewis (1988: 3-4). In western Turkey the palatalization is audible though usually faint, the effect being the introduction of a y-sound after the k, g, or h, not so marked as in English cure, angular, and British, as distinct from American, lurid. The further east you go, the more distinct the palatalization. By the time you get to Erzurum you will hear iki sounding just like ifi. 13 For the exceptional eld, see Ch. 4 n. 24. 14 This may surprise Western orientalists, who regard q as the natural transliteration not of the Arabic letter kaf, pronounced like our k, but of qaf (sometimes transliterated as kaf), pronounced much like our c in cough. The explanation is to be sought in the name of the letter q, which Turks follow the French in calling ku, pronounced /kyii/. This letter, whose name had the requisite palatalized initial sound, seemed the ideal device for indicating /ky/. 34 The New Alphabet Ataturk said, ‘What difference will one letter make? Let’s have it.’ Had we done so, we would have kept the Arabic word from being Turkicized. I didn’t say anything at the table. When I went to see Ataturk next day I explained the problem to him again. He did not know the manuscript capitals; he simply wrote them like the small letters only bigger. He took a sheet of paper and wrote the initial letter of Kemal, first with an enlarged version of q, then with an enlarged version of k. He didn’t like the first at all. So we were spared q. Thank goodness he didn’t know the script capital Q, which was more flamboyant than K. After Kemal’s rejection of q, it was decided to use the Portuguese alternative, but it did not last long. When Atay showed him the Commission’s draft alphabet, Kemal asked whether they had thought about bringing it into use (Atay 1969: 440). Bir on be$ yillik uzun, bir de be$ yillik kisa miihletli iki teklif var, dedim. Teklif sahiplerine gore ilk devirleri iki yazi bir arada ogretilecektir. Gazeteler yarim siitundan ba$hyarak yava$ yava$ yeni yazili kismi artiracaklardir. Daireler ve yuksek mektepler iijin de tedrici bazi usuller du$unulmu§tur. Yuziime baktt:—Bu ya ii<; ayda olur, ya hi$ olmaz, dedi. Hayli radikal bir inkilapq iken ben bile yuzune bakakalmi$tim. —Qocugum, dedi, gazetelerde yarim siitun eski yazi kaldigi zaman dahi herkes bu eski yazili par^ayi okuyacaktir. Arada bir harb bir i$ buhran, bir terslik oldu mu, bizim yazi da Enver’in yazisina doner. Hemen terkolunuverir. I told him there were two proposals, one long term, of fifteen years, the other short term, of five years. According to the proponents, in the first period of each the two systems of writing would be taught side by side. The newspapers would begin with half a column in the new letters, which would gradually be extended. He looked me full in the face and said, ‘Either this will happen in three months or it won’t happen at all.’ I was a highly radical revolutionary but I found myself staring at him, open-mouthed. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘even when the newspapers are down to only half a column in the old writing, everyone will read that bit in the old writing. If anything goes wrong in the meantime, a war, a domestic crisis, our alphabet too will end up like Enver’s; it will be dropped immediately. As soon as the alphabet seemed satisfactory, Kemal introduced it to the vast crowds attending a Republican People’s Party gala in Giilhane Park on the evening of 9 August 1928. Two days later lessons began in Dolmabah<;e Palace, first for officials of the presidential staff and Deputies, then for university teachers and literary people. The latter session turned into a heated debate. At the end of five hours the following resolution was put to the meeting and adopted unanimously (Olkiita$ir 1973: 77): Milled cehaletten kurtarmak i<;in kendi diline uymayan Arap harflerini terk edip, Latin esasindan alinan Turk harflerini kabul etmekten ba$ka <;are yoktur. Komisyonun teklif ettigi alfabe, hakikaten Turk alfabesidir, kat’idir ... Sarf ve imla kaideleri lisamn lslahmi, inkifafim, milli zevki takip ederek tekamiil edecektir. To deliver the nation from ignorance, the only course open is to abandon the Arabic letters, which are not suited to the national language, and to accept the Turkish letters, based on the Latin. The alphabet proposed by the Commission is in truth the Turkish alphabet; that The New Alphabet 35 is definite ... The laws of grammar and spelling will evolve in step with the improvement and development of the language and with the national taste. That last sentence was soon proved true, as the ever-cautious Ismet, who framed the resolution, had foreseen. Equipped with a blackboard and easel, Kemal went on tour to teach huge crowds of villagers the new letters, which they called ‘Gazi elifbasi’ (The Gazi alphabet).15 Some weeks of this practical experience persuaded him that the use of a hyphen before the interrogative particle as laid down by the Alphabet Commission was unnecessary. From Sinop he telegraphed the Ministry of Education to say that the rule was abrogated. On his return to Ankara he addressed a directive to the Prime Minister’s office (£flkuta$ir 1973:122-3): Encumen esasen yeni harfler ile yaziya ba§lamrken uzun kelimelerin hecelenmesini, se^ilmesini kolayla§tiracak bir $are olmak tizere baglamayi du§unmu§ ve baglamanm kaldirilmasim ileriye birakmi$ti. Yeni harflerin kabultt ve taammumundeki siir’at, bu zamanin geldigini gosteriyor ... Bu sebeple ve halk i^indeki mii$ahedelerime giivenerek atideki esaslan kabul etmek faydali ve lazim g6rulmu§tur. 1. istifham edati olan mi, mi umumiyetle ayri yazilir. Mesela: Geldi mi? gibi. Fakat kendinden sonra gelen her tiirlii lahikalarla beraber yazilir. Mesela: Geliyor musunuz?, Ben miydim? gibi. 2. Rabita edati olan (ve, ki), dahi manasma olan (de, da) miistakil kelime olarak ayri ayri yazilir. 3. Turk gramerinde baglama i^areti olan - (tire) kalkmi§tir. Binaenaleyh fiillerin tasriflerinden lahikalar <;izgi (-) ile ayrilmayarak beraber yazilir. Mesela: Geliyorum, gideceksiniz,... giizeldir, demirdir. Kezalik (ile, ise, i<;in, iken) kelimelerinin muhaffefleri olan (le, se, <;in, ken) $ekilleri kendinden ewelki kelimeye biti§ik yazilir, <pzgi ile ayrilmaz—Mesela: Ahmetle, buysa, senin^in, giderken gibi... 4. Ttirkcpede heniiz mevcut olan fars^a terkiplerde dahi baglama $izgisi yoktur, terkip i?areti olan sedali harfler ilk kelimenin sonuna eklenir. Mesela: hiisnti nazar gibi. When writing with the new letters began, the Commission originally thought of hyphenation as a means of facilitating the spelling and recognition of long words, propos¬ ing to eliminate it at some future date. The speed with which the new letters have been accepted and become current shows that that time has come ... For this reason and on the basis of my observations among the people it is deemed advantageous and necessary to adopt the following principles: * 1. The interrogative particle mi will generally be written separately, as in ‘Geldi mi?’ [‘Has he come?’], but will be written together with any following suffix, as in ‘Geliyor musunuz?’‘Ben miydim?’ [‘Are you coming?’‘Was it me?’] 2. The conjunctions ve and ki [‘and’, ‘that’], and de/da in the sense of dahi [‘also’] will be written separately as independent words. 3. The hyphen marking a junction in Turkish grammar is abolished. In the conjugation of verbs the suffixes will therefore be written without being separated by hyphens: 15 The Grand National Assembly had conferred the title of Gazi, ‘Warrior for the Faith’, on Mustafa Kemal in September 1921, after which he was generally referred to as Gazi Pa$a. The picture of him with his blackboard is well known to stamp-collectors. 36 The New Alphabet ‘geliyorum, gideceksiniz ... guzeldir, demirdir’ [‘I am coming’, ‘you will go’... ‘it is beautiful’, ‘it is iron’]. Similarly the lightened forms of the words ile, ise, ifin, iken will be written contiguously with the preceding word and not separated by a hyphen: ‘Ahmetle’, ‘buysa’, ‘seninfin’, ‘giderken’ [‘with Ahmet’, ‘if it is this’, ‘for you’,16 ‘while going’]. So too in the case of ce/fe/ca/fa and ki: ‘mert^e’, ‘benimki’, ‘yarinki’ [‘manfully’, ‘mine’, ‘tomorrow’s’]. 4. Nor is there a hyphen in such Persian compounds as still exist in Turkish; the vowels which show the izafet are suffixed to the first word, as in ‘hiisnii nazar’ [‘favourable consideration’, literally‘goodness of view’]. Some years later the Language Society recommended the restoration of the hyphen in Persian izafet compounds, which certainly makes them easier to spot. From the fact that Kemal chose not to hyphenate them we may infer that he was not thinking at that time of speeding their demise by highlighting their alien nature; perhaps even that he was not then thinking of hastening the elimination of foreign borrowings except for technical terms. Hyphens tend not to be used in the few izafet compounds still surviving. Ttirkfe Sozltik shows sukutu hayal, not sukut-u hayal, for ‘disappointment’, and siircii lisan, not siirc-u lisan, for lapsus linguae (now usually replaced by dil surqmesi ‘slip of the tongue’). A few days after Kemal’s directive, an announcement was made ending the use of h to show palatalization; instead, a circumflex would be placed on the vowel following the palatalized consonant (Ertop 1963: 66). This device was not totally satisfactory, because the circumflex retained its function of showing a long vowel. The resulting possibility of confusion becomes apparent when one considers, say, mutalda ‘observation’, in which the first a is long and the a short: /miitaFaa/. The 1977 edition of Yeni Yazim Kilavuzu, TDK’s guide to spelling, restricted the use of the circumflex; inter alia, it would no longer be used on adjectives ending in -i [A]: milli ‘national’, not milli. The decision was reversed in the 1988 edition (the title of which, Imld [A] Kilavuzu, reflects the change in the Society’s Council of Management in August 1983; see Chapter 12). By that time, however, the damage was done; fewer and fewer Turks were bothering to write or print the circumflex anyway. If katip is not totally supplanted by the neologism yazman or the French sekreter, it seems doomed to be pronounced /katip/ and not /kyatip/. Two other elements of the new alphabet, g and 1, are open to criticism. The raison d’etre of g (‘yumu$ak ge’) was to replace two characters in the old alpha¬ bet. The first was ghayn, the second was kaf where it had the sound of y, as in the words written dkl and ckr in the old letters, and degil, ciger (‘not’, ‘liver’) in the new. Yumu§ak ge now serves to lengthen a preceding back vowel, as in fcdg/f'paper’ (Persian kagid), pronounced /kyat/, and aga ‘master’, pronounced /a/; while between front vowels, as in degil and ciger, it is pronounced like y. So g preserves some features of Ottoman spelling, but that was not the object of the exercise. At least two scholars in the 1930s felt uncomfortable with it. Ahmet Cevat Emre idiosyncratically used g for cayn in his writings on grammar, thus figil for fiil ‘verb’, 16 The suffixed—Atatiirk would have said ‘lightened’—form -(in of ifin (for) is no longer in use. The New Alphabet 37 Arabic ftl, while for ghayn he used g. It was doubtless the fact that g has two distinct functions that led him not to use it for ghayn. On the other hand, Ragip Ozdem (1939: 15) employed g for ghayn to show the pronunciation of French programme as pgoggam, and carte postale as kagt postal. As for 1, when the Alphabet Commission hit on the idea of manufacturing it by removing the dot from i, they never stopped to ask themselves what the dot was doing there in the first place. The answer became apparent as soon as people began using the new alphabet: its function was to distinguish its bearer from the up- and downstrokes of m, n, and u.v To see this for oneself, one has only to compare minimum with minimum in joined-up writing. A little brochure on the new alphabet (Necmi 1928), ‘consisting in the lessons published in the newspaper Milliyet, revised according to the latest amendments’, showed the handwritten form of t as 1 or i. Atatiirk always used the latter form in writing and also habitually wrote u as u. Despite these imperfections, the Latin alphabet is unde¬ niably the best that has ever been used for Turkish, and has played a large part in the rise of literacy; according to the official figures, from 9 per cent in 1924 to 65 per cent in 1975 and 82.3 per cent in 1995. Commendation of it is found in an unexpected source, a book by the Director of the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: A speech synthesizer takes a stream of text... and follows certain rules to enunciate each word, one by one. Each language is different and varies in its difficulty to synthesize. English is one of the hardest, because we write (right and rite) it in such an odd and seemingly illogical way (weigh and whey). Other languages, such as Turkish, are much easier. In fact, Turkish is very simple to synthesize because Atatiirk moved that language from Arabic to Latin letters in 1929 [sic] and, in so doing, made a one-for-one corres¬ pondence between the sounds and the letters. You pronounce each letter: no silent letters or confusing diphthongs. Therefore, at the word level, Turkish is a dream come true for a computer speech synthesizer. (Negroponte 1995:145) Provided that the synthesizer had been well programmed, the only word one can think of that it might fail to enunciate correctly is agabey (elder brother), pronounced /abl/, and a thorough programmer could take care of that. Now briefly to complete the story of how the Latin alphabet was brought into use. Between 8 and 25 October 1928 all officials were examined for their compe¬ tence in the new letters. It was only when Kemal had done all this that he sought the legal authority to do it. On 1 November the Grand National Assembly passed Law No. 1353, ‘On the Adoption and Application of the New Turkish Letters’, which came into effect two days later. It provided that documents in the new letters must be accepted and acted upon at once. The use of books printed in the old charac¬ ters for instruction in schools was forbidden. No books were to be published in 17 In some hands not only m, n, and u but r too can be a source of confusion. The author was gratified when he eventually deciphered, in a handwritten letter from Spain, what looked like La Couuia but turned out to be La Coruna. 38 The New Alphabet the old letters after the end of the year. All correspondence between private citi¬ zens and government departments would have to be in the new letters from 1 June 1929. Those Deputies who were ignorant of the Latin alphabet suddenly found that Article 12 of the Constitution had taken on a sinister importance for them: among those it excluded from membership of the Grand National Assembly were ‘Turkey okuyup yazmak bilmiyenler’ (those who do not know how to read and write Turkish). They hastened to emerge from the state of illiteracy into which they had thrown themselves. One small concession: the ‘old Arabic letters’ could be used in official and private records as shorthand—‘stenografi makammda’— until 1 June 1930. Kemal was not given to procrastinating once his mind was made up. So why the delay of three months between the unveiling of the new alphabet in Giilhane Park and its legitimation? The obvious answer is that he did not want the details of the new letters to be the subject of endless wrangling in the Assembly; far better to present the Deputies with a fait accompli. There is also evidence that Ismet, mindful of how much of the General Staff’s time had been wasted by Enver’s new alphabet during the First World War, argued against the change because he was uneasy about the chaos that would surely set in while the old and new alpha¬ bets were in use side by side. He was no doubt placated and relieved by the speed with which the new letters were left in undisputed command of the field. And, despite his initial disapproval, once the reform had happened he never used the old letters again. On 31 August 1928 The Times of London devoted a well-informed and sym¬ pathetic editorial to the new alphabet: The advantages of the change can scarcely be appreciated by those who have not struggled with the difficulties presented to the student of Turkish by the Arabic letters ... No alpha¬ bet is less fitted to express the melodious Turkish speech, which has relatively few conso¬ nants and an astonishing wealth of vowels and diphthongs .. . Conservatism, the religious associations of Arabic which gave a sanctity to the letters in which the Koran was written, and the oriental delusion that writing should not be made too intelligible in content or in form explain the long domination of the Arabic letters over the Turks ... By this step the Turks, who for centuries were regarded as a strange and isolated people by Europe, have drawn closer than ever to the West. It is a great reform, worthy of the remarkable chief to whom the Turkish people has entrusted its destinies. Memories, however, can be short, even the corporate memory of a newspaper of record. Twenty-one years later, on 10 August 1949, The Times devoted a leading article to the proposed admission of Greece, Turkey, and Iceland to the Council of Europe: To have any chance of success a federal union would have to start with nations either adjoining each other or separated by no barrier more formidable than the English Channel ... They could not share a common language but at least it would be an advantage if the different languages were written in the same script... Muslim in tradition, with an Asiatic The New Alphabet 39 language in an Arabic script, it is not easy to see how Turkey could take her place easily in a United States of Western Europe. The author of that egregious howler could have mentioned that the Greeks have a different script from other Europeans, but he did not. Nor was there any evidence of remorse in his subsequent reference to it: On another occasion I wrote a leader on Turkey’s claim to be a member of any united European federation. (This was before the days of the Treaty of Rome and the Common Market.) I ridiculed this proposal and pointed out that it would be difficult enough to form a European Federation without adding a country which was neither European nor Christian and which did not even use the Roman alphabet. Alas! I was wrong, Turkey had changed from arabic [sic] letters to Roman letters in 1928. Well, one should not make mis¬ takes in The Times—or anywhere else for that matter—but the fuss! The Turkish Govern¬ ment sent for the British Ambassador and reprimanded him severely. The Foreign Office sent for the Foreign Editor and reprimanded him severely. And Iverach McDonald [the Foreign Editor] did his best to reprimand me severely (he was a very kind man). All this because of the absurd myth, which had not been true for many years, that The Times spoke for the British Foreign Office and always reflected British foreign policy. It was a disastrous burden for my newspaper to carry. (Pringle 1973: 81) To quote Yunus Emre, Turkey’s greatest folk-poet, ‘Bilmeyen ne bilsin bizin?18 Bilenlere selam olsun’ (What should the ignorant know of us? To those who know, greetings). 18 Yunus’s bizin instead of bizi is for the sake of the rhyme (vowel plus n). 4 Ataturk and the Language Reform until 1936 The scattered local movements of resistance to the Allied armies that invaded Anatolia after the 1918 Armistice could never have liberated the country without the boundless energy and organizing genius of Mustafa Kemal. In the same way, it was he who gave effect to the desires of the many intellectuals who wanted to make their language more truly Turkish. I specify intellectuals because in those days fourfifths of the population were peasants, who would no more have thought of tam¬ pering with the language than of changing the alternation of the seasons. Above all he wanted to turn his people’s face westwards. He resented the dominance of the Arabic and Persian elements in the language and believed that the intelligent use of its native resources could make the use of foreign borrowings unnecessary. An indication of how such a feeling could arise in a Turk of his generation is seen in a reminiscence of Hasan Re?it Tankut’s (1963:113): Ben liseyi §amda okudum. Hiirriyetin ilanlandigi1 gunlerde son smifta idik. Araplar birdenbire ulus<;uluga ba?ladilar. Tiirk^e ile alay ediyorlardi. Bir gun, smifta kara tahtada tebe?irle yazilmi? be? on satir gordiik. Bunun ba?mda Turk dili nedir? yazili idi. Yaziyi i<;imizden okuduk. Bunda, tek bir Turk<je kelime yoktu. Osmanli iislubuna ve kurallanna uydurularak yazilmi?ti. Bu yazinm sonu ‘dir’ ile bitiyordu. Araplar, bu dil edatini be? on defa tekrarlami?lar ve bu dirdtrlartn altini <;izmi?ler ve online de Tiirk^e budur. Yani (dirdir)dir yazmi?lardi. O gun, biz 4-5 Turk ogrenci btitun bir sinifla adeta bogu?tuk ve o giinden ba?liyarak Turk^eci olduk. I received my secondary education in Damascus and was in my final year at the time of the proclamation of freedom [the restoration in 1908 of the 1876 Constitution]. The Arabs suddenly started on nationalism and took to making fun of Turkish. One day in the class¬ room we saw half a dozen or so lines written on the blackboard, headed ‘What is the Turkish language?’ We read the writing to ourselves; it contained not a single word of Turkish. Written in conformity with the style and rules of Ottoman, it ended with -dir. The Arabs had repeated this suffix several times, underlining this string of -dirs and writing in front of it ‘Turkish is this. That is to say, it’s dirdir [tedious babble]’. That day we four or five Turkish pupils very nearly came to blows with a whole class, and became devotees of Turkish from that day on. As early as August 1923, a proposal was introduced into the Grand National Assembly by the writer Tunalt Hilmi for a new law, the Tilrkfe Kanunu, 1 The text has ‘alanlandigi’, but alanlanmak is an obsolete neologism for ‘to give ground’. What Tankut intended must have been a Turkicization of ‘ilan [A] edildigi’. Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 41 providing for the creation in the Ministry of Education of a Commission for the Turkish Language. Technical terms would be Turkicized, school books, official documents, and new laws would be prepared in accordance with the rules of Turkish, and no newspaper or journal breaching these rules would be licensed. Opinion in and out of the Assembly was not yet ready for such a proposal and it was not accepted (Imer 1976:87). The story of an early, perhaps the earliest, official attempt at simplifying the language was told by H. E. Erkilet (1952), who towards the end of 1924 was appointed to head Talim ve Terbiye, the Army’s Directorate of Training. Eleven years of almost incessant wars had allowed no time for revis¬ ing the training manuals. ‘Sbziin kisasi, ordu kitapsizdi’ (To put it briefly, the Army had no books). With the backing of the Chief of the General Staff, Fevzi [Qakmak], and his deputy, Kazim [Orbay], he ordered that the language of the new manuals should be intelligible to conscripts, with no Arabic or Persian con¬ structions that could be avoided or words for which Turkish equivalents were available. Tarassut [A] ‘observation’ became gdzetleme, pi$dar [P] ‘vanguard’ became oncii, esliha-i hafife [A] ‘light weapons’ became hafif silahlar. §ura-yt Alii Askeri [A] ‘Supreme Military Council’ became YuksekAskeri §ura. Some changes were not as radical as they could have been: Erkan-i Harbiye-i Umumiye ‘General Staff’ became Btiyiik Erkani-i Harbiyer, on the other hand, Erkdn-i Harbiye Mektebi ‘Staff College’ was simplified to Harp Akademisi. A good effort, ahead of its time. The first years of the Republic were not easy for the Turks. They were buoyed up by the pride of being the only people on the losing side in the First World War who had successfully resisted the victors’ territorial demands and won their inde¬ pendence. But the economic situation was parlous2 and the ranks of the com¬ mercial and professional classes had been depleted by the departure, one way or another, of many members of the Christian minorities in the course of the First World War and the War of Independence. In addition, the exchange of popula¬ tions arranged at Lausanne in January 1923 had brought about the displacement of 1.3 million ethnic Greeks from their native Turkey to the ‘homeland’ that few of them had ever seen, and the arrival from Greece of half a million ethnic Turks in a similar state. There was a pressing need to raise morale, to make the people see themselves as a nation with a great past and a great destiny, who would one day take their place among the civilized nations of the West. Turks must have no feeling of inferiority vis-d-vis Europe; they were not outsiders. For the moment they might be poor relations, but relations they were. To this end, history teach¬ ing in the country’s schools was based on the postulate that all the famous peoples 2 Money was very short indeed. As Falih Riflu Atay put it, there was never a limited company worth mentioning that was founded with so little capital as that state in Ankara. He tells a story he heard from Osmanzade Hamdi, co-editor of Yeni Gun, a newspaper that though nominally independent could not survive without its government subsidy. At the end of a frantic day spent in trying to placate the paper’s creditors, Hamdi rushed round to the tea garden where the Minister of Finance was accus¬ tomed to sit for a while after office hours, and caught him just as he was mounting his horse to go home. Hamdi said, ‘For heaven’s sake give me some money!’, to which the Minister of Finance replied, ‘I’ve left the safe open. If you can find anything in it you’re welcome’ (Atay 1969: 515). 42 Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 of antiquity were either Turks themselves or had been civilized by Turks.3 In the same spirit, it was thought desirable to show that the Turkish language was not out on a limb but had affiliations with all the great languages of the world. Ataturk’s first concern, as we have seen, was to change from the Arabo-Persian alphabet to the Latin. Already on 3 February 1928 it was ordered that the Friday sermon in the mosques must be delivered in Turkish. Two years later he con¬ tributed a short foreword to a book on the history and potentialities of the lan¬ guage (Arsal [1930]), in which he included these two sentences: ‘Turk dili, dillerin en zenginlerindendir; yeter ki bu dil, $uurla i$lensin. Olkesini, yiiksek istiklalini korumasim bilen Turk milled, dilini de yabanci diller boyundurugundan kurtarmalidir’ (Turkish is one of the richest of languages; it needs only to be used with discrimination. The Turkish nation, which is well able to protect its territory and its sublime independence, must also liberate its language from the yoke of foreign languages). The second sentence unleashed the language reform. If more people had heeded the first, the success of the reform could have been unqualified. Atatiirk practised what he preached. In August 1930 he dictated a list of topics that he wanted historians to address. One of them was ‘Be§eriyet men§e ve mebdei’ (The source and origin of humankind), all four words being of Arabic origin. When the typescript was brought to him he amended this to ‘Insanlarm nereden ve nasil geldikleri’ (Where humans came from and how they came), three of the five words being Turkish (Tarih Vesikalari (Jan. 1958), opposive p. 192). The key to understanding the course taken by the reform in its early years is that language was his hobby. In the draft bill creating the first faculty of Ankara University, which opened on 9 January 1936, its name was shown as Tarih-Cografya Fakiiltesi (Faculty of History and Geography), and it took a directive from Atatiirk to add language to its name and its responsibilities—Dil Tarih-Cografya Fakiiltesi— before the bill became law. The usual setting for his discussions on language, as on everything, was his table, sofra, in the special sense of a rakt sofrast, a dining-table laden with raki and meze (hors d’aeuvre), theoretically a prelude to dinner but commonly a substitute for it. This institution is well described by Atay: For anyone who knew him, the name Atatiirk conjures up memories of sessions round his table. His custom was to bring his friends together of an evening and talk into the small hours. We never knew in advance whether we would be there just for fun, for a command conference to prepare an attack, or for a meeting that would decide the most involved affairs of State, though we might hazard a guess when we saw who the guests were. The sessions that were just for fun were very rare, and when they did occur it was like having a free period at school. Generally we would debate, read, or write on the most serious topics. Atatiirk seemed never to tire. He would talk and listen. His prime concern 3 In this connection we may mention Vecihe Hatiboglu’s statement (1986: 97): ‘Tinkle dunyamn en eski yazih dilidir’ (Turkish is the world’s oldest written language). Someone in the language business should have heard of Ancient Egyptian, if not Linear A; perhaps she was subsuming those languages in Turkish. Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 43 was not to tell us what he was thinking but to learn what we thought, to hear the country’s various voices. He had a genius for synthesizing. After hours of rambling conversation which darted from one topic to another, he would bring together and arrange what had been said, and produce a logical, clear, and well organized work of cogitation. His guests were always a varied bunch, and he had a perfect tolerance of criticism from those he liked and whom he knew to share his beliefs. I estimate that the problems of Turkish language and history took up as much time round his table as they would have done at a university seminar. Facing him was a blackboard and chalk. All of us, ministers, professors, deputies, were expected to take up the chalk and perform. All of us except him would grow weary and, to be honest with you, a little bored.4 Ataturk’s personal library, part of which is on display at his mausoleum, the Amt-Kabir in Ankara, included many works on language, among them Jespersen’s Essentials of English Grammar and The Philosophy of Language, Fowler’s The King’s English, and some less common items such as Chambers and Daunt’s London English 1384-1425. Ernest Weekley’s etymological writings are well represented on the shelves. Nevertheless, in indulging his passion for etymology Ataturk was more enthusiastic than scientific. He saw asker [A] ‘soldier’ (originally the Latin exercitus) as a conflation of the Turkish words asik ‘profit’ and er ‘man’, and explained it as meaning ‘a man useful to the country, the State, the nation’ (Korkmaz 1992; Ozgu 1963: 31-2). He equated the first two syllables of merinos ‘merino’ with the Yakut ibri ‘fine’, and merino wool is indeed fine. He wondered whether the word might have travelled to Spain with the Iber Turks,5 in which case the names not only of the merino sheep and its wool but of the Iberian peninsula too would be of Turkish origin. He is reputed also to have proposed Turkish etymologies for Niagara and Amazon: Ne yaygara ‘What tumult!’ and Ama uzun ‘But it’s long!’ Admiral Necdet Uran describes in his memoirs an occasion during a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1937, when Ataturk came into the chart-room and, having studied the chart for a moment, pointed to the rota, the line indicating the ship’s course. ‘What’s this?’ he asked and, without waiting for an answer, went on, ‘You’re going to tell me it’s English, Italian, French, that sort of thing, but what I was asking was the origin of the word.’ The Admiral hesitated. Ataturk took a scrap of paper and wrote on it the word yuriitmek (‘to cause to walk, to set in motion’). Below it he wrote the same word divided into syllables: yu-riit-mek. ‘The origin of the word is that rut’, he said, ‘and its origin is Turkish. The Italians took it and called it rota. The Germans have said it another way. So have the French. But that’s its origin’ (Ozgii 1963: 31). The trouble was that, although Ataturk liked nothing better than a good argu¬ ment, none of his intimates had the guts to say ‘Very amusing as an after-dinner game, Pasha, but we mustn’t take it too seriously, must we?’ On the contrary, they 4 Collated from various passages in Atay (1969), principally on p. 507. 5 According to E. Blochet (1915: 305-8), the Iber were a Tunguz people, whom he equates with the Juan-juan of the Chinese chronicles. The relationship of the Tunguz with the Turks, however, is far from certain. 44 Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 played the same game. This being long before the age of political correctness, Samih Rifat, the president of TDK, found the origin of the Western word academy in the Turkish ak ‘white’ and adam [A] ‘man’. He also thought that the French demeure, domicile, and domestique were derived from the Turkish dam ‘roof’ and was not ashamed to say so in a public lecture (‘Relations between Turkish and Other Languages’) at the Turkish Historical Society’s first Congress, which took place on 2-11 July 1932. The tone was thereby set for many a subsequent lecture and article. Tarama Dergisi marks with an asterisk ‘words in use in our language which, although shown in ancient dictionaries as foreign, have emerged in the latest studies as Turkish or are firmly held to be Turkish’. Among the words so marked are kd$e ‘corner’ and tac ‘crown’, both of them borrowings from the Persian (gu$e, taj), and kiral ‘king’, ultimately from Carl, the given name of the Emperor Charlemagne. Another was kultiir, with the comment ‘Keltirmek mastarinin kokiinden kurulmu? oldugundan ana kaynagi turk<;e goriinur’ (As it is based on the root of the verb keltirmek, its original source seems to be Turkish). It is not clear why kultiir ‘culture’ should come from an ancient verb meaning ‘to bring’, but it should be noted that this wild etymology could have been made to look a fraction less wild if keltiir-, the proper ancient form, had been cited. Here a general observation must be made, in view of the several allusions in this book to the unscholarliness of some of those who shaped the new Turkish. One should not be shocked at the apparent disingenuousness or self-deception that still allows some Turks to look one in the eye and insist that all the neologisms are entirely home-grown and uninfluenced by the foreign words that have manifestly inspired them; to swear, for example, that the resemblance between okul ‘school’ and the French ecole is fortuitous. One’s first thought is, who do you think you’re fooling? But when anyone except the most unregenerate of reformers says such a thing, it means no more than ‘But it could have a Turkish etymology, couldn’t it?’ In the several neologisms whose consonants resemble those of the Arabic words they were intended to replace, there is a reflection of their inventors’ belief that they were restoring the original Turkish forms of these Arabic words: ilgi for aldka ‘interest’, varsay- for farz ‘to suppose’, somurme for istismar ‘exploitation’, kutsal for kudsi ‘holy’, sapta- for tespit ‘to establish’. All these are current. Had the reformers happened to know the English ashlar, ‘dressed stone for building or paving’ (ultimately the Latin axillaris), they would surely have claimed it as derived from their ta$lar‘stones’. Similarly they would have claimed the suffix of our kingdom and Christendom as borrowed from the suffix of Turkish erdem ‘manly virtue’ (compare er'man’). Nor can they have come across Clauson’s (1972: p. xliii) mention of tamgma as meaning ‘riddle’, or they would have hailed it as the etymon of enigma.6 The disappearance of the initial ts of ta$lar and tamgma 6 Clauson, p. xliii. One assumes that by ‘riddle’ Clauson meant ‘enigma’ rather than ‘sieve’. He seldom made mistakes, but neither meaning is right for tamgma, which in the body of the dictionary he shows as meaning ‘denial’. His subconscious must have been brooding on the resemblance between tamgma and enigma. Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 45 would not have bothered them, for they would certainly have agreed with Muller’s (1910: 30) dictum ‘The change of a consonant is a mere trifle, for in etymology vowels are worth but little, and consonants almost nothing.’7 And can it be that nobody noticed the resemblance between illet [A] and its English equivalent illness? Or the suffix -ebil- and English able*. Had they come across the nineteenthcentury attempt to establish a Polynesian etymology for taboo as from fa‘to mark’ and pu, an adverb of intensity,8 they would have been delighted by this proof that the influence of Turkish had reached the other side of the world. For tapu is Turkish for ‘title deed’, and what is a title deed if not an intensive marking, a legally cogent proof of ownership? The reader may think that what I am trying to say is that etymology is not a game for amateurs, but that is exactly what it is, whereas for others it is a science.9 To come back to the Dil Enciimeni, which we met in Chapter 3: it had not been idle; in 1929 it had resumed the word-collecting begun by the Ministry of Education in 1920. By mid-1932, however, it was judged to be dormant, for on 25 June the Minister of Education told the Grand National Assembly that an alloca¬ tion of just one lira had been made to it in the budget (Korkmaz 1992: 252-3). He explained, ‘Dil Heyeti, Dil Enciimeni, Dil Cemiyeti vesair namlarla her halde boyle bir heyetin ... liizumunu Hiikumet kabul etmi§tir... Bunun i$in bir lira koyduk. (Kafi sesleri)’ (The Government has accepted the necessity for some such body ... whether under the name of Language Committee, Language Council, Lan¬ guage Society or some other name ... That is why we have put down one lira. (Cries of‘Enough!’)). It is not apparent whether members’ lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of perpetuating the existence of the moribund body was just because it was moribund or because they did not favour the language reform; in view of the general fervour for reform at that time, the former reason is the more likely. Having founded Turk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti (the Turkish Society for the Study of History, later Turk Tarih Kurumu), on 15 April 1931, on 12 July 1932 Mustafa Kemal established the Turkish Society for the Study of Language, Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti, the name of which was changed four years later to Turk Dil Kurumu, after a brief period when tetkik [A] was replaced by ara$tirma.'° The Society’s creation is said to have been at the suggestion of four men: Samih Rifat, Ru§en 7 Not the great nineteenth-century Oxford philologist Max Muller but his cousin, George A. Niuller. 8 ‘The compound word tapu, therefore, means no more than “marked thoroughly” ... because sacred things and places were commonly marked in a peculiar manner in order that everyone might know that they were sacred’ (Shortland 1851: 81, quoted in Steiner 1967: 32). 9 The author vividly recalls learning this fact in his youth from listening to one of the regulars at Speakers’ Corner in London, a woman who preached the necessity of atheism and tried to prove it by explaining away the pagan deities as personifications of natural forces. The god Thor, for example, was the force that ended the winter, his name being identical with the English thaw. See also Lewis (1991). 10 Already in September 1934 Ataturk was referring to the Society as Turk Dili Ara$tirma Kurumu. Two numbers of the Society’s journal Turk Dili appeared in June 1935. In the first, no. 11, as in its pre¬ decessors, the subtitle was Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti Bulteni; in the second, no. 12, it had become Turk Dili Ara^tirma Kurumu Bulteni. 46 Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 Ef ref, Celal Sahir, and Yakup Kadri, who became its first board of management, with Samih Rifat as its first president (Dogan 1984: 25). In the forefront of this new organization were the purifiers (tasfiyeciler, a term soon replaced by 6zle$tirmeciler). One of its first tasks was to draw up a list of philosophical and scientific terms, of which the Ottoman and French ones were sent to the univer¬ sities and various private scholars, with a request that they produce Turkish replacements for them. The replies, after scrutiny by the Society, were sent to the Ministry of Education, which authorized their use in school textbooks. Not all of them were new; some were long-established Arabic borrowings or coinages from Arabic, some were of Greek or Latin origin. On 21 November 1932 the Directorate of Religious Affairs instructed all ‘cami ve mescid hademeleri’ (servants of congregational and other mosques) to prepare themselves to recite the ezan, the call to prayer, not in Arabic but in Turkish, though this did not happen all over the country at once, because it took time for all muezzins to master the new version. A gramophone record made by Hafiz Sadettin, the chief muezzin of the Sultan Ahmed mosque, was distributed to muezzins as the model to follow. This was the prescribed text: Tanri11 uludur! $ubhesiz bilirim bildiririm Tanridan ba;ka yoktur tapacak. $iibhesiz bilirim bildiririm Tanrinm el<fisidir Muhammed. Haydin namaza! Haydin felaha! (Namaz uykudan hayirlidir.) Tanri uludur! Tanridan ba;ka yoktur tapacak. (Jaschke 1951: 75) God is great! I know without doubt and I declare: There is none to be worshipped but God; I know without doubt and I declare: Muhammad is the envoy of God. Come to prayer! Come to felicity! (Prayer is better than sleep.) God is great! There is none to be worshipped but God. The line in parentheses is recited only for the dawn prayer. On 9 July 1933, when it had become obvious that it was not going to be easy to " Tann, anciently tehri, originally meant ‘sky’ and then ‘God’; Clauson (1972: 523-4) describes it as ‘a very old word, prob. pre-Turkish, which can be traced back to the language of the Hsiung-nu, III B.C., if not earlier’. Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 47 find native equivalents for all the doomed Arabic and Persian words, Hakimiyeti Milliye announced that words current among the people, whatever their origin, were to be regarded as Turkish. This sensible provision could have made little impression on the reformers, or they would not have wasted so much time trying to devise Turkish etymologies for Arabic words. Everyone had a go at the etymology game. Birinci Turk Dili Kurultayi (the First Turkish Language Congress)12 was held between 26 September and 5 October 1932, in the great ceremonial hall of Dolmabah<;e Palace in Istanbul. Of some thirty papers read to the Kurultay, nine dealt with relationships between Turkish and other languages, one speaker going so far as to entitle his contribution ‘Turkish Philology: Turkish is an Indo-European Language’ (Dilemre 1933). A Philology and Linguistics Division was created, with responsibility for making comparisons between Turkish ‘and the most ancient Turkish languages, such as Sumerian and Hittite, and the languages called Indo-European and Semitic’. Many people threw themselves enthusiastically into this task. In 1934, if we may get a little ahead of the chronological account, Saim Ali (Dilemre 1935) presented to the Second Kurultay a paper in which he sought to establish a connection ^ between Turkish and the West European languages. He equated the bi- of bicar¬ bonate and bilingual with the bi of bile ‘together’ and binmek ‘to mount’, and the prefix ex- with the eks of eksik ‘lacking’ and eksitmek'to reduce’. Even more bizarre was his identification of Latin ab ‘as in abjure and abandon’ (although the ab in the latter word is not in fact the Latin ab) with the first syllable of abaki ‘scare¬ crow’ and abaci, which he explained as ‘ka§karhlarin ummacisi’ (the Kashghars’ bogyman),13 the connection being that scarecrows and bogymen are frightening and turn birds and people ab, ‘away’. Other products of the same frame of mind were displayed at that Second Kurultay.14 Naim Hazim delivered himself of a paper (Onat 1935) on the rela¬ tionship between Turkish and the Semitic languages, having previously published an article entitled ‘Turk kokleri Arap dilini nasil dogurmu§’ (‘How Turkish Roots Gave Birth to Arabic’ (Hakimiyet-i Milliye, 4 Mar. 1933; Levend 1972: 430)). At the 12 The title of the third and subsequent congresses was Turk Dil Kurultayi—i.e. not TurkishLanguage Congress but Turkish Language-Congress, indicating a greater breadth of interest. The title on bound volumes of the proceedings of the second congress is Turk Dil Kurultayi, but the term used throughout the text is Turk Dili Kurultayi. 13 The normal spelling of the word translated ‘bogyman’ is umaci with a single m. Abaki does not seem to be recorded elsewhere. The common Anatolian word for scarecrow is abak, see Ko$ay and I§itman (1932: 1). As for the ka$karlilar (sic): ‘The Kashgharians are a people living in Kulja and the western part of Chinese Turkestan’ (Czaplicka 1918: 58). 'Kashgartsy, Kashgarlyki: local designation of an Uyghur population of the Kashgar oasis (Western China). The Kashgars in Central Asia are a group of Uyghurs who resettled from the Kashgar oasis to the Ferghana valley in the 1840’s; at the present time they are fused with the Uzbeks’ (Krueger 1963:197-a). So far as one can tell in the absence of an index, they are not mentioned in Bainbridge (1993). 14 And after it: an article by Dilemre, entitled ‘Turk-Kelt dil kar§ila$tirmalari’ (‘Linguistic Com¬ parisons between Turkish and Celtic’), appeared in Turk Dili, 15 (1936), i-97- The proceedings of the Second Kurultay were published in numbers 9-14 (Sept. 1934 to Dec. 1935) of the journal. 48 Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 Third Kurultay, in 1936, he returned specifically to the relationship with Arabic, this time in the light of the Sun-Language Theory (Onat 1937). Years later he pub¬ lished a two-volume work on the same theme (Onat 1944-9), though the second volume did not go beyond one fascicle. The kindest comment one can make is that he could scarcely be blamed for failing to prove his thesis. Yusuf Ziya Ozer, a lawyer, not a language man, found the origin of Aphrodite in avrat‘woman’ fawrat [A]). He spoke at the Second Kurultay on the relation¬ ship between Turkish and the Ural-Altaic languages, including Finnish: Fin dili son zamanlarda indo-avrupayi [sic] sayilmak i<;in bir meyelan vardir. Bu bir fali hayirdir, fiinki fin dilinin indo-avrupai zumresine girmesi uralo-altay leh^eleri lizerinde yapilacak lisani tetkikati geni$letecek ve sonunda bu leh<^elerin de aym membadan geldigi anla;ilarak tiirk^enin ana dil oldugu hakikatini meydana koymaya vesile olacaktir. (Turk Dili, 12 (1935). 55) There has been a tendency recently for Finnish to be counted as Indo-European.15 This bodes well, since the entry of Finnish among the Indo-European languages will broaden linguistic studies on the Ural-Altaic dialects, and eventually the realization that these dialects also come from the same origin will be the occasion to bring to light the truth that Turkish is the mother language. This same Yusuf Ziya figures in a reminiscence of the constitutional lawyer Ali Fuad Ba$gil: Hi(f unutmam, 1935 yazinda, bir gun, Ada vapurunda, rahmetli Eski$ehir Mebusu Yusuf Ziya hoca ile bulu$tuktu. Ankara’dan geldigini ve be§ yiiz sahfelik [sic] bir eser hazirlamakta oldugunu soyledi. Neye dair diye sordum. Arap^a’nin Turk^e’den <pkma olduguna dairmi§ ... Bir de misal verdi, mesela Firavun kelimesi Arap^a santlir, halbuki Tiirk<;edir ve ‘Burun’ kelimesinden ^lkmadir. Burun, insanin oniinde, cfikmti yapan bir uzuvdur. Hiikumdar da cemyetin [sic] oniinde giden bir $ahsiyet oldugu i^in, Misir’da buna burun denilmi;, kelime zamanlar i^inde kullamlarak nihayet Firavun olmu§ ... Ostad hakikaten uydurmacilik hastahgmdan kurtulamiyarak Allahin rahmetine kavu$tu. (Erer 1973:186-7) I shall never forget; on the Islands steamer one day in the summer of 1935,1 met the late Professor Yusuf Ziya, the Deputy for Eski$ehir. He told me he had come from Ankara and was preparing a work of five hundred pages. I asked what it was about. It emerged that it was on the Turkish origins of Arabic. And he gave an example: for instance the word Firavun ‘Pharaoh’ is thought to be Arabic, whereas it is Turkish, being derived from burun ‘nose’, an organ protruding in front of a person. As the sovereign is a personage going in front of the society, in Egypt he was called The Nose. In the course of time, this word burun became altered to Firavun ... The Professor in fact attained God’s mercy without managing to escape from the disease of fakery. To revert to 1932: the Society’s by-laws, accepted by the First Kurultay, set out two aims (Kurultay 1932:437): ‘Turk dilinin oz giizelligini ve zenginligini meydana <;ikarmak; Turk dilini diinya dilleri arasinda degerine yara$ir ytiksekligine 15 This looks like a moonbeam from the larger lunacy, but one cannot confidently assert that there never was such a tendency. Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 49 eri$tirmek’ (To bring to light the particular beauty and richness of the Turkish language and to raise it to the level it merits among the languages of the world). The Central General Committee elected by the Kurultay issued the following directive on the tasks to be given priority: (1) Halk dilinde ve eski kitaplarda bulunan Turk dili hazinelerini toplayip ortaya koyma; (2) Tiirk^ede soz yaratma yollanm belli etmek ve bunlari i$leterek Turk koklerinden turlii sozler ^ikarmak; (3) Turk^ede, hele yazi dilinde, 90k kullanilan yabanci kokten sozler yerine konabilecek oz Turk^e sozleri ortaya koymak ve bunlari yaymak. (Soz Derleme Dergisi (1939-52): i. 7-8) (1) Collecting and publishing the treasures of the Turkish language existing in the popular language and old books; (2) clarifying the methods of word-creation in Turkish and employing them to extract various words from Turkish roots; (3) uncovering and publi¬ cizing pure Turkish words which may be substituted for words of foreign roots widely used in Turkish, especially in the written language. On the evening after the close of that First Kurultay there was great euphoria round Atatiirk’s table. He himself was saying, ‘We are going to defeat Ottoman. Turkish is going to be a language as free and as independent as the Turkish nation, and with it we shall enter the world of civilization at one go’ (Tankut 1963:116-17).16 Then there began soz derleme seferberligi (the word-collection mobilization). ~ ‘Mobilization’ was not an empty metaphor; those called upon included army officers, teachers, tax, agriculture, and forestry officials, and government doctors, whose duties brought them into regular contact with the people. The central com¬ mittee of the Language Society distributed to every part of the country a booklet explaining how the work was to be carried out, together with slips on which to enter the words collected. In the capital of every province (vilayet) a ‘collection committee’ of mayors, military commanders, and head teachers was set up, chaired by the provincial governor (Vali), with a branch committee chaired by the sub-governor (Kaymakam) in the chief town of every sub-province (kaza); the duty of these committees was to organize the collection of words in use among the people. Within a year, a total of 125,988 slips had been returned, from which, after checking and the elimination of repetitions, 35,357 words were left. To these were added 765 words collected by private individuals and gleaned from folkpoetry and various books, including the first ever Turkish dialect dictionary: Hamit Ziibeyr [Ko§ay] and Ishak Refet [I§itman], Anadilden Derlemeler (1932),17 a scholarly work containing the results not only of its authors’ own investigations but also of the 1920 inquiry mentioned in Chapter 2. In addition, there was a number of words from Turkmence (Turcoman), and Azerice, the dialect of Azerbaijan (Kurultay 1934 (= Turk Dili, 8 (1934), 12)). 16 Tankut does not quote Ataturk’s actual words. His version of them runs ‘Osmanhcayi yenecegiz. Turk dili Turk ulusu gibi ozgur ve ba$ina buyruk bir dil olacak ve biz onunla uygarhk acununa birden ve toptan girecegiz.’ But ozgur, for example, was not invented until twenty years after the First Kurultay. 17 Twenty years later a second volume appeared: Ko$ay and Aydin 1952. 50 Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 A Commission of Inquiry was created and from March to July 1933 Hakimiyeti Milliye published daily lists of a dozen or so Arabic and Persian words under the heading ‘Turk okur yazarlari! Biiyiik dil anketi seferberligi ba$ladi. 1$ ba$ina!’ (Literate Turks! Mobilization for the great language inquiry has begun. To work!). Other newspapers and radio stations were invited to cooperate and readers’ sug¬ gestions for Turkish replacements were published as they came in. (There is anec¬ dotal evidence that suggestions were paid for at the rate of TL6 a word.) When it became apparent that different contributors had different ideas about what sort of replacements were acceptable, belatedly on 9 July Hakimiyet-i Milliye stated two principles: (a) words current among the people, whatever their origin, were to be counted as Turkish, and (b) replacements must be Oztiirkge (see note 25, p. 56): while kalem [A] ‘pen’, for example, would not be discarded, yazak would also be used and whichever proved the more popular would survive. This exercise was not very productive: the number of words in the daily lists totalled 1,382. Of the replacements suggested, 640 were accepted. Meanwhile, scholars had been combing through dictionaries of Turkic lan¬ guages and more than 150 old texts in search of words that had fallen out of use or had never been in use in Turkey; these totalled close on 90,000. After a very brief process of checking, mostly by middle-school teachers, the results of both researches were embodied in Tarama Dergisi (1934). Although the compilers had conscientiously put question marks against some words of which they were not sure, and warned that this huge mass of material was undigested, enthusiasts did not feel inhibited from using any word found in it, and for a while Babel set in. If you wanted to express ‘pen’ without using the normal kalem, you looked up kalem and made your choice from among yagu$ or yazgag, shown as recorded at Bandirma and Izmir respectively, or the Karaim cizgig or sizgig, or the Tatar kavri, or kamtg from the Kamus18 or yuvug from Pavet de Courteille (1870). For hikaye ‘story’ there were twenty-two possibilities, including ertegi, hogek, otkting, and siirgek, but not dykti, which eventually supplanted it. For hediye ‘gift’ you could pick your favourite from a list of seventy-seven words ranging from agt through ertiit and tangu to yarligag and zim. Agop Dila^ar notes (Korkmaz 1992: 363) that for akil ‘intelligence’ there were twenty-six equivalents, from an to zerey. He describes a visit he paid some time in 1934 to Necmettin Sadak, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Akgam: Sadak, gazetenin ba$yazisim yazmi$ti, Osmanlica. Zile basti, gelen odaciya yaziyi vererek ‘bunu ikameciye gdttir’ dedi. Kar§i odadaki ikameci Tarama Dergisi ni a^ti ve yazinin sdzdizimine hit; bakmadan, Osmanlica sdzciiklerin yerine bu dergiden begendigi Tiirk^e kar$ihklari ‘ikame’ etti. Ba§ka bir gazete burosunda ba$ka bir ‘ikameci’ aym 18 What the Kamus (1316/1901: ii. 1039) actually gives under kami$ ‘reed’ is ‘kalem kami$i: yontularak yazi yazmaga yarayan kami$ cinsi...’ (pen-reed: a type of reed which on being trimmed serves for writing ...). ‘Reed pen’ is kamtf kalem-, the two words are not synonymous. Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 51 Osmanlica sozcuklere ba$ka kar§ihklan sepni? olabilirdi. f§te Atatiirk’un ilk bunalimi bu karga$adan dogdu. Sadak had written the editorial, in Ottoman. He rang the bell, gave the text to the mes¬ senger who arrived, and said ‘Take this to the substitutor.’ The substitutor, in the room across the corridor, opened Tarama Dergisi and, paying no regard to the structure of the passage, ‘substituted’ for the Ottoman words the Turkish equivalents he liked from that book. In another newspaper office another ‘substitutor’ might have chosen other equivalents for the same Ottoman words. The author had some first-hand experience of the rite of‘substitution’ in 1984, when he spent a memorable evening in Istanbul with a group of members of the Faculty of Political Science who were organizing a symposium on the Tanzimat, the nineteenth-century reforms. Their chairman, a venerable retired professor, was composing his opening address, which, for the sake of the many young students who were expected, he wanted to couch in the most up-to-date language. So in his own archaic and courtly Turkish he told the company what he wanted to say and we suggested the appropriate neologisms. There was much discussion about how to say ‘modern’. He knew asri was too old-fashioned but he did not know the new word. One or two people suggested fagda$, but we agreed that that was the neologism for muasir ‘contemporary’. The eventual consensus was that he should use modern, which he did. It was around 1934 that a Turkish writer, when asked how many languages he knew, is said to have replied that it was as much as he could do to keep up with Turkish. The situation is well summed up by Heyd (1954: 31):'9 Now any Turkish word found in the vernacular of a remote Anatolian village, in the speech of an even more remote Turkish tribe in Siberia or in the manuscript of an eleventh century Turkish-Arabic dictionary was regarded as a possible addition to the modern Turkish vocabulary. On the other hand, practically every word of Arabic or Persian origin was considered outlawed and condemned to suppression as soon as a Turkish equivalent was found. An undated leaflet, published by TDK and distributed to the participants at one of the early Kurultays, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. It is entitled Kurultay Mar$i (‘Congress March’), words by Dr Hilmi Oyta^, Deputy for Malatya, music by Maestro Karlo d’Alpino Kapo^elli. The presence of the surnames Atatiirk and Oyta^ shows it could not have been before 1934, as does Dr Oyta^’s manifest indebtedness to Tarama Dergisi of 1934: bu$gut, tolunay, canki [M], and so on. The translation offered here is in parts tentative; the rendering ‘respect’ for okkay, for example, which is not found in Tarama Dergisi, is based on the possibly far-fetched assumption that it is a back-formation from okkalt (from okka ‘oke’, a measure of weight), first meaning ‘weighty’ and then ‘worthy of respect’, with the y added for the sake of the rhyme. 19 This book is immensely useful for details of the Society’s history, as is Brendemoen (1990:454-93). 52 Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 Gozttn aydin Turk oglu aqldi benlik yolu Ey bu yolun yolcusu artik sana ne mutlu Atatiirk <;oculdari diline el bastirmaz Kurultay bu$gutlan diline dil kattirmaz Selam sana Kurultay yeni dogan tolunay Selam sana Atatiirk, bizden sana bin okkay Bil ki tarih ile dil benligin damgasidir {9! di$i gosteren bir kilik aynasidir Bu cankidan dogacak oz Tiirkliige yom olcay Ozge dilden oz dili kurtaracak Kurultay Selim sana Kurultay yeni dogan tolunay Selam sana Atatiirk, bizden sana bin okkay Joy to you, son of Turks, the road to identity has been opened O traveller on this road, how happy you are at last. The children of Atatiirk let no stranger encroach on their language The disciples of the Kurultay let no language adulterate their language Salutations to you, Kurultay, full moon newly rising Salutations to you, Atatiirk, a thousand respects from us to you Know that history and language are the mark of identity A full-length mirror showing the inside and the outside From this council blessings and felicity will be born for pure Turkdom The Kurultay will save the pure language from other languages. Ibrahim Necmi displayed some cheerful ignorance in his speech on the occasion of the second DilBayrami( Language Festival), in which he spoke of Tarama Dergisi: Dergideki sozler, oz dilimizin hem zenginligini, hem de ba$ka dillere kaynakligmi gosterecek degerdedir. Bir ornek verelim. Bugiin herkesin soyledigi ‘psikoloji’ soziinun kokti aranacak olursa bunun ‘psikoz’ dan qktigi gorulur. Etimoloji kitaplari bunu da ‘nefes’ diye anlatirlar. Ya§amamn nefes almakla bir oldugunu dti$Unen eskilerin ‘nefes’ le ‘ruh’ u bir tutmalari kolay anla§ihr bir i§tir. §imdi Dergide ‘nefes’ soztine bakarsantz ‘Pis’ diye bir soz gorursunuz ki ‘psikoz’ sdzunun de, ‘nefes’ lakirdisimn da hep bu ana kaynaktan kaynami§ oldugunu anlamak pek kolay olur.... (Turk Dili, 10 (1934), 23-4) The words in the Dergi are capable of showing both the richness of our language and the fact that it is the source for other languages. Let me give an example. If one looks for the root of the word psikoloji, which today is on everyone’s lips, it will be seen that it comes from psikoz. The etymology books explain this as nefes [A] ‘breath’. It is easily under¬ standable that the ancients, reflecting that living was one with breathing, took ‘breath’ and ‘soul’ as one and the same. Now if you look up the word nefes in the Dergi you will see a word pis, and it will be very easy to understand that psikoz and nefes have both welled up from this ultimate source. He then gave another example, tiinel (familiar to Istanbul people as the name of the underground railway going down from the lower end of Istiklal Caddesi to the Golden Horn), ‘which everyone knows we borrowed from the French’. Having said that a recent French etymological dictionary explained the word as a French borrowing from the English tonnel (sic), of obscure origin, he continues: ‘§imdi Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 53 Dergiyi aijiniz: “Tun” sozunun “gece, karanlik” demeye geldigini goriirsiinuz. Buna “Rural, kaval, ^akal, sakal, guzel..sozlerinin sonunda gorillen “al-el” ekini katarsaniz “Tunel” in “karanlik yer” demeye gelen oz Tiirk^e bir soz oldugu ortaya $ikar’ (Now open the Dergi and you will see that tun means ‘night, darkness’. If you add to this word the suffix appearing at the end of words such as kural [‘rule’],20 kaval [‘shepherd’s pipe’], fakal [‘jackal’], sakal [‘beard’], guzel [‘beauti¬ ful’], and so on, it becomes apparent that tunel is a pure Turkish word meaning ‘dark place’). That last paragraph, together with his confusion of psikoz ‘psychosis’ and psyche, and his equating the second syllable of the Arabic nefes with pis (according to Tarama Dergisi (1934), a Kirghiz word for ‘weak breath’),21 may be thought to show a deficiency of philological competence. Although he taught literature and from 1935 was a member of the Grand National Assembly, by train¬ ing he was a lawyer, but that did not harm his career in the Language Society, of which he was Secretary-General from 1934 to 1945. It was during the period of linguistic chaos following the publication of Tarama Dergisi (1934) that Ataturk said to Atay something on these lines:22 ‘(^ocugum beni dinle, dedi. Tiirk^enin hi^bir yabanci kelimeye ihtiyaci olmadigim soyleyenlerin iddiasmi tecriibe ettik. Bir qkmaza girmi^izdir. Dili bu ^lkmazda birakirlar mi? Birakmazlar. Biz de qkmazdan kurtarma $erefini ba$kalarma birakamayiz’ (‘Listen to me, my boy,’ he said. ‘We have put to the test the claim of those who say that Turkish has no need of any foreign word. We really have got into a dead end. Will they leave the language in this dead end? They won’t. But we can’t leave to others the honour of saving it from the dead end’). Atay’s next words are of greater significance: ‘Fakat bir noktada israr etti. Tiirk^ede kalacak kelimelerin aslmda Ttirk^e oldugu izah edilmeli idi’ (But on one point he was insistent: it had to be explained that the words which were to remain in Turkish were Turkish in origin). Atay gives us an insight into the method used to avoid branding as foreign any essential word for which no native equivalent could be found. He tells of a dis¬ cussion on the Dictionary Commission about possible replacements for htikiim [A] ‘judgement’: Naim Hazim Hoca was sitting on my right, Yusuf Ziya on my left. I said, ‘There’s no equiv¬ alent for it. Let’s keep it.’ They both said, ‘Impossible!’ I turned to my right and said, ‘Pro¬ fessor, you say that the origin of Arabic is Turkish. You claim as originally Turkish any word we cite from the Koran.’ 1 turned to my left. ‘And you, Professor, maintain that all languages derive from Turkish. You resort to all kinds of dodges to show that the French chambre is 20 Kural' rule’ is a neologism of dubious ancestry. In the real world it occurs in the sense of‘instru¬ ment, tool’ in most Central Asian dialects. 21 Pis, which looks onomatopoeic, is not to be found in Taymas (1945-8), the Turkish translation of Yudakhin, Kirgizsko-Russkiy Slovar (1940). 22 The reason for the Russkiy Slovar uncertainty is that this version, from Atay (1951), is one of his three versions of the same reminiscence. It has been selected as being the oldest and, one therefore hopes, the nearest to what Ataturk actually said. There is yet another version in Akbal (1984), obvi¬ ously quoted from memory: ‘Ataturk “oz Tiirk^e i$i ipkmaza girdi, vazge^elim bundan” diyesi imi$!’ (Lewis 1988:115) (A. is supposed to have said, ‘The pure Turkish business has got into a dead end; let’s drop it’.) 54 Ataturk and Language Reform until 1936 derived from oda. And now, when it comes to a word like htiktim which has become part of village speech, the two of you dig your toes in.’ We had quite an argument. After the meeting, my friend Abdiilkadir came up to me in the upper corridor of Dolmabah^e Palace. He it was who had once said to me, ‘1 know most of the dialects of the Asian Turks. I also understand the dialect spoken by you and people like Yakup Kadri. If there’s one dialect I can’t make head or tail of, it’s the dialect of the Turkish Language Society.’ On this occa¬ sion he said, ‘You look worried. Tell me what words are bothering you and I’ll find Turkish origins for them.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘there’s this word htiktim’. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘tomor¬ row we’ll make huktim Turkish.’ Next day he quietly put into my hand a slip of paper on which he had noted that some dialects had a word ok meaning ‘intellect’, which in several of them took the form tik. I had myself discovered that in Yakut there was a word¬ building suffix - tim. The rest was easy: tik plus tim had in the course of time become htiktim. When the meeting began, I said, ‘The word htiktim is Turkish,’ and gave a full account of what I had learned, which reduced the two professors to silence. We had laid the founda¬ tions of the science of—I shan’t say fakery, but flim-flam. [‘Uydurma’ demiyeyim de ‘yaki$tirmacilik’ ilminin temelini atmi§tik.’] That evening I reported to Ataturk on the Commission’s proceedings and he was very pleased that we had won so important a word by this fabrication. What he wanted us to do was to leave as many words in the language as possible, so long as we could demonstrate that they were Turkish.23 Atay of course knew that huktim was borrowed from the Arabic hukm but he offers no justification for his conduct; if taxed with dishonesty he would no doubt have pleaded that what he had told the Commission and Ataturk was a white lie intended to save the life of a word that had served the Turks well for centuries. Ataturk, who was no doubt equally aware of the origin of huktim, was satisfied that it could be reprieved now that it had been provided with a Turkish pedigree. A remarkable revelation of the Language Society’s way with words is to be seen in an unsigned article entitled ‘Cep Kilavuzlari ne kadar Sozii Kar§ilami$tir?’: §imdiye kadar lugatlerde arap^a fars^a ... gibi Tiirk<;eden ba;ka samlan dillere mensup diye gosterilmi$ olan, fakat Kilavuz ara$tirmalari arasinda gerek kokunun Tiirk<;e oldugu anla$ilmasi ve gerek yayginligi ve dilin ihtiyaci olmasi bakimmdan Turk kokiinden geldigi tesbit edilen sozlerin sayisi (583)tiir. {Turk Dili, 16 (1936), 22-3) Up to now, 583 words have been shown in the dictionaries as belonging to languages thought to be different from Turkish, such as Arabic, Persian etc., but their derivation from Turkish roots has been established, in view of the facts that it has become clear in the course of researching the Guide that their roots are Turkish, that they are widely used, and that the language needs them. One may wonder why, once it had become clear that the roots of the words in question were Turkish, further evidence was required that their derivation from Turkish roots had been established. In so far as it betokens an uneasy conscience on the anonymous writer’s part, let us not condemn him. Ataturk was far too intelligent to be deluded by those who maintained that all languages derived from Turkish. The logical consequence of such a belief would 23 Atay’s story is here pieced together from his two divergent accounts, one in Atay (1969: 478), the other in Atay (1965). Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 55 have been to retain all the Arabic and Persian elements in the language, which at that time was the exact opposite of his intention. So, for a limited period, he seized on the Oztiirkfe words produced by the reformers and used them in his speeches and letters. In February 1935 he dropped his given names, Mustafa and Kemal, both being irremediably Arabic, and for a little while took to signing himself as Kamal. The origin of this novel name was explained in a communique from Anadolu Ajansi, the official news agency: Istihbaratimiza nazaran Ataturk’iin ta§idigi ‘Kamal’ adi Arap^a bir kelime olmadigi gibi Arap<;a ‘Kemal’ (olgunluk) kelimesinin delalet ettigi manada degildir. Ataturk’iin muhafaza edilen oz adi, Turk<;e ‘ordu ve kale’ manasma olan ‘Kamal’ dir. Son ‘a’ ustundeki tahfif i$areti T harfini yumu§attigi i^in telaffuz hemen hemen Arap<;a ‘Kemal’ telaffuzuna yakla$ir. Benzeyi$ bundan ibarettir. (Cumhuriyet, 5 Feb. 1935, quoted in Bozgeyik 1995:15) In the light of our information, the name ‘Kamal’ that Atatiirk bears is not an Arabic word, nor does it have the meaning indicated by the Arabic word kemal [‘maturity’, ‘perfection’]. Ataturk’s personal name, which is being retained, is ‘KamM’, the Turkish meaning of which is army and fortification. As the circumflex accent on the final a softens the l, the pronunciation closely approximates that of the Arabic ‘Kemal’. That is the full extent of the resemblance. Tarama Dergisi (1934) gives kamal as meaning fortification, castle, army, shield. That, however, is of no relevance, because kamal (/kamal7/) is not kamal (Lewis 1988:6-7).24 Apart from the improbable final syllable, the substitution of a for the e of Kemal would alter the sound of the initial consonant, from /ky/ to /kJ. But clearly the purpose of the change was not to affect the pronunciation of the name but only to make its written form look less Arabic. In fact he did not persist with ‘Kamal’ but habitually signed himself K. Atatiirk. In the spring of 1935 the newspapers began to publish lists of proposed replace¬ ments for Arabic and Persian words, on which readers were invited to commentr' Later that year the results were presented to the public in a little ‘Pocket Guide from Ottoman to Turkish’ (Cep Ktlavuzu (1935)), as planned at the Second Kurultay in August 1934. The speed with which the plan had been implemented was due to the active interest of Atatiirk himself, but it is a pity the editors did not have more time to spend on it. Two examples: the new word they offered for ‘educa¬ tion’ was egitim, which was supposed to be a noun derived from an ancient verb egitmek ‘to educate’. But there never was a verb egitmek, it was a misreading of igidmek ‘to feed (people or animals)’. For millet ‘nation’ Tarama Dergisi had come up with eight possibilities, among them ulu$ and ulus. The compilers of Cep Ktlavuzu backed the wrong horse and chose the latter, which represented the Mongolian pronunciation of Turkish ‘country’, an early borrowing by the 24 There is a Turkish word containing a back vowel and a clear l, the somewhat mysterious elA (lelya/) ‘hazel’ (of eyes). Agop Dinar's new surname ‘language-opener’ (he was born Martayan) was given to him by Atatiirk; the circumflex shows that the l is clear. 56 Atatiirk and Language Reform until 1936 Mongols, used by them for ‘a confederation of peoples’ (Clauson 1972:152). By the fourteenth century the Turks had borrowed it back, and it was in its Mongolian form ulus that they used it until the seventeenth century and use it again now. The end product was to be Oz Tiirkfe25 (Pure Turkish), a term said to derive from a favourite expression of Ataturk’s, ‘oz Turk dilimiz’ (our own Turkish language), oz meaning ‘pure’ as well as ‘own’. The new words were circulated to schools by the Ministry of Education, and publicized and used in the newspapers. Atatiirk had already gone a long way in the use of Ozturkge, he took it to the limit in the speech he made on 3 October 1934, at a banquet in honour of the Swedish Crown Prince and Princess. Turks refer to it as ‘baysal utkulu nutuk’ (the speech characterized by ‘baysal utkusu’), this expression standing out as the oddest of all. It contains three French words, Altes, Ruvayal, and Prenses, and only two words of Arabic origin, tarih ‘history’ and turn ‘all’.26 It also contains some startling neologisms. Here is a sample (full text and glossary in Levend 1972: 424-6): ‘Avrupamn iki bitim ucunda yerlerini berkiten uluslarimiz, ata<; ozluklerinin turn issilan olarak baysak, oniirme, uygunluk kildacilari olmu§ bulunuyorlar; onlar, bugiin, en giizel utkuyu kazanmiya amklamyorlar: baysal utkusu’ (Our nations, which hold firm their places at the two extremities of Europe, in full possession of their ancestral qualities have become the agents of tranquillity, progress and harmony; today they are preparing to win the most beautiful victory of all: the victory of peace). Tankut (1963:125) says that the speech was composed in Ottoman and the Arabic words were then replaced by neologisms. He says too that Mustafa Kemal delivered it ‘okumaya yeni ba§lami§ ogrencilerin acemiligiyle’ (with the awkwardness of schoolchildren who have just begun to read). This self-inflicted injury must have caused him great irritation, for he was a proud man and a master of his own language. He had the rare gift of being able to extemporize, in Ottoman, lengthy periods of the kind that others might strug¬ gle for hours to compose, while he was equally at home with the straightforward and often racy colloquial he used in conversation and when addressing informal meetings. His address opening the new session of the Grand National Assembly on 1 November 1934 contained a fair number of Qzturkge words,27 though they were nothing like so numerous or so outlandish as those that must have tried the skill of the Swedish Crown Prince’s interpreter a month earlier unless he had been given a sight of the original Ottoman text. Towards the end of 1935, Atatiirk seems to have decided that he would no longer deny himself the full use of the instrument he wielded so well; this is evident from the language of his subsequent public utterances, as we shall see. One can only imagine his mortification after all the effort he had invested in the language reform. And then, in what must have been a time of great chagrin and heart¬ searching for him, there appeared a deus ex machina: along came Kvergic. 25 Now generally written as one word, a practice which henceforth is followed in this book. 26 It is not totally certain that turn is originally Arabic, but there is no evidence that it is not. 27 Text in Atatilrk’iin Soylev ve Demefleri (1945: i. 362-4). 5 The Sun-Language Theory and After Sometime in 1935 Atatiirk received a forty-seven-page typescript in French, enti¬ tled ‘La Psychologie de quelques dements des langues turques’, by a Dr Hermann F. Kvergic of Vienna. The theme was that man first realized his own identity when he conceived the idea of establishing what the external objects surrounding him were. Language first consisted of gestures, to which some significant sounds were then added. Kvergic saw evidence for his view in the Turkish pronouns. M indi¬ cates oneself, as in men, the ancient form of ben T, and elim ‘my hand’. N indi¬ cates what is near oneself, as in sen ‘you’ and elin ‘your hand’. Z indicates a broader area, as in biz ‘we’ and siz ‘you’. Further, Kvergic considered that Turkish was the first human language to take shape. Nothing could have been more timely. Two months before, a copy of the paper had been sent to Ahmet Cevat Emre, the chairman of the grammar section of the Language Society, who after a cursory examination dismissed it as unsubstantiated and worthless. Atatiirk was more impressed, pardy because, having discussed it with Emre, he suspected that the latter’s rejection of it was due to his seeing in Kvergic a potential rival. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘the psychological analyses look important.’ He thought that primitive man might well have given vent to exclamations such as ‘Aa!’ and ‘Oo!’ and that lan¬ guage could have emerged from utterances of this kind. He passed the paper on to ibrahim Necmi Dilmen, the secretary-general of the Language Society, and said, ‘It looks important; let it be examined carefully.’ Dilmen talked it over with Hasan Re§it Tankut, Naim Hazim Onat, and Abdiilkadir inan, who saw merit in the psy¬ chological analyses (Emre i960: 342-6). The result of Ataturk’s subsequent lucubrations, aided by these and others of the staff of the Society, was Giine$ -Dil Teorisi (the Sun-Language Theory), which saw the beginning of language as the moment when primitive man looked up at the sun and said ‘Aa!’. As it was concerned only with the beginning and not the development of language, it cannot be reproached for omitting to explain how mankind progressed from that primeval ‘Aa!’ to the sublimity of‘Faith, hope and charity, these three things’, or Virgil’s ‘sunt lacrimae rerum’ or even to so com¬ monplace an utterance as ‘Let’s go for a walk in the park.’ Here is a brief summary of the theory, which came equipped with a battery of rules for its application. That ‘Aa’, ag in Turkish spelling, was the first-degree radical of the Turkish language. Its original meaning was sun, then sunlight, warmth, fire, height, bigness, power, God, master, motion, time, distance, life, 58 The Sun-Language Theory and After colour, water, earth, voice. As man’s vocal mechanisms developed, other vowels and consonants became available, each with its own shade of meaning. Because the primeval exclamation was shouted, and it is obviously easier to begin a shout with a vowel than with a consonant, any word now beginning with a consonant originally began with a vowel, since abraded. The words yagmur ‘rain’, qamur ‘mud’, and hamur ‘dough’, for example, are compounded of agmur ‘flowing water’ preceded by ay ‘high’, af ‘earth’, and ah ‘food’ respectively. The reader is urged not to waste time looking for the last four ‘Turkish’ words in the dictionary. There is a cryptic foreshadowing of the theory in Dilmen’s preface to Ttirkfeden Osmanltcaya Cep Ktlavuzu. After asserting that it was becoming daily more certain that ‘the languages termed non-Turkish are equally of Turkish origin’, he says, ‘There can be no doubt that the great truth we are referring to will soon reveal itself with the brightness of the sun.’ The authorship of the theory is archly hinted at by the anonymous writer of ‘Gune^-Dil Teorisinin Esaslarma Kisa bir Baki$’,‘ which speaks of it as a product of ‘Turk jenisi’ (the Turkish genius). The Third Kurultay, in 1936, was dominated by what Heyd (1954: 34), with admirable restraint, refers to as ‘this amazing theory’. So does Brendemoen (1990: 456), who with less restraint also calls it ‘infamous’. Ataturk’s responsibility for the theory is not disputed, though clearly he did not do all the donkey work. Dila^ar (1963: 50) says in so many words that the paper on the application of the analyti¬ cal method of the theory, described in the agenda as the work of Ismail Mii^tak Mayakon, who read it to the Congress on 27 August 1936, was wholly due to Ataturk. So was the anonymous and undated little brochure Etimoloji Morfoloji ve Fonetik Bakimindan Turk Dili (‘The Turkish Language Etymologically, Morphologically and Phonetically Considered’), a condensed version of which was given away with the issue of Ulus, 14 November 1935. Between 2 and 21 Novem¬ ber of that year, half of the front page of the newspaper was devoted to a series of unsigned ‘Dil Yazilari’, articles purporting to demonstrate the Turkish origin of some sixty words, mostly Arabic borrowings, on the basis of the Sun-Language Theory. The fact that Ulus gave up half its front page day after day to these articles is a pointer to the identity of their writer, but Ataturk’s authorship of them was not known for sure until the publication in 1994 of an article that established with documentary evidence (Ercilasun 1994: 89) what had long been generally assumed. This is how the first section of the brochure began: Etimoloji, morfoloji ve fonetik bakimindan Turk dili’ hakkindaki $u notlarin ifade ettigi fikirler... Birinci Dil Kurultayindan beri ge<;en ii<; sene i^inde, Turk Dil uzerinde ve bu miinasebetle diger dillerde yapilan tetkik ve ara$tirmalardan ve dille alakadar olan filozofi, 1 Originally serialized in Ulus from the beginning of November 1935 onwards, reprinted in Turk Dili, 16 (1936), 33-123. The Sun-Language Theory and After 59 psikoloji, sosyoloji bahislerinin gozden gecprilmesinden dogmu^tur. Bu dogu§, filolojide yeni bir teori olarak gdriilebilir. Bu teorinin temeli, insana benligini giine$in tanitmi$ olmasi fikridir. The ideas set out in these notes on ‘The Turkish Language Etymologically, Morphologi¬ cally and Phonetically Considered’ have emerged in the three years since the First Language Congress ... They grew from studies and research conducted during that time on Turkish and other languages and from a review of topics in philosophy, psychology, and sociology that have a bearing on language. This outcome may be seen as a new philological theory, based on the concept that what made man aware of his identity was the sun. Having cited several works in which he had found confirmation for his theory— by Carra de Vaux on Etruscan, and Hilaire de Barenton on the derivation of languages from Sumerian—Atatvirk continues: Dil bu bulu^la, tamamen camit olmaktan kurtulamami$tir. Ona can ve hareket vermek lazimdir. I§te bu nokta iizerinde dtifunmege ve tetkike ba;ladik ... Turk diline ait lugat kitaplarim onumuze aldik. Bu kitaplardaki tarn ve belli anlamlar ifade eden sozleri ve bu sozlerde ek olarak koke yapi$mis konsonlari birer birer gozoniinde tutarak, bunlarin kokte yaptiklari mana niianslanm etiit ettilk ... Bu sirada Dr. Phil. Orient. H. F. Kvergitch’in ‘Psy¬ chologic de quelques 616ments des langues turques’ adh basilmami; kiymetli bir eserini okuduk. Turk dilindeki siifikslerin gosterici manalarim bulmak i<pin Dr. Kvergitch’in bu nazariyesini Turk Dil Kurumunun elder hakkindaki geni$ ve 90k misalli <;ali§malari sayesinde anhyabildik ve istifade ettik. This discovery could do nothing to save the language from being totally lifeless. It had to be given soul and activity. It was on this point that I began to concentrate my thinking and investigation ... I sat down with the Turkish dictionaries in front of me. Scrutinizing one by one the words in them that expressed complete and clear meanings, and the consonants suffixed to the root of each word, I studied the shades of meaning these made in the root ... About this time I read a valuable unpublished work, Dr. Phil. Orient. H. F. Kvergic’s ‘Psychologie de quelques dements des langues turques’. To find out the demonstrative senses of the Turkish suffixes, thanks to TDK’s extensive labours on the suffixes, with abundant examples, I was able to understand this theory of Dr Kvergic’s and I made use of it. The first hint of what was coming was in a paper entitled ‘The Sun, from the Point of View of Religion and Civilization’, presented on the first day of the Congress by Yusuf Ziya Ozer. The theory was mentioned only at the very end: Be$eri kiiltiir iizerinde bu kadar mtihim rol yapan Giine§in ... dil iizerinde de aym tesiri ve aym rolu yapmi? olmasi gayet tabii goriilmek lazim gelir. Binaenaleyh Giine$-Dil Teorisi’nin de Gune$e bu kadar ezeli surette merbut olan Turk ilmi tel4kkiyatmm bir eseri olarak meydana konmu§ olmasi iftihara layiktir. (Kurultay 1936: 48) It must be seen as quite natural that the Sun, which plays so important a part in human culture, has ... exercised the same influence on, and played the same part in, language too. We should therefore take pride in the fact that the Sun-Language Theory has been pro¬ pounded as a product of the outlook of Turkish science, which has been linked to the Sun since time immemorial. 6o The Sun-Language Theory and After Dilmen began the next day with a lengthy outline of the theory, in which he proved, among other things, the identity of English god, German Gott, and Turkish kut ‘luck’. The proof was simple enough: Gott is og + ot, god is og + od, kut is uk + ut. By spelling Gott with only one f, he spared himself the necessity of explain¬ ing its second t. Similar moonshine was delivered on that second day and the three following days, the sixth day being given over to the foreign scholars. Dilmen used the theory to show the identity of the Uyghur yaltrik ‘gleam, shining’, and electric (Turk Dili, 19 (1936), 47-9). An article in the Wall Street Journal of 16 March 1985 on the language reform states that a headline in Cumhuriyet of 31 January 1936 ran: ‘Electric is a Turkish word!’. Space does not permit a full examination of the material presented to the Con¬ gress, much as one would like to go into the content of papers with such intrigu¬ ing titles as Tankut’s ‘Palaeosociological Language Studies with Panchronic Methods according to the Sun-Language Theory’ and Dila^ar’s ‘Sun-Language Anthropology’. Emre’s contribution, however, deserves a word, because Zurcher (1985: 85) describes him as Tun des rares linguistes un peu serieux de la Societe’. Emre, who had expressed his contempt for Kvergic’s paper, which was not devoid of sense, went overboard on the Sun-Language Theory. Here is a summary of his lengthy presentation (Kurultay 1936:190-201) on the origin of the French borrowings filozofi ‘philosophy’, filozof ‘philosopher’, and filozofik ‘philosophic(al)’, commonly supposed to be from the Greek phil- ‘to love’ and sophia ‘wisdom’. Having learned that the etymology of Greek phil- was doubtful, he decided that the word was his to do with as he would, to the fol¬ lowing effect. As the Sun-Language Theory shows, no word originally began with a consonant, so the first syllable of filozof was if or ef, and in its original form ip or ep. Now ip or ep in Turkish meant ‘reasoning power’ (this was no better founded than his preceding assertions). Further, the Greek phil- is generally supposed to mean ‘to love’ or ‘to kiss’, but he rejected the first sense on the grounds that Aristotle used sophia alone for ‘philosophy’, so the philo- could only be an intensifying prefix, having nothing to do with love. On the other hand, he accepted the second sense, because ip, besides meaning ‘reasoning power’, was clearly the same as the Turkish dp- ‘to kiss’. Next, the original form of philo- was ipil-, the function of the il being ‘to broaden the basic meaning of the ip’, and this was obviously the same word as the Turkish bil- ‘to know’. As for sophia, that did indeed mean wisdom; compare sag ‘sound, intelligent’ and sav ‘word, saying’. In short, filozofi, filozof, and filozofik were Turkish, so there was no need to create replacements for them.2 Emre concluded his contribution with a verse ‘from one of our poets’, the second line of which indicates that Atatiirk’s proprietorial interest in the theory, if not common knowledge, was at least an open secret: 2 Clement of Alexandria would have put this differently. He is quoted by Peter Berresford Ellis (1994: 67) as saying, ‘It was from the Greeks that philosophy took its rise: its very name refuses to be trans¬ lated into foreign speech.’ The Sun-Language Theory and After 61 AtatUrk, Ataturk antliyiz sana Gune§inden i<;tik hep kana kana. Ataturk, Ataturk, we are pledged to you, We have all drunk deep of your sun. The impact of the theory on books and articles published during its brief reign is easily recognized. Turning the pages of Abdulkadir inan’s (1936) Turkoloji Ders Hulasalart for example, you see it to be a compendium of notes on the history of the language and on its dialects, particularly that of the Kirghiz (Kirgiz). Then, after a discussion of various views on the etymology of the name, you come across Fig. 5.1 and know you have left the realm of scholarship for the land of the Sun-Language Theory. (1) (2) (3) (4) kirgty (ik + ir + ig + ty) Kirgiz (ik + tr + tg iz) + Fig. 5.1. A typical ‘etymological analysis’ according to the Sun-Language Theory Source, lnan (1936: 52). This figure purports to show the components of the words ktrgiy and Kirgiz, the former being the Kazakh-Kirghiz word for falcon, a bird which may have been the Kirghiz tribal totem. Then comes the analysis. Ik is the first-degree principal root, representing abrupt motion, ir expresses the confirmation of the root meaning, ig is the object or subject over which the abrupt motion recurs, while ty is the expression and nominalization of this. The first three elements of kirgty and Kirgiz are identical in form and meaning, but one of the final elements ends in y, the other in z. The explanation is that the function of ly was to turn the word into a noun. In the totemistic period all surrounding subjects and objects were the same, but once the concepts of distance and the individual had emerged, all such subjects and objects, starting from the centre, the ego, were expressed by the element z. Here lnan, to his credit, loses interest in the Sun-Language Theory and goes on to talk about his experiences among the Kirghiz. Another sample of the application of the theory will be found in the first volume (1937) of Belleten, the journal of Turk Tarih Kurumu (the Turkish Historical Society). Its name looks like the present participle of belletmek and its apparent meaning is ‘causing to learn by heart’, which is perhaps just possible as the title of a learned journal.3 The earlier and later word for ‘bulletin’ is biilten, correctly shown in Tiirkge Sozlilk (1988) and other dictionaries as from the French bulletin. On pages 3 Belleten is indeed a learned journal, with a high international reputation; the accident that it was given its name during the heyday of the Sun-Language Theory must not be held against it. 62 The Sun-Language Theory and After 311-16 of the first volume of the journal, however, will be found an analysis in French of belleten and bulletin, from which we learn that the two are phonetically identical and that, Turkish being the oldest of languages, the French word is derived from the Turkish, and not, as some may have supposed, vice versa. In defence of belleten, Dogan Aksan (1976: 25) writes: Bu sozciik, dilimize Fransizcadan gelen btilten in (Fr. Bulletin) etkisiyle, daha dogrusu, onu Turk^ele^tirme amactyle turetilmi§tir. Ancak tiiretme, Tiirk^enin kurallarina uygundur (belle-, belief-, bellet-en). Ayrica, dile, yeni bir kavrami karfilayan yeni bir sozciik kazandmlmi§ olmaktadir. Belleten’i, btilten in bozulmuf bipmi degil, yeni bir sozciik saymak gerekir. This word has been derived under the influence of btilten (French bulletin), which comes into our language from French; to be more precise, with the purpose of Turkicizing it. But the derivation is in accordance with the rules of Turkish ... Moreover, a new word cover¬ ing a new concept has thereby been won for the language. Belleten must be regarded not as a corrupted form of btilten but as a new word. Atatiirk’s faith in his theory must have been shaken by the reactions of the foreign guests at the 1936 Congress, a group of distinguished scholars including Alessio Bombaci, Jean Deny, Friedrich Giese, Julius Nemeth, Sir Denison Ross, and Ananiasz Zayaczkowski. One, variously referred to as Bartalini, Baltarini, and Balter, and variously described as Lector and Professor in Latin and Italian at Istanbul University, mentioned it tactfully in the course of a graceful tribute to Ataturk and the new Turkey: ‘La theorie de la langue-Soleil, par son caractere universel, est une preuve nouvelle de la volonte de la Turquie de s’identifier toujours davantage avec la grande famille humaine.’ Four of them did not mention it at all in their addresses to the Congress or subsequent discussion. Two thought it ‘interesting’. Hilaire de Barenton agreed that all human speech had a common origin, but saw that origin in Sumerian rather than Turkish. Two wanted more time to think about it. The only foreign guest to swallow it whole was Kvergic, who volunteered the following etymology of unutmak ‘to forget’: Its earliest form was ug+ un+ ut+ um + ak. Ug, ‘discriminating spirit, intelligence’, is the mother-root. The n of un shows that the significance of the mother-root emerges into ex¬ terior space. The t/d of ut is always a dynamic factor; its role here is to shift the discrim¬ inating spirit into exterior space. The m of urn is the element which manifests and embodies in itself the concept of the preceding ug-un-ut, while ak completes the meaning of the word it follows and gives it its full formulation. After phonetic coalescence, the word takes its final morphological shape, unutmak, which expresses the transference of the discriminat¬ ing spirit out of the head into the exterior field surrounding the head; this is indeed the meaning the word conveys. (Kurultay 1936: 333) Yet Ataturk did not immediately drop the theory; for this we have, inter alia, the testimony of Akil Muhtar Ozden, a highly respected medical man who served in 1937 on the Language Commission (Dil Komisyonu), over which Ataturk The Sun-Language Theory and After 63 presided, and who attended sessions on the technical terms of geometry, physics, chemistry, mechanics, and geology. He kept notes, mostly on individual words and tantalizingly brief. After listing the names of those present at a session on 8 March 1937, he recorded: Kara tahta geldi. Ataturk hemen terim meselesi ile me§gul olmaya ba$ladi. Benden ne yaptigimizi sordu. Gosterdikleri istikamette giderek 9ali$tigimizi soyledim. Giine$-Dil tatbikatmda abstrait (soyut) kelimeler 19m zahmet <;ektigimizi soyledim. Bir misal istedi. Aklima muvazi kelimesi geldi. Hemen analiz ba§ladi. Parallel kelimesinin Tiirk9e oldugu ispat edildi. (Tevfikoglu 1994: 99) The blackboard arrived. Ataturk at once began to deal with the question of technical terms. He asked me what I had been doing, and I told him I was working on the lines he had indicated. I told him I was having difficulty in applying Sun-Language to abstract words. He asked for an example. The word muvazi [‘parallel’] came to mind. The analysis started immediately. It was proved that parallel was Turkish. Others of his notes read: ‘atom (Tiirk^e)’, with no explanation, and ‘Geometri (Tiirk^e)’, followed by a terse ‘ge = gen = geni$’; i.e. the ge of geometri is not the Greek ge ‘earth’ but the Turkish gen ‘wide’. On polygon be made two notes: ‘Poligon Ttirk^e/Pol = bol/gen = en’, and ‘gen = geni§/poligon (geni§ligi 90k)’. These can be expanded as follows: Poligon is Turkish. Pol is bol ‘abundant’, gen is en ‘width’, and geni$ ‘wide’; poligon means ‘of much width’. Later on comes an analysis of likid ‘liquid’ according to the Sun-Language Theory: ‘Likid (Turk^e) Yg-il-ik-id-ey Yg = Kati il = Bunu namiitenahiye kadar uzakla$tiran, yani yok eden ek. (ilik Tiirk<;e kati olmayan bir $ey demektir.)’ In other words, liquid is Turkish, its original form being ygilikidey. Yg means ‘hard’, il is the suffix remov¬ ing it to infinity, i.e. annihilating it. (ilik (‘marrow’) is Turkish, meaning a thing which is not hard.) These instances of the application of the theory are not cited just for their inher¬ ent fun. They also demonstrate the unscholarliness of the officers of the Language Society (as well as of Dr Kvergic), who unblushingly delivered themselves of such drivel in public. And these people and others like them were largely responsible for the creation of Ozturkfe, a fact which helps to explain why so much of it violates the rules of the language. About Atatiirk’s motive in launching the theory, opinions differ. Did he delib¬ erately take up Kvergic’s idea of the antiquity of Turkish and enlarge on it in order to justify ending the purge of words of Arabic and Persian origin? A footnote to the article on Cep Kilavuzlart (1935) cited in Chapter 4, while not suggesting that this was Atatiirk’s purpose, indicates that it was the result of the theory: Kilavuzun ne$rinden sonra Turk dehasindan fi§kiran ‘Gune^-Dil Teorisi’ yalmz bu Kilavuza alman sozlerin degil, daha pek ^oklarimn Turk^eden iiremi$ sozler oldugunu ortaya 9ikarmi§tir. Kilavuz ara$tirmalari arasinda yalmz benzerliklere ve klasik etimoloji bilgilerine gore elde edilebilen neticeler, ‘Giine^-Dil Teorisi’ nin ytiksek mgi altinda 90k daha esasli ve muayyen bir §ekilde geni§lemi§tir. Bu geni$leme bir derecededir ki dilimizin ihtiyaci olan 64 The Sun-Language Theory and After ve halk arasinda manasi bilinen kelimelerden hi$ birini atmaga ve yerini yeniden bilinmeyen bir kelime koymaga ihtiya^ kalmami^tir. (Turk Dili, 16 (1936), 22-3) The Sun-Language Theory, which welled up from the Turkish genius after the publication of Cep Kilavuzu, has revealed that not only the words included in Cep Kilavuzu but a great many more are of Turkish derivation. The results that could be obtained in the course of the research for Cep Kilavuzu, going by resemblances and the findings of classical etymol¬ ogy alone, have broadened far more fundamentally and definitely under the sublime light of the Sun-Language Theory. Such is the extent of this broadening that there is no longer any necessity to discard a single one of the words that our language needs and whose mean¬ ings are known among the people, and to start from scratch to replace them with words that are not known. Karaosmanoglu (1963:110) saw in the theory ‘dil konusundaki tutumuna yeni bir bi$im, bir orta yol arama endi$esi’ (a concern with seeking a new shape, a middle way, for his attitude to language). Hatiboglu (1963: 20) is more explicit: Atatiirk put the theory forward to end the impossible situation in which satisfac¬ tory replacements could not be found for words that were being expelled from the language. Nihad Sami Banarh (1972: 317), an inveterate opponent of the reform, is of the same opinion: oztiirk^eyi denemi§ ve bu yoldaki <;ah;malara bizzat i§tirak etmi§tir. Fakat, ayni Atatiirk, tecriibeler ilerledik^e, i§i yar §a dokiip soysuzla§tiranlann elinde Turk dilinin ve Turk kiiltiiriiniin nasil bir fikmaza siiriiklendigini de derhal ve £ok iyi gormu§tiir. Neticede, Atatiirk, bu durumu diizeltme vazifesini de iizerine almi$ ve yine dahiyane bir taktikle Giine§-Dil teorisinden faydalanarak oztiirk^e tecriibesinden vazge$mi$tir. [Atatiirk] tried Ozturkfe and took a personal part in the efforts in this direction. As the experiment advanced, however, this same Atatiirk saw instantly and clearly what sort of impasse the Turkish language and Turkish culture had been dragged into by people vying with each other to bastardize the whole thing. Eventually he took upon himself the duty of rectifying this situation too and, again by a stroke of tactical genius, availed himself of the Sun-Language Theory to drop the Oztiirkfe experiment. So is Ercilasun (1994: 89): Atatiirk’iin kaleme aldigi biitiin bu bro$iir ve dil yazilanndan cpkan sonuc; §udur: Giine§Dil Teorisini ortaya atarken Atatiirk’iin ama^larindan biri de a§iri dzle^tirmecilikten vazgeifmek, ‘millet, devir, hadise, miihim, hatira, iimit, kuwet’ vb. [ve ba;kalan ‘and others’] kelimelerin dilde kalmasmi saglamakti. The conclusion emerging from all these brochures and articles on language penned by Atatiirk is this: one of his aims when launching the Sun-Language Theory was to give up excessive purification and to ensure the survival in the language of the words millet [‘nation’], devir [‘period’], hddise [‘event’], miihim [‘important’], hatira [‘memory’], limit [‘hope’], kuwet [‘strength’], and others. Ertop’s (1963: 89) view is quite different: Atatiirk tarafindan dildeki 6zle§tirmeciligi simrlamak amaciyle kullamldigini ileri siirenler, Atatiirk’iin ki$iligini de gozden uzak tutmaktadirlar. Atatiirk ulusun iyiligine The Sun-Language Theory and After 65 dokunacagma inandigi hi^bir konuda kesin, koklii davram§tan ka<pnmami§tir ... Atatiirk Giine$-Dil Kurammi bir geriye donii; araci olarak kullanmami^tir. Boyle bir davranifin gerektigine inansaydi dii^uncesini a?ik, kesin yoldan dogrudan dogruya belli ederdi. Those who assert that the Sun-Language Theory was used by Atatiirk in order to limit the purification are overlooking Atatiirk’s personality. He never refrained from acting deci¬ sively and radically in any matter which he believed would affect the good of the nation ... He did not use the theory as a means of turning the clock back; had he believed in the necessity for such a move, he would have made his thinking plain, candidly, positively, and directly. The argument has some force, but it is harder to accept Ertop’s subsequent remarks, which reflect the views of the many adherents of the pre-1983 Language Society who refuse to believe that Atatiirk abandoned the campaign to ‘purify’ everyday speech. He goes on to offer what he calls clear proof that the theory was not advanced with the aim of slowing the pace of language reform: work on the reform went on after the theory was propounded, technical terminology continued to be put into pure Turkish, and Atatiirk busied himself with linguistic concerns almost until his death. While all three statements are accurate, they are irrelevant to the question of whether or not Atatiirk, having tired of the campaign to purge the general vocabulary, concocted the SunLanguage Theory to justify abandoning it. The basis of all three items of ‘proof’ is the fact that, while at one time he had tried his hand at finding Ozturkfe equivalents for items of general vocabulary, his enduring concern was with technical terms. However much lovers of the old language may regret some of the consequences of the language reform, they cannot deny that something had to be done about scientific terminology. This was almost entirely Arabic; what was not Arabic was Persian. English technical terms, though mostly of Greek or Latin origin, have long been Anglicized; we say ecology not oikologia, hygiene not hygieine. In Turkish, however, there had been no naturalization of Arabic and Persian terms; they remained in their original forms. Atatiirk decided to tackle the problem in person. In the winter of 1936-7 he wrote Geometri, a little book on the elements of geometry, which was published anonymously. The title-page bears the legend ‘Geometri ogretenlerle, bu konuda kitap yazacaklara kilavuz olarak Kiiltiir Bakanligmca ne§redilmi$tir’ (Published by the Ministry of Education as a guide to those teaching geometry and those who will write books on this subject). In it he employed many words now in regular use, though not all were of his own invention; some are discussed in later chapters. They included aft ‘angle’, alan ‘area’, boyut ‘dimension’, dikey‘perpendicular’, dii$ey ‘vertical’, duzey ‘level’, gerekfe ‘corollary’, kesit ‘section’, ko^egen ‘diagonal’, orantT proportion’, teget ‘tangent’, tiirev ‘derivative’, uzay ‘space’, yanal ‘lateral’, yatay ‘horizontal’, ydnde$ ‘corresponding’, yiizey ‘surface’. He created the terms am, eksi, farpt, bolii, for ‘plus’, ‘minus’, ‘mul¬ tiplied by’, and ‘divided by’, and izdufiimu (‘trace-fall’) ‘projection’. 66 The Sun-Language Theory and After Of these, eksi is an example of uydurma; the others are made from the appropriate verb-stems, whereas eksi is formed analogously with them but solecistically, from the adjective eksik ‘deficient’. He also devised new names for the plane figures, which until then had been called by their Arabic names, his method being to add an invariable -gen to the appropriate numeral. Muselles ‘triangle’ became iiggen, while miiseddes ‘hexagon’ became altigen, and kesiriiladla ‘polygon’ became gokgenf In Sinekli Bakkal (1936), Halide Edib describes Sabit Beyagabey, the local bully, as standing with his arms at his sides like jug-handles, each making a right angle. And for ‘right angle’ she says ‘zaviye-i kaime’, two Arabic words joined by the Persian izafet. That is because until 1937 Turkish children were still being taught geometry with the Ottoman technical terms. When Halide Edib learned geome¬ try, this is how she was taught that the area of a triangle is equal to the base times half the height: ‘Bir musellesin mesaha-i sathiyesi, kaidesinin irtifaina hasil-i zarbinin msfina musavidir.’ Largely through the personal effort of Atatiirk, this has now become: ‘Bir utjgenin yiizol^umu, tabanimn yuksekligine ^arpimmin yarisma e$ittir’, which contains no Arabic or Persian. This achievement may be said to justify much of what has been done in the name of language reform. It is true that the pedigree of -gen is attained, owing more to the -gon [G] of pentagon than to the ancient and provincial Turkish gen ‘wide’. But the new terms of geometry must be numbered among Ataturk’s greatest gifts to his people. A Turk would have to be a pretty rabid enemy of change to persist in calling interior opposite angles ‘zaviyetan-i miitekabiletan-i dahiletan’ rather than ‘inters a^ilar’. A related topic that may conveniently be discussed here is the much debated question of whether Atatiirk, while adhering to the new technical terms, many of which he himself devised, gave up the use of neologisms for everyday concepts. There is no shortage of misrepresentations of his attitude; here is one speci¬ men, by Giiltekin (1983: 72): 1936’dan sonra, ozle§me <;ali$malarindaki a$iri yonleri gdrmu§ ve bunlari duzeltmi$tir. Ama bundan, Ataturk’un 1932’de ba$lattigi dil hareketinden dondiigii qkarilabilir mi? Boyle bir iddia, ger^ekleri tersyiiz edip, olmsini istedigimizi ger$ekmi§ gibi gostermektir. Atatiirk, 1932 yih oncesi dile donmemi$tir. Bilindigi iizere, 1937 yilmda ozellikle bilim dilinin ozle$mesi dogrultusunda kendi fali§malari vardir. Gene mirasmdan Turk Dil Kurumu’na pay birakmasi, 1932’de ba$lattigi dil ^ah^malarimn devam etmesini istedigini gosterir. After 1936, [Atatiirk] saw the extremist aspects of the purification campaign and he cor¬ rected them. But can one deduce from this that he turned away from the language move¬ ment which he initiated in 1932? To make such a claim is to stand the facts on their head, to show as fact that which we want to be fact. Atatiirk did not return to pre-1932 Turkish. 4 Not to be confused with the variable -gen seen in unutkan ‘forgetful’ and dogujken ‘quarrelsome’ (see Lewis 1988: 223). -genlgan was once the suffix of the present participle, as it still is in many Central Asian dialects: Kazakh kelgen = gelen ‘coming’, Tatar bilmdgdn = bilmeyen ‘not knowing’, Uyghur algan = alan ‘taking’. The Sun-Language Theory and After 67 It is well known that in 1937 he himself worked especially on the purification of scientific language. Again, his bequest of a share in his estate to TDK shows that he wanted the work on language, which he initiated in 1932, to continue. And another, by Yiicel (1982: 36): Burada raslantidan soz edilebilirse, ilginq: bir raslantiyla, ‘Tiirk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti’ admin ‘Turk Dil Kurumu’na donufturuldugii yil, kimilerinin sik sik siirdukleri bir gbrti§e gore, Ataturk’un boyle bir giri$imin <;ikar yol olmadigim, yani yanildigtm anlayarak ozle§tirme etkinliklerini durdurttugu yildir. Ataturk’un Tiirk Dil Kurumu <;ali§malanyla ya$amimn sonuna degin 90k yakmdan ilgilendigi, daha da onemlisi, bu ^ah^malari kendi goru§leri dogrultusunda yonlendirdigi goz online ahnacak olursa, kesinlikle ozle^tirme dogrultusunda olan bu ad degi§tirmenin onun bilgisi di$inda yapilmi? olmasma olanak bulunmadigim, onun bilgisi di§mda yapilmi? olmasma olanak bulunmadigi ii;in de, boyle bir degi§iklige izin vermekle Ataturk’un <;eli§kiye dii§tUgunu kesinlemek gerekir. If one may speak here of coincidence, it is by an interesting coincidence that the year [1936] in which the name Tiirk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti was changed to Turk Dil Kurumu was, according to a view frequently advanced by some, the year in which Atatiirk realized that this kind of undertaking was a dead end, i.e. that he had made a mistake, and put a stop to the purification exercise. If one keeps before one’s eyes that until the end of his life Atatiirk was very closely involved in TDK’s endeavours and, more important, that he directed these endeavours along the lines of his own views, one is bound to state categorically that this change of name, which was definitely on the lines of purification, could not possibly have been made without his knowledge and that, because this change of name could not pos¬ sibly have been made without his knowledge, in allowing such a change Atatiirk fell into an inconsistency. The italics, which are Yucel’s, must be intended to point to the enormity of the implication. Atatiirk was in fact never afraid to admit that he was fallible, but idol¬ atry, by definition, denies the humanity of its object. In italicizing these words, Yiicel seems to be rejecting the possibility not only of Atatiirk’s making a mistake but of his realizing that he had done so. A dispassionate examination of the evidence leads to the following conclusion. When Atatiirk launched the theory, it was not with the express intention of jus¬ tifying a change of course. He had decided that a change of course was due, because he had appreciated the futility of trying to make the mass of the people give up their ancestral vocabulary. On the other hand, he could not abandon his declared purpose of freeing Turkish from the yoke of foreign languages. He loved playing at etymology and had persuaded himself that Turkish origins could be found for the ostensibly non-Turkish elements in the language. He had already been toying with the notion that what made man aware of his identity was the sun before he read Kvergic’s paper, which asserted the antiquity of Turkish (but did not mention the sun). The elements of the Sun-Language Theory all came together in his mind and he published it. It was not an excuse to justify a change of policy but a systematization of his ideas. He launched the theory because he genuinely believed in it; he started to abandon it when he saw that 68 The Sun-Language Theory and After foreign scholars thought it nonsensical. Intelligent as he was, he must have sensed that the best native opinion too, though scarcely outspoken, was on their side. To disprove the common assertion that he never returned to pre-1932 Turkish, we need do no more than examine the proof-texts, his own speeches and writ¬ ings. While in general exhibiting a desire to avoid using words of Arabic origin if Turkish synonyms—or synonyms he believed to be Turkish—existed, they show that he was no longer going out of his way to give up the words he had used all his life in favour of unnecessary neologisms. From 1933 on, 26 September had been celebrated as Dil Bayramt (the Language Festival). The vocabulary of his telegrams to the Language Society on this occasion is worthy of study. Those he had sent in 1934 and 1935 were couched in Oztiirkfe throughout,5 including the words kutunbitikler‘messages of congratulation’, orunlar ‘official bodies’, and genelozek ‘general headquarters’, none of which proved viable. The 1936 telegram contained four words of Arabic origin: mesai ‘endeavours’, te$ekkur ‘thanks’, tebrik ‘congratula¬ tions’, and muvaffakiyet ‘success’: ‘Dil Bayramim mesai arkada$larmizla birlikte kuduladigimzi bildiren telgrafi te$ekkiirle aldim. Ben de size tebrik eder ve Turk Dil Kurumuna bundan sonraki $ali§malarina da muvaffakiyetler dilerim’ (I have received with thanks the telegram telling me that you and your colleagues who share in your endeavours offer congratulations on the occasion of the Lan¬ guage Festival. For my part I congratulate you and wish the TDK success in its subsequent endeavours too). The 1937 telegram contained six: munasebet ‘occasion’, the hakk of hakkimdaki ‘about me’, miitehassis ‘moved’, teqekkiir and muvaffakiyet again, and temadi ‘con¬ tinuation’: ‘Dil bayrami munasebetiyle, Turk Dil Kurumu’nun hakkimdaki duygularmi bildiren telgraflarmizdan 90k miitehassis oldum. Te§ekkiir eder, degerli ^ali^mamzda muvaffakiyetinizin temidisini dilerim’ (I have been gready moved by your telegrams conveying your feelings about me on the occasion of the Language Festival. I thank you and wish that your success in your valuable labours may continue). But of no less significance than the old words he used are the new words that he also used; the inference is not that he had abandoned the language reform— birlikte ‘together’, duygu ‘sentiment’, bildiren ‘conveying’, degerli ‘valuable’; had he been simply rejecting the reform he would have said beraber, his, teblig eden, and kiymetli or even zikiymet. What he was doing was adhering to the wholly praise¬ worthy aspect of the reform: making full use of the existing resources of the lan¬ guage. His use of kutlulamak ‘to congratulate’ as well as tebrik etmek ‘to felicitate’ in the 1936 telegram is a perfect example, reflecting the stylist’s desire to avoid repeating a word if a synonym could be found. On 1 November 1936 he delivered his annual speech opening the new session of the Grand National Assembly. It too was peppered with words of Arabic origin, including sene not ytl for ‘year’, maarif not egitim for ‘education’, tetkik 5 The text of the 1933 telegram does not seem to be available. The texts of the later telegrams were published in the September issues of Turk Dili (1934-7). The Sun-Language Theory and After 69 not araftirma for ‘research’, and millet and memleket rather than ulus and yurt for ‘nation’ and ‘country’. He did use Kamutay for ‘Assembly’, however, and not Meclis. The language and content of his last message to the Language Society is highly significant. It consists of two sentences of the speech read for him by the Prime Minister, Celal Bayar, at the opening of the new session of the Assembly on 1 November 1938, nine days before he died. It is worth quoting, because it has often been used as evidence that the Society never ceased to enjoy Atatiirk’s total support for its campaign to eliminate everyday pre-reform words from the lan¬ guage. The contents of the message (Ozgii 1963: 37), however, no less than its language, give the lie to that claim (words of Arabic origin are italicized): Dil Kurumu en guzel ve feyidi bir i§ olarak tiirlu ilimlere ait Turk<;e terimleri tespit etmi§ ve bu suretle dilimiz yabanci dillerin fesirinden kurtulma yolunda esash adimim atmi§tir. Bu yil okullarimizda tedrisatin Ttirk^e terimlerle yazilmi§ fcifaplarla ba$lami; olmasmi kiiltur hayatimn ipn mtihim bir hddise olarak kaydetmek isterim. The Language Society, in a most excellent and fruitful endeavour, has established Turkish technical terms pertaining to the various sciences, and our language has thus taken its essen¬ tial step on the road to liberation from the influence of foreign languages. I should like to place it on record, as an important event for our cultural life, that teaching has begun this year in our schools from books written with Turkish technical terms. The partisans of ‘purification’ will not give Atatiirk credit for saying what he meant. Those words are regularly cited as praise for the Society’s ‘siirduriilen ozle§tirme $abalari’ (continued exertions towards purification) (e.g. Yticel 1982: 38). Aksoy, too honest a man not to concede that there was precious little Oztiirkfe in that speech, could still write (1982: 146-7): ‘Biiyuk Millet Meclisi acplirken okunan soylevinde oz Turk^e sozciikler kullanmami§ olmakla birlikte, ozle$tirmeden duydugu mutlulugu belirtmiyor mu?’ (Although he did not use pure Turkish words in his speech at the opening of the Grand National Assem¬ bly, does he not make clear the happiness he felt in the purification?). No, he does not. All he does is to praise the Society for its work on technical terms, and for nothing else. In fact those words reflect his disillusionment with the people who sat round his table night after night, drinking his raki and enthusiastically applauding his views without ever having the honesty—even if they had the knowledge—to tell him that some of the ideas he came out with could not be taken seriously. Anyone who pictures him as a typical 1930s dictator may suppose that nobody could be blamed for pretending to agree with him. In fact one of the things he liked best in the world was a good argument. An observation by Falih Rifki Atay (1969: 474), who knew him better than most, is worth quoting in this context. Having described a heated discussion at Atattirk’s table, he says, ‘Sakm bu tarti$malarda bulunmagi cesarete vermeyiniz ... Atatiirk’iin soffasinda fikirlerini soylemek bir cesaret degildi. Soylememek, aksini soylemek liizumsuz bir 70 The Sun-Language Theory and After “miidahane”, yahut <;ikar bekleyen bir dalkavukluktu’ (You must not think that it called for courage to take part in this kind of argument... To speak one’s mind at Ataturk’s table was not an act of courage. Not to say what one thought, or to say the opposite of what one thought, was an act of unnecessary sycophancy, or toadying in the expectation of personal gain). Melahat Ozgii (1963: 37) notes, ‘Atatiirk bu soylevinde heniiz pek aykiri gelmiyen: feyizli, tesir, tedrisat, mtihim, ve hadise gibi yabanci sozleri kullanmi§tir’ (In this speech [his last message to TDK], Atatiirk used such foreign words as feyizli, tesir, tedrisat, mtihim, and hadise, which did not yet sound incongruous). She sanctimoniously continues: ‘Yeni ku$ak, bugiin, Atatiirk’ten aldigi esin ve buyrukla daha ileridedir’ (The new generation today is further advanced, thanks to the inspiration and the command it has received from Atatiirk). Instead of sin¬ gling out five of the fourteen ‘foreign words’ he used in those two sentences, she could have been better employed in noticing that he used only two of the new words, terim rather than istilah for ‘technical term’ and okul rather than mektep for ‘school’. His use of them is understandable: terim was the new technical term par excellence, which he himself had originated, while okul did not have the pre-Republican connotations of mektep and was partly his work. In the face of Ataturk’s clear indication of his opinion, why did the Language Society continue to introduce not just technical terms, as he wanted it to do, but also replacements for normal items of standard Turkish? Many otherwise rea¬ sonable Turks will tell you it was all a communist plot to destabilize the country by impoverishing the language, widening the generation gap, and demoralizing the people by cutting them off from the records of their great past. Comparisons were drawn between the Society’s ceaseless undermining of the language and the Trotskyite doctrine of permanent revolution. Tekin Erer (1973: 61) said: ‘Tiirkiyemizde solculari tefrik etmek i^in basit bir usul vardir: Bir insamn ne derece solcu oldugunu anlamak icpin yazdigi ve konu§tugu kelimelere dikkat edeceksiniz. Eger hhj anhyamiyacagimz kadar uydurma kelimelerle konu$uyorsa, ona tereddiitsuz Komunist diyebilirsiniz’ (There is a simple method of distinguishing the leftists in our country. To ascertain how far to the left a person is, look at the words he uses in writing and speech. If the fake words he employs when speak¬ ing are too numerous for you to be able to understand, you may unhesitatingly call him a communist). Turkish communists, on the other hand, saw the language reform as a bour¬ geois movement aimed at widening the gulf between the official and literary language and the language of the people. It is worth remembering that the poet and playwright Nazim Hikmet (1902-63), the most distinguished of all Turkish communists, did not use Ozturkfe but followed Atay in making full use of the language as it stood. The extremists of the right regarded the Language Society as a subversive or¬ ganization whose mission was to decrease mutual understanding between the Turks of Turkey and the Turks of the then Soviet Union, whom they hoped some The Sun-Language Theory and After 71 day to liberate. In this they were overlooking the high degree of mutual unintel¬ ligibility that existed even before the reform began, due only in part to the influx of Russian words into the Central Asian dialects, most of which use, for example, the Russian names of the months.6 This point is worth a digression. A vivid illustration of how the meanings of words may vary from one dialect to another was given by Nermin Neft^i, a former Minister of Culture, at the 1992 meeting of the Standing Congress on the Turkish Language: Af buyurun, ‘ki$’ bizde ba$ka manaya gelir, ama Kerkuk Turk^esinde ‘la?’ bacaktir. Ben Kerkuk’e gittigim zaman e$imin silt ninesi ‘ay ay’ diye agliyordu ‘kipm lurildi, sumugum yaziya <;ikti’ diyordu. Allah a;kimza bu ne diyor diye sordum. Meger ‘bacagim kinldi, kemigim di$an pkti’ demek istiyormuf. (Surekli Turk Dili Kurultayi 1992:169) The word fcif, if you will pardon the expression, means something else to us [backside’], but in the Turkish of Kerkuk it’s Teg’. When I visited Kerkuk, my husband’s foster-mother was sobbing bitterly and saying, ‘My backside is broken and my mucus has gone up to the writing.’ ‘For goodness’ sake, what is she talking about?’ I asked. It emerged that she meant, ‘My leg is broken and my bone is sticking out.’ The national motto of Uzbekistan is ‘Miistakillik, Tin^lik, Hamkarlik’ (Indepen¬ dence, Peace, Cooperation). The first and third words would be intelligible to anyone old enough to remember when mwstaki/was the Turkish for‘independent’ (now bagimsiz), and kar was ‘work’. The second would convey only ‘vigour’. To resume: it was neither left-wing nor right-wing ideology that motivated those who were not content to follow Ataturk’s lead and confine their creative urge to technical terms. They began with a genuine desire to close the gap between the official and the popular language, or at least to comply with his desire to do so. When he decided that things had gone too far, and reverted to his natural mode of expression, they allowed a decent interval for him to depart from the scene and then resumed their work, having developed a taste for inventing words, which for many of them had become a profession. So they continued to invent, for which one should not blame them too harshly; after all, Ataturk’s withdrawal from the wilder shores of Ozturkfe was based on a personal decision which he did not seek to impose on anyone else. But while continuing to invent, they persisted—and this was their unpardonable offence—in claiming to be following in the footsteps of Atatiirk. Their frequent line of argument is to adduce the fact that Atatiirk wrote his little book on geometry with his own hand in the winter of 1936-7; would he 6 Kirghiz and Uyghur are partial exceptions. In Kirghiz both the Russian and the following names are used: U(tiin ayi, Birdin ayi, Calgan Kuran, Qtn Kuran, Bugu, Kulca, Teke, Ba$ ona, Ayak ona, Toguzdun ayi, Cetinin ayi, Be$tin ayi. In Uyghur, as well as the Russian names, the months are called ‘First Month’ etc., from Biritifi Ay to Onikkinfi Ay. The Kazakh months are: Kaiitar, Akpan, Navnz, Kokek, Mamtr, Mavsim, $ilde, Tamiz, Kirkuyek, Kazan, Kara^a, Celtoksan. None of the Kirghiz or Kazakh names would be understood in Turkey, where indeed Tamiz ‘August’ would be mistaken for Temmuz‘)uly’. 72 The Sun-Language Theory and After have done so if he had turned against the language reform? The answer, as we have seen, is that it was only the creation of technical terms that continued to interest him. For a defence of their position, Omer Asim Aksoy’s (1982: 144-5) would be hard to beat, depending as it does on his coolly equating the Language Society with the nation: Tutalim ki, Gune§-Dil Teorisini biz yanh§ yorumluyoruz ve Ataturk iki u<; yil ozle$tiricilik yaptiktan sonra Gune§-Dil Teorisi ile eski dile d6nmii§tu. Bunu kabul etmek neyi degi$tirir? 1932’de ba$layan ozle$me alarm durmu$ mudur, gittik^e geni§leyip gu<;lenmemi$ midir? Denilmek isteniyor mu ki ‘Ataturk ozle$tiricilikten vazge^tigine gore bizim de vazge^memiz gerekir’? Gerekseydi, buna ‘vazge^me’ (!) tarihinde uyulamaz miydi? Boyle bir donii;un olmamasi, ozle§menin siirtip gelmesi neyi kamtlar? Atatiirk’e kar$m ulusun ozle§tirme eyleminde direndigini mi, yoksa Atatiirk’iin 6zle§tirmeden vazge<;tigi savrnm yanli$ligim mi? Elbette ikincisini. Qiinkii ulus, hi<j bir zaman Ataturk’e ters du^medigi gibi Ataturk de hi^ bir zaman ulus^uluk, halk<;ilik ve bagimsizlik ilkelerine ters driven bir yol tutmami§tir. Let us suppose that we have been misinterpreting the Sun-Language Theory and that Ataturk, after practising purism for two or three years, used the theory as a way of revert¬ ing to the old language. If we accept this, what does it change? Has the current of purification which began in 1932 stopped? Has it not gradually broadened and gained strength? Is what is meant that since Ataturk abandoned purism, we must do so too? If that were the case, would people not have complied at the time of the ‘abandonment’? The fact that there was no such reversion and that the purification kept on going; what does that prove? Is it that the nation persisted in the purification activity in spite of Ataturk, or that the allegation that he abandoned purification is wrong? Certainly the latter, for never has the nation been at variance with Ataturk, nor did Ataturk ever take a course at variance with the principles of nationalism, popularism, and independence. All that is proved by the fact that the purification went on is that the Language Society—not the nation, which was not consulted—persisted in the purification although Ataturk had abandoned it. Whether that persistence was justified is another matter. Had the Society not persisted, Atatiirk’s goal of liberating the language from the Arabic and Persian yoke would not have been achieved. But one may recognize this without insisting that he himself never gave up purification, because he indubitably did, and to deny it is to falsify history. Heyd’s (1954:36) statement that the Sun-Language Theory gradually faded out after Atatiirk’s death needs to be modified; the theory had already begun to fade out during his lifetime, and interest in it evaporated the moment he died. Tankut (1963:125) says the theory was carried to excess by people out to make a name for themselves, ‘and Ataturk eventually abandoned it’. There are several pieces of evi¬ dence that he was still interested in it in 1937 and perhaps even in the following year. One is Akil Muhtar’s testimony that the topic was still alive in March 1937, another is that Ataturk was still corresponding with Kvergic in September of that year. A third is that in the first week of that month the seventeenth session of the The Sun-Language Theory and After 73 Congr£s International d’Anthropologie was to be held in Bucharest, and Atatiirk decided that a Turkish delegation should be there to present the theory to the par¬ ticipants. A few days before the congress opened, he gave Tankut a pile of his own handwritten notes on the theory and said, ‘Produce a thesis out of these and go to Bucharest.’ Tankut produced his paper in two days and in another two days it was translated into French ‘again at Atatiirk’s table and in his presence’. On their arrival in Bucharest they found that no one had been aware that they were coming, but an opening was made for Tankut on the last morning of the congress. Accord¬ ing to the report subsequently presented to Atatiirk by Dilmen, his paper was well received, but as the proceedings of the congress were never published this cannot be confirmed. There is one scrap of evidence that Atatiirk may have maintained his interest in the theory into 1938. On 1 June of that year, when he was very ill indeed, he was moved from the heat of Istanbul to his yacht, the Savarona, in the port of Istanbul. ‘Bununla ilgili haberi verirken, Cumhuriyet gazetesi, yata Giine§-dil adi verilmesi olasihgi bulundugunu ekliyordu’ (In presenting the news of this, the newspaper Cumhuriyet added that there was a possibility that the yacht might be given the name Gune$-Dil) (Derin 1995:130). Although the possibility never materialized, this at least suggests that somebody thought it would please him. Dilmen, who had been giving a series of lectures on the Sun-Language Theory at Ankara University, cancelled the course when Atatiirk died. When his students asked him why, he replied, ‘Giine$ oldukten sonra, onun teorisi mi kalir?’ (After the sun has died, does its/his theory survive?) (Banarli 1972:317). It was not men¬ tioned, for good or ill, at the 1942 Kurultay. Atatiirk never publicly repudiated it; why did he not ‘make his ideas plain, openly and directly’, on this matter? A sophis¬ tic answer could be that as he had never put his name to it he could fairly have claimed that it was not his business to disown it. But the simple truth is that, although his belief in it had been shaken by the reception given to it by the foreign guests at the 1936 Kurultay, he still clung to it because he saw it as his contribution to scholarship. One can well understand his reluctance to engage in a public debate that might have entailed a public retreat, and not just because it would have hurt his pride to do so. In those years there were more pressing calls than the Sun-Language Theory on the time and energy of a Head of State, particularly one in poor health. Five months before the theory was first aired, Hitler occupied the Rhineland. Three months before, Mussolini annexed Ethiopia. Two months before, the Spanish Civil War began. Three days before, Germany introduced compulsory military service. In addition, during 1937 and until a matter of months before his death on 10 November 1938, Atatiirk was spending much of his waning strength— successfully—on coercing France into ceding Hatay, the former Sanjak of Alexandretta, to Turkey. The Sun-Language Theory must have recurred to haunt him while he was trying to concentrate on matters of high policy. What began as a harmless after-dinner game had ended up as an incubus. 74 The Sun-Language Theory and After On 27 September 1941, ismet Inonii, who had succeeded Atatiirk as President of the Republic, gave an address to mark the ninth Language Festival. It included these words: ‘Biiyuk Atatiirk’iin, Turk dili ugrunda harcadigi emekler bo§a gitmemi$tir ve asla bo§a gitmiyecektir’ (The efforts which the great Atatiirk expended for the sake of the Turkish language have not gone to waste and never shall). (Turk Dili, 2nd ser., 11-12 (1941), 2). But who suggested that they had? Could there have been any reason for inonii to say this other than his awareness of a general feeling that the Sun-Language Theory had been a fiasco? It is recorded (§ehsuvaroglu 1981: 260, cited in Tevfikoglu 1994) that during the evening of 16 October 1938, when Atatiirk lay on his deathbed, he said again and again in delirium ‘Aman dil... Aman dil... Dil efendim.’ Some interpret this as ‘For pity’s sake, the language’, and explain it, according to their point of view, either as ‘Don’t let them stop the language reform’ or as ‘Don’t let them go on ruining the language’. Others cite the well-known fact that he habitually pro¬ nounced degil in the Rumelian fashion, as /dll/, and prefer ‘For pity’s sake ... It isn’t...’ What he really meant is unknown, save only to God. 6 Atay, Ata^, Sayili Two people besides Atatiirk made significant contributions to the vocabulary of modern Turkish: Falih Rifki Atay and Nurullah Ata$. The third subject of this chapter, Aydm Sayili, did not, but his efforts to do so deserve to be commemorated. Atay and Ata^ both believed that the language had to be modernized and both saw the futility of merely producing lists of neologisms; the new words had to be used in the sort of newspaper and magazine that ordinary people read. As Atay was fond of saying, the neologisms were dead butterflies pinned into collections; what they needed was the life and colour they could be given by stylists. On how the new words were to be arrived at, however, the two men’s views could not have been more different. Atay (1894-1971), having graduated from Istanbul University, spent most of his working life before and after the First World War as journalist, editor, and news¬ paper proprietor. From 1922 he was the friend and confidant of Atatiirk, until the latter’s death in 1938. He had a fine feeling for language and shared Ataturk’s conviction that the intelligent use of the native resources of Turkish, with its enormous capacity for word building, could reduce dependence on foreign bor¬ rowings. The underground railway in Istanbul, on which work began in the 1980s, is called the Metro, as it was when planned at the beginning of the century. Atay would never have used this name for it; in 1946, when speaking of an underground train he had taken in the course of his travels abroad, he called it just that: ‘yeralti treni’ (Atay 1946, cited in Ozon 1961b: 42). Here, in his own words (Atay 1969: 477) is how he set about ‘purifying’ the Turkish vocabulary: Anadolu kulubiinde ‘Cep kilavuzu’ denen Osmanhcadan-Turk^eye lugati hazirlamaga ba§ladik. Usulumiiz pek sade idi: Bir Turk<;esi olan yabanct kelimeleri tasfiye ediyorduk. Kullanilir Tiirk^esi olmayanlari Tiirk<;e olarak ahkoyuyorduk. Artik Tiirk^e kelimeler yapilma devrine girmi? oldugumuzdan, fivemizdeki ek ve koklerden yeni kelimeler iiretiyorduk. At the Anatolia Club we began preparing Cep Ktlavuzu, the dictionary from Ottoman into Turkish. Our method was very simple: we were purging the language of foreign words which had a Turkish equivalent. Words with no current Turkish equivalent we retained as being Turkish. Because by now we had entered the era of making Turkish words, we were producing new words from the suffixes and roots existing in our dialect. 76 At ay, Ataq, Sayilt His contribution is the subject of a lengthy article by M. Nihat Ozon (1961b). On running an eye over the six hundred or so items in it and noticing, say, cinsda$ (1956)1 ‘member of the same race’ (the Ottoman hemcins), one wonders why credit should be given to Atay for this regularly constructed word. Surely somebody before Atay must have added that suffix to that noun? The answer is that some¬ body may well have done so in conversation; somebody indeed may have used it in writing and not been lucky enough for it to be noted by an Ozon. Ozon includes among Atay’s words vurgunculuk ‘profiteering’ (1945), derived from the expression vurgun vurmak'to pull off a shrewd stroke of business’. It does not occur in the Kamus or Redhouse (1890). Redhouse (1968), on the other hand, by showing it in the old letters as well as the new, indicates that it was used in Ottoman, so what we have here may be that rarity, an error in a work bearing the name of Redhouse, in which case the word is post-Ottoman and may well be due to Atay. One of his successes was to popularize iftenlik, literally ‘from-within-ness’, for ‘sincerity’, now well on the way to supplanting samimiyet.2 From the expression mtnn kinn etmek ‘to shilly-shally, to find excuses not to do something’, he made minn kmnci to describe the sort of person who does that sort of thing (1950). He refers to the chart at the bed-end of a patient suffering from fever as ‘indili <;iktih grafik’ (1951), using -li to make adjectives from indi ‘it went down’ and fiktt ‘it went up’: ‘the graph with its ups and downs’. He contrasts yapilamazctlik with olurculuk (1956), the first being the quality (-lik) of the defeatist who says yaptlamaz'it can’t be done’, the second that of the sanguine person who says olur ‘it will happen’. In 1946 he suggested a new use for an old word, ufanti ‘fragment’, as a replace¬ ment for teferruat [A] ‘details’: ‘Ufanti kelimesi dilimizde vardir ve pek giizel “teferruat” yerine kullamlabilir’ (We have the word ufanti in our language and it may very well be used in place of teferruat). But ayrinti, from Cep Kilavuzu (1935), has carried the day, except with those who prefer the French detay. In 1951 he wrote, ‘Bursa benim i<;in bile bir dinlenti yeri’ (Bursa, even for me, is a place of repose). This dinlenti ‘rest, repose’ has an Ozturkfe look about it, but is a respectable formation, from dinlenmek1 to rest’ with the same deverbal noun¬ suffix -ti as in ufanti, only no one seems to have used it before or since; dinlenme is the usual word. Others of his are: operetle^tirmek ‘to make into a light opera’ (1932), i.e. to turn something serious into something frivolous; yazi kalfalari ‘hacks’ (lit. ‘writingjourneymen’, 1945); yapim ‘manufacture’ (1946); yikicilik ‘destructiveness’ (1951); kesik for ‘newspaper cutting/clipping’ (1951), previously kupiir [F] or gazete maktuasi [A]; oycu ‘vote-catcher’ (1951); politikasizla$tirilmalidir ‘must be 1 In what follows, dates in parentheses after individual words indicate the first recorded use of these words. 2 It is not known whether Atay was the first to use iftenlik. Tarama Dergisi (1934), in the produc¬ tion of which he was closely involved, gives iften for samimi ‘sincere’, attributing it to the Kamus, in which work the present writer has failed to find it. Atay, A tag, Sayilt 77 depoliticized’ (1952); yaramci ‘smarmy, ingratiating’, from yaranmak ‘to curry favour’ (1954); yasaksizlik ‘policy of laissez-faire’ (1954); nutukgu ‘speechifier’ (1956); oydag ‘holding the same opinion’ (1956). His damggilik (1961) for ‘consultancy’ is at first sight surprising, as one would have expected him to know better than to use a verb-stem (damg- ‘to consult’) as a noun.3 But in the Ottoman Turkish that was his mother tongue damg was a noun, the Persian borrowing da nis ‘knowledge, learning’. Its connection with the verb damgmak, in use since the fourteenth century, is unclear; there may have been a confusion with tamgmak ‘to become acquainted’. Atay’s damggi was not taken up; the neologism for‘consultant, counsellor’ is damgman, ostensibly derived from damg- and the spurious suffix -men/man making nouns of agent, but in fact a corruption of the Persian danismand ‘learned’. His ugum for ‘flight’ (1946), as in ‘Bir uc^um otede kita’ (the continent which is a flight away), fell by the wayside; ugug is the current word. Using ugum in this sense was an uncharacteristic oversight on his part, as it existed already for what in English is termed the fly—i.e. the end of a flag furthest from the flagstaff.4 In 1951 he created eyim from eyi, a by-form of iyi ‘good’, and kotiim from kotti ‘bad’, for ‘approval’ and ‘disapproval’ respectively, which one might think a heavy load to impose on the unassuming suffix -m. From these two words, someone manufactured the verbs iyimsemek and kotiimsemek, ‘to be optimistic’ and ‘to be pessimistic’, neither much used except for their aorist participles iyimser and kotiimser, ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’, which have totally replaced the Persian nikbin and bedbin. To judge by a passage from his study of Atatiirk (Atay 1969:476), Atay deserves credit for assuring the survival of gey‘thing’. The resurrected nesne has won limited currency but will never replace gey, a word without which many Turks would find difficulty in conversing, for it is what comes automatically to their lips when groping for a word or a name, or thinking what to say next. It is used much like the English ‘what-d’you-call-it’ or the French chose and, as a sentence opening, like ‘Well now’ or ‘I’ll tell you what’, or ‘Il-y-a une autre chose qui est celle-ci’. Atatiirk wanted it abandoned, as it was a borrowing from Arabic. (Had that happened, an English analogy would be the inhibiting effect of a ban on ‘y’know’ or ‘basically’.) beni her toplantida bulundurup tenkidlerimi dinlemege tahammiil gostermekte idi: —Yapmayiniz Pa§am, diyordum, bir mucize olsa da Anadolu’da ne kadar 6lmii§ Turk varsa hepsinin aym anda dirilmesi mumkiin olsa, hepsinin beraber ilk agizlanndan <;ikacak kelime ‘$ey’dir. ‘Sey’ o kadar Turk<;edir. Hi<; unutmam. Atatiirk, dil meselesine sarildigindan beri kendi dairesinin i$leri ile ugra$mamasina pek sevinen vekil ile aym arabaya binmi$tim. Bana donerek: 3 Only a handful of pre-reform nouns are also verb-stems, such as gof ‘migration’, giif-‘to migrate’, boya ‘paint’, boya- ‘to paint’. See Lewis (1988: 227). 4 Ufum is so defined in Kurtoglu (1938), the definitive work on Turkish flags, which is not men¬ tioned in Eren (1990). Okyanus (Tuglaci 1971-4), a comprehensive dictionary marred by many mis¬ prints, gives the correct definition of ufum but under the headword ufun. So did Tiirkfe Sozliik before the 1988 edition, but has since got it right. 78 Atay, Ataf, Sayili —Falih’cigim, sen de ‘fey’ gibi koyu Arap«;alann Turk^e oldugunu iddia edecek kadar ileri varma! demesin mi? Bu vekilin dili de zevki de eskinin eskisi idi. he had me present at every meeting and was indulgent enough to listen to my criticisms. ‘Don’t do it, Pasha!’ 1 was saying, ‘If a miracle were to occur and all the dead Turks in Anatolia could suddenly be resurrected, the first word to come out of their mouths in unison would be fey. That’s how Turkish fey is.’ I shall never forget; I had got into the same car as the Minister, who was delighted that Atatiirk had not been concerning himself with the business of his Ministry since he had become engrossed in the language problem. He turned to me and, would you believe it, he said, ‘My dear Falih, don’t go so far as to claim that genuine Arabic words like fey are Turkish.’ This Minister’s language and his taste were the oldest of the old. Ozon does not distinguish between words Atay originated and words he merely used. He credits him with several neologisms proposed in Cep Kilavuzu (1935), such as kurtanci ‘saviour’ and uyamk ‘wide-awake’, as well as several words in use in the nineteenth century and earlier—for example, bulanti ‘feeling of nausea’, dlum-kalim (savant) ‘life-and-death (struggle)’, and yapici ‘builder, constructive’. But the credit is deserved, if not for creating these and other words, then for giving them new leases of life and inspiring others to explore the existing resources of the language before resorting to invention. Nurullah Ata<; (1898-1957) was a late convert to the cause of Ozttirkge, which he had long opposed. The autobiographical note on the jacket of his Karalama Defteri (1952) reads: i898de istanbul’da dogmuf. i909da 119 simflik iptidai mektebinden ipkmiftir. Sonra bir iki okula gitmifse de hi^birini bitirememiftir. Imtihana girerek fransizca ogretmeni olmuf edebiyat dersleri de vermiftir. Bazi dairelerde mutercimlik etmiftir. fjairlige, hikayecilige ozenmifse de becerememif ifi eleftirmecilige dokmuftur. Son yillarda turk^eyi—kendince—ozleftirmeye ^alifmaktadir. Birka<; kitabi dilimize <;evirmi§tir ... Born 1898 in Istanbul.5 Left three-year primary school 1909. Subsequently attended a school or two but failed to finish any of them. Went in for an exam and became a teacher of French and also taught literature. Worked as a translator in some government departments. Longed to be a story-teller and poet but could not make it. Turned to criticism. In recent years has been trying to purify—as he sees it—Turkish. Has translated several books into our language .. ,6 He was a prolific essayist, whose work appeared regularly in a number of newspapers and journals. For some twenty years his interests were literary, but in the early 1940s his attention was increasingly directed towards language reform. He explained this change of heart as due to a realization that, in a country 5 His father was Mehmet Ata, who translated von Hammer’s Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches into Turkish. 6 They number over sixty, the authors ranging from Balzac to Simenon. At ay, Atag, Sayili 79 where Latin and Greek were not taught (earlier he had advocated their inclusion in the school syllabus and he continued to stress, rather wistfully, the desirability of knowing them), the only rational course was ‘to go to the pure language’ (Ata<; 1954: 11). In other words, he rejected Ziya Gokalp’s view that Turks should go back to Arabic and Persian when creating new words for new concepts, in the way that West Europeans resorted to Greek and Latin. As he saw it, the Turks had to exploit the resources of their own language. Incidentally, by Ata^’s time Ziya Gokalp’s view could never have prevailed anyway, the Ministry of Education having removed Arabic and Persian from the school syllabus on 1 September 1929. Ata^’s place in the language reform is that he was the great inventor of words. He was no language expert, nor did he profess to be; indeed he is said to have remarked, ‘My ignorance is boundless and at my age it cannot be eradicated.’ He had, however, a passionate love of language. He detested the habit some intellec¬ tuals had of using Western words as cliches without understanding their origins. He came out strongly against those who maintained that language can only develop naturally and that no individual or group of individuals can bring about linguistic change. He took to task a writer, whom he does not name, for saying in a newspaper article: ‘bir milletin dilini heyetler diizenleyemez. O kendi kendine gelif ir. Ve en dogru tabirler halkin sagduyusundan dogar’ (A nation’s language cannot be regulated by committees. It develops by itself, and the most authentic forms of expression are born of the common sense of the people). He points out that the words used by the writer for ‘regulate’, ‘develop’, and ‘common sense’— duzenlemek, geli$mek, sagduyu—were not words he had grown up with but were products of the language reform: ‘Sorun kendisine: Bunlar halkin sagduyusundan mi dogmu$? Bir kurul, bir kurum yapmami? mi onlari? Ne yaptigim bilmeden soyltiyor: Kendisi bir kurulun cpkardigi sozleri kullaniyor, sonra da kurullarm dil yapamayacagim sbyliiyor’ (Ask him: were they born of the common sense of the people? Weren’t they the work of a committee, a society? He speaks without knowing what he is doing: he uses words produced by a committee, then he says that committees could never create language!).7 As has been said, he shared Atay’s belief that it was futile to produce new words unless they were brought to public attention by being used, preferably in newspaper articles that would be widely read. He declared his philosophy in an article in Ulus of 8 March 1948 in which he spoke of his last conversation with Kemalettin Kamu, a recently deceased member of TDK’s central committee: ‘“Sizin Dil Kurumu’nda yaptigmiz dogru degildir, birtakim yabanci sozlere kar$ilik anyorsunuz; ancak onlari birer yazida kullanacagimza sozliik yapmaga kalkiyorsunuz. Tilcikler sozluklerde oliidur, yazilarda dirilir” gibi sozler soyledim’ (I said something on these lines: ‘What you’re doing in the Dil Kurumu isn’t right. You’re looking for equivalents for a lot of foreign words but instead of using each 7 Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives geli$mek as the replacement for inki^af etmek ‘to develop’. The word existed long before, but in pre-reform days it meant ‘to grow, improve’. 80 Atay, Atag, Sayili of them in a piece of writing you set about making dictionaries. Words are dead in dictionaries; they come to life in writing’). The popularity he enjoyed with his readers enabled him to familiarize them with existing Ozturkge and to make known his own neologisms, adding in paren¬ theses the words they were intended to replace, usually with no explanation of how he had derived them. Here is a typical example: ‘Doriit yapitlannda {sanat eserlerinde) ancak biqme bakihr, konunun bir onemi yoktur derler. Bu soz, ezgiciler (bestekarlar), bedizciler (ressamlar) i$in kesin olarak dogrudur belki; oykuciiler (hik&yeciler), oyun-yazanlar i<;in de bilmem oyle midir?’ (They say that in works of art one looks only at the form; the subject has no importance. This may be absolutely true for composers and painters; I wonder if it is so for storytellers and playwrights) (Ata$ 1964:187). His many opponents called him an extremist. One of his friends said in his defence that you cannot adopt a balanced position until you have been to the far end, a not unreasonable remark but hardly applicable to Ata$ who, when it came to Ozturkge, never aspired to being anything but extreme. I met him in Ankara in 1953 and found him to be not the irascible Antichrist my linguistically conservative friends had told me to expect but an amiable and enthusiastic man of high intelligence. As we strolled up and down the Atatiirk Boulevard, stopping every now and then for coffee, his good humour and his doggedness were amply displayed. He spoke of the problem that was currently exercising him: finding a Turkish replacement for ragmen [A] ‘in spite of’. He had invented and had for some years been using tapa, but was not satisfied with it.8 He said, ‘I don’t feel at all proprietorial about my ideas for new words. If people like them and use them, of course I’m pleased; if they don’t, I tell them to have a go themselves and I think of some more.’ At one point he shyly mentioned that he had tried his hand at writing poetry in English, but had got no further than a single couplet. He wrote it down on a scrap of paper, treasured by the author to this day: O Lord! give me the power of a song-creator. For the joyful love I would sing! He devised a game, described by Aksoy at a memorial meeting held on the tenth anniversary of Ata^’s death. The idea was to find meanings for Ottoman words of Arabic origin on the assumption that their consonants were not those of Arabic triliteral roots but those of a more familiar Turkish or Western word. Birgiin odama gelmi;, ‘me$ruta’ ne demek, diye sormu$tu. Ben ‘hiikumet-i me§ruta’, ‘evkaf1 mefruta’ gibi orneklere gore a^iklama yaparken o kis las giiliiyor; —Yorulmayin, bilemezsiniz, diyordu. Bu sozlerini ciddiye aldigimi goriince hemen a<;iklami§ti: 8 Where he got tapa from is not evident; tap- means ‘to worship’. The modern replacement for ragmen is karftn, another of his inventions, based on karp ‘against’, though he used it not for ragmen ‘in spite of’ but for muhalif [A] ‘opposed to’. At ay, Ataf, Sayili 81 —Me$ruta ‘§ort giymi$ kadin’ demek. Bu kez gtilme sirasi bana gelmi^ti. O zaman kar$i kar^iya oturup bir<;ok sozciiklerin bu bikini anlamlanm bulmu$tuk: ‘Tereddi’ radyo dinlemek, ‘tebenni’ banyo yapmak, ‘terakki’ raki i^mek demekti, ‘mezun’ Ozen pastahanesinde oturan kimseye denirdi, ‘Tekelliim’un birka^ anlami vardi: Kilim satin aimak, kelem yani lahana yemek ve KLM u^agi ile u$mak. (Aksoy 1968:18) He came to my room one day and asked me the meaning of me$ruta. While I was trying to explain it on the basis of examples such as hukumet-i me^ruta [‘constitutional govern¬ ment’] and evkaf-i me^ruta [‘pious foundations subject to conditions’], he was chuckling and saying, ‘Don’t wear yourself out, you’ll never guess.’ Seeing that I was taking what he said seriously, he explained. 'Me^ruta means a woman wearing shorts.’ This time it was my turn to laugh. Thereafter we sat down together and invented this kind of meaning for a number of words. Tereddi meant ‘listening to the radio’, tebenni ‘to take a bath’, terakki ‘to drink raki’. Mezun was an habitue of Ozen’s patisserie.9 Tekellum had several meanings: ‘to buy kilims’, ‘to eat the sort of cabbage known as “kelem” ’, ‘to fly KLM’. Readers who have seen the point need not bother with the rest of this para¬ graph. Me$ruta is the feminine of me$rut ‘bound by conditions’, Arabic masruf, the triliteral root of which is S-R-T (whence sarf ‘condition’). Ata$ was pretend¬ ing that the root was S-R-T, the consonants of Turkish $ort, English shorts. The Arabic root of tereddi ‘degeneration’ is R-D-Y ‘fall’, not R-D-Y as in Turkish radyo, English radio. Tebenni ‘adoption’ is from Arabic B-N-Y, not from the three consonants of Turkish banyo (Italian bagnio) ‘bath’. Terakki ‘progress’ is from Arabic R-K-Y'ascent’, not from raki ‘arrack’. Mezun ‘authorized, graduate’ is from Arabic 7-D-N ‘permission’, not from the name of a Turkish pastry-cook. The root of tekellum ‘speaking’ is Arabic K-L-M, not Turkish kilim ‘woven rug’ (Persian gelim) or the Turkish dialect word kelem ‘cabbage’ or the Dutch abbreviation KLM. In 1947 he was using keleci [M] (Mongolian kele- ‘to speak’) for kelime [A] ‘word’. Keleci is found in written Turkish of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries in the sense not of‘word’ but of‘words, discourse’,10 just like Turkish soz. Even if it had been of impeccably Turkish parentage, it would have stood little chance of general acceptance, because the final -ci makes it look like a noun of agent, specifically kelleci, ‘dealer in sheeps’ heads’. Yet that fact did not seem to bother him, as is evident from the explanation he gave in Ulus (9 February 1948) for drop¬ ping keleci: ‘§imdiye dek kelime yerine keleci diyordum, pek de begenmiyordum; 9tinku keleci, kelime degil, soz demektir; bundan boyle tilcik, belki tilce diyecegim. Til, dil lugat demektir, tilcik, tilce de “kii^iik til” demek olur’ (Until now I’ve been saying keleci instead of kelime but I didn’t like it much, because keleci doesn’t mean kelime but soz. From now on I shall say tilcik, perhaps tilce. Til, dil means speech, so tilcik or tilce would mean ‘speechlet’). What he was doing was adding a diminu¬ tive suffix to a word he alleged to mean ‘speech’, as if speechlet meant ‘unit of 9 Ozen Pastahanesi on the Ataturk Boulevard, a favourite haunt of Ankara intellectuals. 10 It is recorded for ‘agreement’ in the spoken language of the vilayet of Tokat (Derleme SozliigU 1963-82: viii. 2726). 82 At ay, Atag, Sayili speech’ and so ‘word’; a good example of the cavalier attitude that shocked the language specialists. And why fiT? Because dil ‘tongue’ already had a diminutive, dilcik, a botanical term for ‘ligule’ and a physiological term for ‘clitoris’. It was not, however, as his wording suggests, an alternative to dil, but an older form of it that had been obsolete for centuries, its initial t having followed the normal course and become d. Tilcik was used by hardly anyone but its inventor. The neologism that carried the day was sozciik, invented by Melih Cevdet Anday in 1958 on the same lines as Ata<;’s tilcik but based on soz, which really did mean ‘speech’. Here is Anday’s note on it: ‘Daglarca, “kelime” kar$iligi olarak “sozciik”u degil, “tilcik”i benimsemif. Ben, “tilcik”e kar$i “sozciik” u onerirken, bunun, yeni sozciik yapma kurallarma daha uygun oldugunu du§unmu$ttim: elden geldigince canli koklerden, canli eklerden yararlanarak...’ (As the replacement for kelime, [the poet Fazil Husnu] Daglarca has adopted not sozciik but tilcik. When I proposed sozciik instead of tilcik, I had reflected that it was more consistent with the rules for building new words: making use as far as possible of living roots and living suffixes ...) (Anday i960, cited in Kudret 1966: 61). There is a critical study of Ataij’s contribution to the new Turkish in Talat Tekin’s (1958) paper ‘Ata^’in Dilciligi ve Tilcikleri’ (‘Ata$ as Language Expert, and his Speechlets’, the use of Ataij’s own tilcik being ironic. Tekin lists the tilciks in three groups, though the first and second sometimes overlap: (1) Anatolian dialect words found in Tarama Dergisi (1934) and Soz Derleme Dergisi (1939-52); (2) OT words, most of them from Diwan Lugat al-Turk (DLT),“ the rest from Tarama Sozliigii (1963-77) or Tarama Dergisi; (3) words of Ata^’s own coining. Some examples of each group are now discussed; all the words Ata^ hoped his proposals might replace are Arabic unless otherwise indicated. Group 1: ayak for kafiye ‘rhyme’; gergek for hakiki ‘true, real’ and hakikat ‘truth’; kez for defa ‘time, occasion’; kural for kaide ‘rule’; kiigiim for fiiphe ‘doubt’; ogseyin for elbette ‘certainly’; sin for mezar ‘tomb’; tore for ahlak ‘customs, ethics’; tiim for kiil ‘whole, totality’; umut for iimit [P] ‘hope’, iiriin for mahsul ‘crop, product’; yazak for kalem ‘pen’; ytmizik for firkin [P] ‘ugly’, yitirmek for kaybetmek ‘to lose’. Tekin remarks that, in spite of all Atacj’s efforts, a large number of the words in Group 1 had not become part of the written language and never would, because the words they were meant to replace were so widely known. Time has proved him wrong; the majority of them—all but kii$iim, ogseyin, yazak, and ytmizik— are in everyday use. While ayak has not superseded kafiye for ‘rhyme’, it has always been a technical term of folk-poetry, applied to the rhyming refrain between verses. For rhyme in general, from 1949 onwards Ata<; himself used uyak, " Mahmud Ka$gari’s dictionary of Turkish, written in Arabic and completed probably in 1079. See References under DLT. A Turkish translation of the unique manuscript and a facsimile of it were avail¬ able to Ata<; (Atalay 1939-41). At ay, Atag, Sayili 83 obviously based on ayak but having as its first syllable the stem uy- ‘to fit, to conform’, and uyak is well on its way to ousting kafiye among the younger generation of poets. For sin, see pages 6 and 82. As for $iiphe, which Tekin thought assured of survival, though still common in speech it is rarely seen in writing, being rapidly edged out not by Ataev’s kiigiim but by ku$ku, proposed in Cep Ktlavuzu (1935) as a replacement for vehim ‘ground¬ less fear’ and vesvese ‘Satanic prompting, morbid suspicion’. Ata<; rightly objected to it, as he said in an article in Ulus of 21 February 1957: ‘Qtinkii ku$ku, doute demek degil, olsa olsa soupgon demektir. Ku$ku bir tiirlii gtivensizlik gosterir. Ben bu sozden ku$kulandim demek, bunun altinda bir kotuliik, ba$ka bir dilek sezdim demektir’ (For kugku does not mean doute but, if anything, soupgon. Ku$ku indi¬ cates a kind of lack of confidence. To say ‘I felt ku$ku about this remark’ means that behind it I sensed some evil, some arriere pensee). He was not wedded to his own suggestion, ku$iim: Konya’da oyle derlermi§ de onun i$in. Sonra ku$um tilciginin ba§ka yerlerde ba§ka anlamlarda kullanildigini ogrendim. Kbkunii bilmiyorum. Konya’da giiktim dedikleri de olurmu$. Arapifa $ek’in bozmasi olacak. Bunun kpin $imdi sizin diyorum. Onu da pek begenmedigim i<jin daha iyisini ariyorum. That’s how they’re reported to say it in Konya, that’s why [I proposed it]. Later I learned it was used elsewhere in other senses. I don’t know its root. It seems that sometimes in Konya they also say $ukum. That will be a corruption of the Arabic gek. So now I use sizin. As I don’t like that much either, I’m looking for a better word for it. Tarama Dergisi records kiigtim as being in colloquial use for ‘doubt’ or ‘worry’ in nine vilayets besides Konya, but it has not achieved literary status. §iikiim, not in Derleme Sozliigu (1963-82) or Tarama Dergisi, may well have been a metathesis of ktigiim under the influence of $ek (the Arabic sakk), to which Ata<; refers. As for sizin, which he first used for ‘doubt’ in 1956, it sank without trace; given that sizin is the Turkish for ‘of you’, it was clearly a non-starter.12 Urun, an Anatolian word for ‘produce’ that has now almost totally supplanted mahsul, is probably a Turkicization of iiren [M] ‘seed, fruit, progeny’ (Clauson 1972: 233). If so, while Ata<j may not have been aware of its non-Turkish origin, he would not have cared anyway, considering as he did that anything was preferable to an Arabic word. Group 2: betik for kitap ‘book’; kog for vezin ‘metre’ (of verse); tin for ruh ‘soul, spirit’; netek for nasil ‘how’; ozan for gair ‘poet’; tamu for cehennem ‘hell’; ttikeli for tamamiyle ‘wholly’; tup for astl ‘origin, original’; ugmak for cennet ‘paradise’; yanit for cevap ‘answer’; yavuz for kotii ‘bad’. Tekin includes gevre ‘surroundings’, now ‘environment’, in this group, which is 12 Ata<; may have come across and misread sezik, which in the old alphabet was written identically with sizin. Tarama Sozliigu (1963-77) gives two citations, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the meanings sezgi, zan, tahmin: ‘perception, supposition, estimation’. 84 At ay, Ataf, Sayilt an error, as the word has never totally lost currency since the thirteenth century. He may have confused it with fevren, manufactured by Ata^ from fevre to replace ufuk [A] ‘horizon’ but scarcely known nowadays even to intellectuals. Tarrtu and ufmak for ‘hell’ and ‘paradise’ did not catch on; they would scarcely have helped the ethnic cleansing, as they were not Turkish but Sogdian. Some items in this group were taken in a form consistent with the phonetic development of modern Turkish—for example, yamt, anciently yanut. The changes Ata<; made in others were contrary to the laws of phonology. Tekin tells how in 1949, while still an undergraduate, he wrote to Ata$ to point out that netek (properly neteg) was the ancient form of a word that, had it survived into modern Turkish, would have become nite. Ata$ accepted the correction and used nite thereafter. Betik has won some currency but it was a mistake for bitig, the natural development of which, biti, was in use as late as the eighteenth century for ‘letter, document’. Tin too is flawed; its ancient form was tin ‘breath, spirit’. Tekin, comparing its derived verb dinlenmek ‘to rest’, originally ‘to draw breath’, notes that its modern form would have been din. Even if Ata<; had known that, however, he would have been unwise to chose the latter form, since a homograph and so near a homophone of din [A] ‘religion’ (in which the i is long) would have been unlikely to gain favour,13 whereas tin and its adjective tinsel ‘spiritual’ are nowadays not without their devo¬ tees. Tiikeli (in the older language not ‘wholly’ but ‘perfect’) would have become diikeli if it had survived into the modern language. Tup did in fact survive, as dip ‘bottom, base’. He took yavuz for ‘bad’, the opposite of its most usual modern sense. Tekin notes that, although ‘bad’ was its ancient meaning, it is used in dialect for ‘good, beauti¬ ful’. He could have added that it is also used in dialect for‘generous, manly, capable’. And for ‘bad’. In view of its ambiguity, in a country where Yavuz is a common male name it could never have won acceptance as a replacement for fern [A] ‘bad’, much less for kotii, which being pure Turkish stood in no need of a replacement.14 As the appellation of Sultan Selim II, Yavuz is rendered ‘Grim’ by English-speaking histo¬ rians.15 but ‘Steadfast’ is closer to what it meant to those who applied it to the ruler who added Egypt and Syria to the Ottoman dominions.16 It is a pity that many modern writers have followed Ata<; in using ozan in place of $ air for ‘poet’, because its old meaning was ‘bard, minstrel’. Those who know— a large category, including as it does every Turk with an interest in folk-poetry— preserve the distinction. I! In the light of his toying with siziti for ‘doubt’ that consideration might not have deterred him. 14 Not that that is much to go on, as the impeccably Turkish butiin for ‘all, whole’ has for years been fighting for life against turn, of whose Arabic origin there is little doubt. The two words, however, are not synonymous. While the sophisticated may use turn elmalar for ‘all the apples’, to the people who grow them it means whole apples, as distinct from sliced apples. Even istemek ‘to want’ is looked on with disfavour, the in-word being dilemek ‘to wish for’. 15 Some old Turkey hands refer to him affectionately as Grim Slim. 16 The use of wicked as a term of approbation by English and American schoolchildren is worth mentioning in this context but, as with yavuz, should not be cited as evidence of moral decline. At ay, Ataf, Sayili 85 Group 3: (a) words made from OT roots with various suffixes: assiglanmak for faydalanmak ‘to utilize’; kopuzsulluk for lyrisme [F] ‘lyricism’; kogiik for misra ‘line of poetry’; tansiklamak for -e hayrati olmak ‘to admire’; yamtlamak for cevaplamak ‘to answer’. Assiglanmak was Ata^’s first attempt at a replacement for faydalanmak, in which the fayda represents the Arabic fa' Ida ‘use’, ‘profit’, the OT for which was asig. Why he decided to double the s is unknown. He then came up with asilanmak, no doubt having learned that asi was the form asig would have taken had it survived into the modern language. Neither form has endured. He coined kopuzsulluk by first adding -sul to kopuz ‘lyre’, to make kopuzsul ‘lyric’, and then the abstract-noun suffix -lik. -sul was not a living suffix, occurring only in yoksul ‘destitute’, described by Clauson (1972: 907) as ‘clearly a corruption of yoksuz’. Kopuzsulluk did not survive its creator. No more did kogiik, which he manufactured from kog with the long-obsolete diminutive suffix -ik. In so doing he was using the method he later used to create tilcik loading on to a diminutive form of his word for ‘metre’ the meaning of‘line of poetry’. (The accepted new term for this is dize, a deliberate variation of dizi ‘line’.) Kog for ‘metre’ is the form he would have found in Atalay’s translation of DLT. Clauson transcribes it as kii:g—i.e. with long ii—which is how Dankoff and Kelly (1982-5) also read it. Kiig survives, though not in Ata<;’s sense of‘metre’ but rather for ‘music’—its first sense was indeed ‘tune’. Neither kog nor kiig appears in Tarama Sozliigii, but kiig is used for ‘music’ by some musicologists, particularly those at the University of the Aegean (see Chapter 9). Tansiklamak was made from tansik, which is how the old tansuk ‘marvellous, marvel’ would have appeared had it survived. Tarama Sozliigii does not include the verb but gives tansik for mucize [A] ‘miracle’. Both yamtlamak and the noun yamt ‘answer’ from which Atac; formed it are commonly used in modern writing. Group 3: (b) words coined by Ata$ from Anatolian dialect words: devinme for hareket ‘movement’; oykiiniilmek for taklit edilmek ‘to be imitated’; perkitlemek for tekit etmek'to corroborate’; yeginlemek for tercih etmek ‘to prefer’; yoresellik for mahallilik ‘regionalism’. Tekin points out that, as yeginlemek is based on yeg‘good’, the -in- is superfluous, as is the -le- of perkitlemek, perkit- being a verbstem anyway. As perkitmek is given in Derleme Sozlugii (1963-82) with the required meaning, it is problematic why Ata<; did not leave well alone. The yore of yoresellik (the only word in this group, apart from devinmek, to have won any currency) is shown in Derleme Sozlugii as meaning fevre ‘surroundings’. The same work shows devinmek for ‘to move’; on the other hand, it gives dykiinmek only in the senses of‘to relate, tell’ and ‘to compete’, though the meaning ‘to imitate’ is given in Tarama Dergisi, as is the meaning ‘to be sorry’. It was presumably oykiinmek that inspired Ata^’s invention of oykii for ‘story’, which has largely replaced hikaye, though some say that oykii is no more than a vulgar mispronunciation of hikaye. If so, it is as if we were to discard nuclear in favour of the Pentagon’s nucular. 86 At ay, Ataf, Sayili In view of the rash of -sek and -safe by which the face of written Turkish is blemished, Tekin’s comment on yoresellik is of historical interest: ‘Bunlardan yoresellik i$lek olmiyan -sel ekiyle kurulmu§tur. Kumsal, uysal gibi pek az birkat; kelimede goriilen bu ek bir vakitler nisbet -f si yerine teklif edilmi? fakat tutmami$ti’ (Of these, yoresellik is formed with the unproductive suffix -sel. This suffix, which appears in a very few words such as kumsal and uysal, had at one time been proposed as a replacement for the [Arabic and Persian] adjectival suffix -i, but had never caught on). It is fair to add that in 1958, when he wrote this, he was not alone in his judgement. Group 3: (c) coinages produced by dismembering (‘ayirma yolu ile’) ancient and dialect words—i.e. by taking them apart and putting the pieces together as he fancied: betke for makale ‘(newspaper) article’; doriit for sanat ‘art’; ep for sebep ‘cause’; soydep for yani ‘that is to say’; tiikelmek for tamamlamak ‘to complete’; usul for akli ‘intellectual’. None of these won favour. As Tekin says, this method of word-making calls for profound grammatical knowledge. He explains betke as derived by Ata<; from biti, earlier bitig, in the mistaken belief that bit- was the stem of a verb bitmek ‘to write’ (the old word, of Chinese origin, for ‘to write’ was bitimek not bitmek); he then added the -ke to make a noun of it. It is more likely that he manufactured it from betik, his invention for ‘book’, or from bete, his mis¬ reading of biti, which he went on using for ‘letter’ until his death. The second syl¬ lable, -ke, is not an all-purpose noun-suffix but an extremely rare diminutive suffix (Clauson 1972: p. xi); what he thought he was creating was a word meaning ‘little writing’. Doriit is the stem of dorutmek or tbrutmek, an old word for ‘to create’, from which he also made dorutmen for ‘artist’. With all due respect to Tekin, ep ‘cause’ does not belong in this group but in the first. Ata$ would have found it among the equivalents for sebep in Tarama Dergisi, where it was due to a misreading of ip‘rope’ in one of the Ottoman sources used by the compilers of that dictionary. There, however, it was given as the Turkish for sabab [A] in the sense not of ‘cause’ but of ‘tent rope’, the original meaning of the Arabic word. Soyde$i for ‘it means, that is to say’, is another oddity that did not take. Tekin supposes that Ata^ extracted the first syllable from soylemek ‘to say’ on the correct assumption that the latter was compounded with the denominative verb-suffix -lemek, but there was no such noun as soy, the soy of soylemek started life as soz. The -def is for the invariable -da$ ‘-fellow’, which Ata<; helped deprive of its invari¬ ability.17 The literal meaning he must have been aiming at was ‘its saying-fellow’— i.e. ‘which amounts to saying’. Over tanmali ‘wonderful, surprising’ one must again take issue with Tekin. His 17 In pre-reform days, the only word in which it appeared as -def seems to have been karde$ ‘sibling’, an Istanbul pronunciation of karda$ (earlier karmda$ ‘womb-fellow’), a form used until well into the seventeenth century. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives gonitlde$ not -da$ for yekdil ‘sympathizer’, possibly through a misreading of the phonetic spelling used by Redhouse (1890). At ay, Ataf, Sayili 87 view is that Atat; made it by adding the deverbal suffix -malt to tan, the noun seen in tansik and tana kalmak (‘to be left to wonderment’), which he took to be a verbstem meaning ‘to wonder’.18 But there is also a verb tanmak ‘to be astonished’, found in the form danmak in texts of the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and still used in parts of Anatolia. Ata<; presumably made tanmali from the -me verbal noun of that word, in which case it belongs in Tekin’s list 3(b). As for usul for ‘intelligent’: although us originally meant ‘intelligence, discrim¬ ination’, uslu, once ‘intelligent’, nowadays means only ‘well behaved’. This attempt by Ata(j to base a new adjective for ‘intelligent’ on us is rightly criticized by Tekin on the grounds that ‘research to date into the Turkish language has failed to come up with a denominal adjective-suffix -il/iT. Moreover, there was another usul [A] ‘method, system’ in everyday use in Ata^’s day and still not extinct. True, it differs from Ata$’s usul in that, because of its Arabic origin, its final l is clear, so that its plural is usuller, while ‘methodical’ is usullii and ‘unmethodical’ usulsuz (Lewis 1988: 19),19 but that would not—indeed did not—make its proposed homograph acceptable. Group 3: id) words taken from other Turkic dialects or based on such words: komugfox mnsifci‘music’; uciik fox harf ‘letter of the alphabet’; $uyuncii for miijdeci ‘bearer of good news’; tilcik for kelime ‘word’; iiyciik for hey if‘line of poetry’. These need not detain us long, since tilcik, the only one of them to win any cur¬ rency at all, has been adequately discussed. The correct form of Ata^’s uciik is iijek, probably of Chinese origin. Oy is the form taken by ev‘house’ in Kirghiz, Uzbek, and those other Eastern dialects in which it does not appear as oy. Ata^’s reason for making a diminutive of it to replace beyit [A] is that ‘line of poetry’ is a secondary sense of Arabic bayt, the primary sense being ‘tent’ or ‘house’. Group 3: (e) compounds made with words from OT and Anatolian or other dialects: aktore or sagtore for ahlak ‘ethics’; bile-duyu$ for sympathie [F] ‘sympa¬ thy’; budunbuyrumcu for demokrat' democrat’; diizeyit for nesir‘prose’; gokqe-yazm for edebiyat ‘literature, belles-lettres’; uza-bilik for tarih ‘history’. To prefix ak ‘white or sag ‘right’ to tore, the OT for ‘customary law’, does not seem a particularly felicitous way of expressing the concept of ethics, but some writers do use aktore. Bile-duyu$, compounded of bile, OT for ‘with’, and duyu$, ‘feeling’, did not prevail; the new word for ‘sympathy’ is duyguda$ltk ‘feelingfellowship’, which has not supplanted sempati, as may be judged from the fact that the equivalent given in Tiirkge Sozltik (1988) for duyguda$ is sempatizan. Tekin passes over the second element of budunbuyrumcu in silence, saying only 18 From this noun tan comes the verb tanlamak ‘to be astonished’, in literary use between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries and still alive in one or two local dialects, including that of the vilayet of Ankara. 19 Some use the neologism yontem, others still prefer metot (F). In the 1950s Istanbul University had a pair of professors known to their colleagues as Metotlu Cahil (‘The Methodical Ignoramus’) and Metotsuz Cahil respectively. 88 Atay, Ataf, Sayilt that budun, an ancient word for ‘people’, would have become buyun had it sur¬ vived. The ancient word for ‘people’ was in fact bodun, which by the eleventh century had become boyun though, given the existence of boyun ‘neck’, boyun ‘people’ would have stood little chance of acceptance in modern Turkish. As early as 1912, Yakup Kadri [Karaosmanoglu] made fan of an attempt to replace millet ‘nation’ by budun (Levend 1972: 321). But now it has happened, in that budun is used to some extent, notably in budunbilim for ‘ethnography’. The buyrum of buyrumcu is pure invention, a noun made from the stem of buyurmak ‘to command’. The buyruk of budunbuyrukfu, Ata^’s offering for ‘dictator’, was an old Ottoman word for ‘command’. Tekin explains duzeyit for ‘prose’ as illegitimately formed by adding to diiz ‘level’ the stem of the old verb eyitmek'to say’: ‘level-speak’. The somewhat more logical duzyazi ‘level writing’ is used instead. Gokfe-yazin was intended to mean ‘belles-lettres’, gokye being a provincialism for ‘beautiful’, while yazin was Ata^’s arbitrary modification of yazt ‘writing’. The whole expression did not catch on, but yazin is current in the sense of‘literature’, without having supplanted the time-honoured edebiyat. Categories id) and (e) both contain words not in the spirit of the guideline adopted by the Sixth Kurultay, but then no one could have expected it to restrain Ata^’s creative urge: ‘Turk dili, Turk Milletinin kullandigi dildir. Terimler yapihrken eski tarihlerden beri ya§ayip gelen unsurlar zaman ve mekan itibariyle yakmlik ve uzaklik bakimindan dikkate ahnmali ve bugtinkii Tiirkiye Tiirk^esinin fonetik ve estetigine uygun olmahdir’ (Turkish is the language used by the Turkish nation. When terms are being made, elements which have survived from ancient times should be considered from the point of view of their proximity and remote¬ ness in time and place and be in conformity with the phonetics and aesthetics of the present-day Turkish of Turkey) (Kurultay 1949: 146). No one has yet succeeded in finding an acceptable Ozturkge word for ‘history’; tarih [A] still holds its ground and will continue to do so. Ataev’s uza-bilik won no following, any more than his uza alone or uzagi or uza-bilim, or his uzabilikfi for ‘historian’. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives uza as replacement for mesafe [A] ‘distance’, while bilik is OT for ‘knowledge’, appearing in Ottoman from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century as bilii or bill. As for bilim, which has acquired general currency for ‘science’ because of its fortuitous resemblance to ilim ('i/m [A] ‘knowledge’), Ata«;’s first recorded use of it was in 1956, but it had already appeared in 1935, in Cep Kilavuzu. Group 3: (/) words made by Ata$ from living roots and more-or-less active suffixes: baglanf for din ‘religion’; dokunca for zarar‘harm’; ornegin for mesela ‘for example’; sorun for mesele ‘problem’; yapit for eser ‘work’ (artistic or literary); yazim for metin ‘text’; yazin for edebiyat ‘literature’. Tekin’s conclusion: At ay, Ataf, Sayth 89 Ata$, yaman bir tenkitq, titiz bir ^evirici, kisaca, usta bir edebiyat^i idi; ancak bir dilci degildi. Gerekliligine inandigi davayi yuriitebilmek i^in dilimizdeki yabanci kaynakli kelimelere tiirk^e kar$ihklar arami<j, bulamadigi zaman kendi kurmuftur. Fakat, kelime yaparken bir noktaya dikkat etmemi§tir: Ya§iyan kolderden i$lek eklerle soz tiiretmek. Boyle yapsaydi tilcik’leri yadirganmaz, kolayca tutunurdu. Ata<; was a remarkable critic and a sensitive translator; in short, a consummate literary man, but he was no language man. To advance the cause in whose necessity he believed, he looked for Turkish equivalents of words of foreign origin in our language and when he could not find them he made them up himself. But in his word-making there was one point he disregarded: the need to derive words from living roots and active suffixes. Had he done so, his tilciks would not have struck people as odd and would have easily gained acceptance. The criticism sounds reasonable but in its implication that the tilciks did not gain acceptance it is dead wrong. All the words in the last list, with the exception of baglang, are in everyday use, and all but one with the meanings he assigned to them: yaztm nowadays means not ‘text’ but ‘spelling’. It is a pity that baglanf, from baglan- ‘to be attached’, has not had more success, seeing that it was one of Ata^’s few correct formations. Yilmaz Qolpan (1963) does not claim that the thousand-odd neologisms in his glossary of Ata<p’s words were all originated or resurrected by Ata$, nor were they. He shows iftenlik ‘sincerity’, for example, as having been used by Ata$ in 1950, whereas Atay’s first recorded use of it is dated 1946. It appears in Cep Kilavuzu (1935)) for which Atay was largely responsible. Qolpan shows ytr ‘poetry’, a respectable old word listed in Tarama Dergisi, as first used by Ata$ in 1949, but Sadri Maksudi (Arsal 1930:116) had used it nineteen years before. Nevertheless, even if we halve Qopan’s figure, Ata^’s contribution to the vocabulary of presentday Turkish unquestionably exceeds that of any other individual. Aydin Sayili (1913-93) was born in Istanbul and completed his secondary educa¬ tion at the Atatiirk Lycee in Ankara. Ataturk attended the viva voce examination for the baccalaureate and was so greatly impressed by Sayih’s performance that he rec¬ ommended him to the Minister of Education, who sent him to Harvard, where he studied under George Sarton, obtaining his doctorate in 1942. In 1952 he was appointed Professor of the History of Science at Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakiiltesi and in 1974 became Chairman of the Philosophy Department of the same faculty. His reputation was worldwide. His best-known work in English (Sayili 1988) is The Observatory in Islam and its Place in the General History of the Observatory. Unlike many scholars of his age group, he took to Oztiirkge enthusiastically, but he did not believe in letting the old words die. He wanted to keep them alive because they might be useful, now or in the future, to express subtle distinctions. Thus he advocates (Sayili 1978: 400) the retention of tabii alongside the increas¬ ingly popular dogal for ‘natural’, because tabii is used ‘yadirganmayan bir $ey i^in’ 90 At ay, Ataf, Sayili (of something not regarded as strange)—i.e. in the sense of ‘naturally, of course’. Tabu does in fact survive in this sense, but I fear the credit goes not to Sayili but to the linguistic conservatism of the people. His language is eclectic; he uses whatever word best expresses his meaning, whether it belongs to the older or the newer vocabulary. He did not condemn -sel/sal but his remarks on it (see Chapter 7) include such Ottoman survivals as tereddut, hissedenler, mevcut, fare, vakta, taraf, iltifat, and even the antiquated selika. Although he used Oztiirkfe, he was ready to speak out against its worst fea¬ tures, as we see in the following passage (Sayili 1978:399). The word yamrsiz, which he uses in it for ‘unbiased’, is the final theme in the present chapter. Birhayli fena bir ba;ka misal de ku$ku sozciiguniin $uphe yerine kuilamlmasidir. Qunkii kufku sozcugunde bir itimatsizlik, bir kotii niyet, yahut da ho$lamlmayacak bir sezinleme anlami vardir. §iiphe ise bu bakimdan tarafsiz veya yamrsiz bir kelimedir. Kufku gibi giizel bir kelimeyi $uphe yerine kullanmak onu ozel anlamindan ayirmak ve aym zamanda dilimizi ftipheve kufku gibi yakin anlamli iki kelimeye sahip olmaktan zorla yoksun kilmak demektir. Another extremely bad example is the use of ku$ku instead of ftiphe. For in ftiphe there is a sense of a lack of confidence, or an evil intent, or a perception of a situation that is going to be unpleasant, whereas $uphe in this respect is neutral or unbiased. To use a beautiful word like ku$ku in place of ftiphe is to divest it of its proper sense and at the same time to dispossess our language forcibly of a pair of words of related meaning. His intelligence and erudition marked him off from those responsible for much of the vocabulary of current Turkish. Every page of his book-length article reveals that he thought more deeply about the language than did most of those who shaped its future. The reason he had so little effect on the course of the reform is that, unlike Atay and Ata(;, he was not a popular writer but a scholar who wrote for scholars. Discussing neden, for example, he mentions that Ottoman had the words sebep ‘cause’ and i/fef‘reason’. Neden, which could have replaced Met, is now used for both Met and sebep. But these two words represented two distinct concepts, and two such words exist in all developed languages. ‘Cause’ is used in relation to nature, and for situations outside one’s volition, whereas ‘reason’ is used for matters coming within one’s volition: ‘yagmur yagmasinm nedeni’ (the cause of the rainfall), but ‘konuf mak istemesinin sebebi’ (the reason for his wishing to speak). No one seems to have paid any attention to that or his other criticisms and sug¬ gestions. He thought it was wrong (Sayili 1978: 442), for example, that, although f eviri was in common use for‘translation’, for the verb ‘to translate’ there was only the old tercume etmek or the non-specific fevirmek ‘to turn’. He made a verb from f eviri—f evirilemek—and used it throughout the article, but it is doubtful if anyone else ever adopted it. Probably not, as it would have been too easily confused with the existing neologism fevrilemek‘to explain away, to interpret allegorically’. He pointed out a flaw in yiizyil, the prevalent replacement for asir [A] ‘century’—namely, that when you hear ‘yedi yiizyil/yuz yil’ you cannot tell At ay, Atag, Sayilt 91 whether what is meant is ‘seven centuries’ or ‘seven hundred years’. And this dis¬ tinction may sometimes be important. If someone says ‘yedi asir kadar once’ (some seven centuries ago), you understand that there may be a margin of error of, say, sixty or seventy years, whereas ‘yedi yiizyil/yuz yil kadar once’ may imply an error to be measured not in years but in centuries. A valid criticism, but he did not offer an unambiguous alternative to ytizyil; obviously he was hoping that asir could be rescued from oblivion. The trouble was that he was working on too high a plane. One need only open his article at any page to see why his proposals passed over the heads of the wordsmiths. This passage, for example: Bugiin orttik ve agk sozciiklerini birbirinin kar$iti iki terim olarak kullan lanmiz vardir. Bunlann da terim olarak pek doyundurucu olmadigi soylenebilir. CJunkii a(ik sdzcugu ^okanlamli oldugu gibi, orttik de yakin akraba terim tiiretilmesine pek elveri§li degildir. Ayrica, orttik sdzcugu anlamtn orttilu oldugunu ifade ediyor. Oysa, burada onemli olan husus anlamtn Orttilmesi degil, orttik bi<;imde ifade edilmesi, dile getirilmesidir... Bu terimlerin Ingiiizcedeki kar$ihklari implicit ve explicit'tir... Fakat orttik ve aftk yerine, yukartda deginilen yetersizlikleri dolaytstyle, altgin ve tistgtin gibi iki terimin getirilmesi daha isabetli olur. Qtinku bunlardan her ikisi de ozel terim vasfint tatmin edici bir $ekilde karfiyabilecegi gibi, altgin sdzcugu anlam bakimtndan, orttik sozciigiine kiyasla, maksada daha uygun dii$er. (Sayilt 1978: 443-4) There are some amongst us today who use the words orttik and aftk as two antonymous technical terms. One may say that as technical terms they are not very satisfactory. For aside from the fact that aftk has many meanings, orttik is not particularly suited to deriving closely related terms. Moreover, the word Orttik implies that the meaning is veiled, whereas the important fact here is not that the meaning is veiled but that it is expressed, conveyed, in a veiled way... The English equivalents of these terms are implicit and explicit... But because of the inadequacies of orttik and a(ik touched on above, it would be more appro¬ priate to introduce two terms to replace them, such as altgin and tistgtin. Not only would they both meet the definition of a special technical term more satisfactorily: if we consider the word altgin from the point of view of meaning, in comparison with Orttik it is more to the purpose. Or this, from a discussion of possible equivalents for ‘determinism’ and ‘indeterminism’: Osmanhcada bu konuda oturmu§ ve yerle$mi$ terimler pek yoktu. Muayyeniyet ve gayr-i muayyeniyet sozciiklerinin bu terimlerin fizik alamndaki anlamtni kar§ilamak maksadiyle kullanilabilecegi a$ikardir. Fakat bu anlamlar cok genel ve geni§ oldugundan, bu sozciiklerin, ger^ek anlamiyle terim sayilmamasi gerekir. Ayrica, bu sozcukler soz konusu felsefi anlamlanm kar§ilamamaktadirlar. Bu terimlerin felsefi anlammi kar$ilamak iizere de icdbiyye ve Idicdbiyye sozcuklerimiz vardi. Fakat bunlar da 90k dar bir ?evre di$inda tanmmamaktaydi. (Sayih 1978: 502) Ottoman really had no settled and established terms in this subject. It is manifest that muayyeniyet [definiteness) and gayr-i muayyeniyet [non-definiteness] could be used for the purpose of representing the meaning of these terms in the field of physics. But since these 92 Atay, Ataf, Sayili meanings were very general and broad, these words are not to be regarded as technical terms in the true sense. Moreover, these words cannot meet the philosophical meanings we are talking about. To meet the philosophical meaning of these terms, we also had the words icabiyye [determinism] and laicabiyye [indeterminism].20 These, however, were not known outside a very narrow circle. Sayili goes on to say that no agreement has been reached on new equivalents for ‘determinism’ and ‘indeterminism’, though various terms are in use: gerektirim, gerekircilik, and belirlenimcilik for the first and belirlenmezcilik for the second. But obviously these are no more widely used or known than were ic&biyye and laicabiyye in the Ottoman period. Nevertheless, though his theme is the language of science and teaching, he has time for some less technical terms: ‘to translate’ and ‘century’, as we have seen. He considers (Sayili 1978: 441-2) that insufficient thought was given to the conse¬ quences of replacing kutiiphane by kitaplik what happens to ‘librarianship’? In fact the kitaplikphk he feared has not won the day over kutuphanecilik, though kitaplik bilimi is used for ‘library science’. Another problem he could have added was how to say ‘a library of twenty thousand books’; clearly ‘yirmibin kitaplik bir kitaplik’ won’t do, and to say ‘volumes’ instead of ‘books’—‘yirmibin ciltlik bir kitaplik’—does not mean the same. One curious coinage of his which had no success was yamr. Speaking of taraf [A] ‘side’ and its derivatives tarafli ‘partisan’ and tarafsiz ‘impartial’, he remarks (Sayili 1978: 402) that some people use the pure Turkish yan, yanlt, and yansiz instead. He continues: Dilimizdeki kocunmak ve yagir sozcuklerinden bu bakimdan yararlanma yoluna gidilebilir. Bunlardan her ikisi de aslmda at i<jin kullamlan sbzciikler olmalarma ragmen, kocunmak sbzcugu daha genel ve mecazi anlamda da sik sik kullamlmaktadir. Ayrica bu sozciikler yamr ve gocunmak bi^iminde de telaffuz edilmektedir. Yagir veya yamr atin omuzlan arasindaki yer ve bu yerde eger vurmasmdan a<plan yara anlammdadir. Yagiri olan at bu yarasmdan kocundugu i<jin bu iki sozctik arasinda her zaman i<;in hatirlanan bir (jagri^im mevcuttur. Bu belirgin anlamiyle, yagir veya yamr Avrupa dillerindeki bias ve biais gibi sozciilderi akla getirmektedir. Kammca, yanlt ve yansiz yerine yamrlt ve yamrsiz sbzciiklerini kullanmak daha yerinde olur. Boylece yamr telaffuz $ekline aslina yakm ozel bir anlam verilmi$ olur ve dili bir yerde fakirle§tirmek yerine tarn tersi yapilmi§ olur... Tarafsiz veya yamrsiz kar;ihgi olarak ingilizcede neutral ve bir de gramer terimi olarak neuter sozciikleriyle kar$ila;ir. From this point of view, one may resort to utilizing the words kocunmak and yagir, which we have in our language. Although both are originally used of horses, kocunmak is frequently used in a more general and metaphorical sense. Moreover, they are also pronounced yamr and gocunmak.21 Yagir or yantr means the horse’s withers and the sore made there by saddling. Since the horse with a saddle-sore is scared of this wound he has, there is an 20 The first of these is an Arabic abstract noun of Turkish manufacture, derived from igab ‘making obligatory, making unavoidable’; the la of the second is the Arabic for ‘not’. 21 Gocunmak is an Anatolian pronunciation of kocunmak. See Lewis (1988: 4, end of §9). Atay, Ataf, Sayili 93 unforgettable association of ideas between these two words.22 With this specific meaning, yagir or yarnr calls to mind such words in the European languages as bias or biais [F], In my opinion, it will be more appropriate to use yamrlt and yamrsiz instead of yanli and yansiz. In this way, the pronunciation yarnr will have been given a special meaning close to its origin and instead of impoverishing the language at one point the exact oppo¬ site will have been achieved ... The sense of tarafsiz or yamrsiz is conveyed in English by neutral or, as a grammatical term, neuter. It is not surprising that this suggestion did not catch on. The progression from a saddle-sore that makes a horse shy away from a curry-comb, to a bias that makes a person shy away from a course of action, is more than a little far-fetched. But Sayili did explain the thinking behind his suggestion, which is more than Ata$ was in the habit of doing. 22 The reference is to the proverb ‘A1 ka^agiyi, gir ahira, yagiri olan gocunur’ (Take the curry¬ comb, go into the stable, and the one with saddle-sores will be scared), much like our ‘If the cap fits, wear it.’ 7 Ingredients As we have seen, the reformers’ overriding desire was to get rid of Arabic and Persian borrowings, even if the proposed replacements were equally non-Turkish: hudut [A] ‘frontier’ was dislodged by simr [G] (synuron), millet [A] ‘nation’ by ulus [M], $ehir [P] ‘city’ by the Sogdian /cent‘small town, village’, istilah [A] ‘tech¬ nical term’ by terim [F]. But at least these were natural-born words. This chapter discusses the more noteworthy suffixes used, even invented, in the creation of Oztiirkfe. The squeamish reader may find some of what follows disturbing. Before we come on to suffixes, a word about prefixes. At the time when TDK was doing its best to prove that Turkish and the Indo-European languages were akin, efforts were made to create words by using prefixes, against the genius of Turkish. For ‘sub-’, ast was imported from one or other of the Central Asian dialects in which it means ‘underside’, like Turkish alt. It was soon shortened to as-, which survives in astegmen ‘second lieutenant’ and assubay ‘non¬ commissioned officer’. In the late 1930s astiizuk was used for ‘supplementary by¬ laws’, asba$kan for ‘vice-president’, and askurul for ‘subcommittee’. The first syllable of yardim ‘help’ was prefixed to direktor to make yardirektor ‘assistant director’, to ba$kan to make yarba$kan ‘vice-president’, and to kurul to make yarkurul ‘subcommittee’; this and asba$kan may still be met with occasionally. One other yar- survives, in yarbay ‘lieutenant-colonel’, bay being the Oztiirkfe replace¬ ment for bey ‘commander’. The first syllable of albay ‘colonel’ is also an abbre¬ viation, of alay ‘regiment’, The gen of genel ‘general’ was similarly pressed into service as a prefix, a use that survives in gensoru ‘parliamentary question’. The turn of tiimgeneral ‘major-general’ is the first syllable of ttimen ‘division’, while the or of orgeneral ‘general’ is from ordu ‘army’. What inspired these truncations was Russian abbreviations like Sovnarkom for ‘Sovyet Narodnykh Komissarov’ ‘Council of People’s Commissars’. It should be remembered that in those days Turco-Soviet relations were, at least outwardly, cordial. Another attempt at creating a prefix was arsi- ‘inter-’, an arbitrary corruption of the postposition arasi, but its use did not go beyond arsiulusal, which gave rise to one of the successive designations of the Izmir International Fair: Izmir Beynelmilel Fuan, Izmir Arsiulusal Fuari, Izmir Enternasyonal Fuari, Izmir Uluslararasi Fuari. There is some dispute about the legitimacy of the widely used ongormek ‘to foresee’, there being no precedent for incorporating an adverb into a verb. There is no such dispute about prefixing on to nouns, as in onsezi Ingredients 95 ‘premonition’, the on here being an adjective, as in many respectable old words like onkapt ‘front door’ and onoda ‘antechamber’. So too with alt, as in altgegit or alt gefit‘underpass’. Now for some suffixes. -fe/ffl. Three old borrowings from Serbo-Croat—kiralige ‘queen’, fa rife ‘tsarina’, imparatorige ‘empress’—supplied a feminine suffix, which Turkish lacked. Added to tanri ‘god’, it made tanriga, the Ozturkge for ilahe [A] ‘goddess’. That was its sole contribution to the language reform. There is another -fe/fa that, unlike the -ce of du$unce ‘thought’ and eglence ‘amusement’, is added to nouns. It is a Persian diminutive suffix, seen in paga (paca [P]) ‘trotter’ from pa [P] ‘foot’, and lugatge ‘glossary’ from lugat [A] ‘dictionary’. It provided the reform with one or two hybrids like tarihge ‘short history’, and dilekge ‘petition’ from dilek ‘wish’. -enek. Once occurring in very few words—for example, gorenek ‘usage’ and the archaic degenek ‘stick, wand’ (now degnek, from deg- ‘to touch, reach’)—it was given new life by Ismet tnonii. On the pattern of gorenek, he created gelenek for ‘tradition’, which has totally replaced an’ane [A], while its adjective geleneksel has done the same for an’anevi [A] ‘traditional’. Other neologisms made with this suffix are olanak ‘possibility’, segenek ‘alternative’, yazanak ‘report’, and tutanak ‘minutes of a meeting’. Apropos minutes, those of the first three Language Congresses (1932,1934,1936) were called Milzakere Zabitlarv, the fourth (1942) Toplantt Tutulgalan (tutulga is the equivalent given for zabitname in Cep Kilavuzu (1935)); the fifth and subse¬ quent ones (1945- ); Tutanaklar. Those of the Congresses of the Republican People’s Party: 1934 Tutulga, 1938 Zabit, 1939 Zabitlar, 1947 Tutanak. -ev/-v. The origins of this suffix lie far from Turkey. In Bashkurt and Kazakh the infinitive ends not in -mek/mak but in - v (preceded by the appropriate vowel after consonant-stems), and in Kirghiz and Tatar -m or -if. The respective equivalents in these languages of aimak ‘to take’ are ahv, aluv, alii, alii, and of gormek ‘to see’ kiiriv, koriiv, korti, ktirti. Hence several neologisms: gorev‘duty’, soylev‘speech’, iglev ‘function’, odev ‘obligation’, sinav ‘examination’, tiirev ‘derivative, by-product’. Another was saylav, Kazakh and Kazan for ‘to choose’, used in the early years of the reform instead of milletvekili or meb’us ‘deputy’. Odev is from odemek ‘to pay’, and for a glimpse of how it struck sensitive Turks we only have to imagine how we would feel if told we should abandon the foreign obligation and adopt a new word constructed from an English root and a German suffix, say paykeit. Nor can one overlook the possibility that odev owes something to the French devoir. As for gorev, this is how it is explained in Eyuboglu’s (1988) etymological dictionary, a work remarkable for its shiftiness: ‘Sozciigiin sonuna getirilen v sesiyle ad tiiretme, seyrek de olsa, Turk dilinde vardir. Edilce-v/edilcev (yapilmasi, edilmesi gereken), Anadolu halk agzinda ar. siinnet kar$ihgi soylenir... Gece-v/gecev (ger<;ekte gece evi, tarlalarda yapilan, geceleyin ekinleri kollamak i<;in kurulan kuliibe)’ 96 Ingredients (Noun-derivation by adding a v, though rare, does exist in the Turkish language. Edilce-v/edilcev (‘what must be done’) is said in popular Anatolian dialect for the Arabic sunned... gece-v/gecev (in fact gece evi, a hut made in the fields and erected for watching the crops by night).) Edilcev appears in Derleme Sozlugii (1963-88) (misplaced at v. 1665) as being recorded for siinnet at Onye in the vilayet of Ordu, which makes ‘Anadolu halk agzinda’ seem a bit of an exaggeration. No explana¬ tion is offered for the peculiar-looking edilce. Nor does Eyuboglu strengthen his case by citing another -v, in gecev, which he himself recognizes as an abraded form of ev ‘house’. To revert to gorev. one can see a connection between the notions of obligation and payment, but why should a noun derived from gdrmek‘to see’ mean ‘duty’? The answer requires a digression. One of Ata(;’s neologisms, invented in 1947, is ko$ul, now widely used in writing instead of §art [A] for ‘condition’. Ata<; extracted it from the expression $art ko$mak ‘to impose a condition’. (Ko$mak, besides meaning‘to run’, is also used transitively in the sense of ‘to attach’, as in ‘ati arabaya ko§tuk’ (we hitched the horse to the cart).) The once unproductive noun-suffix -ul occurs in a few words such as fdkiil ‘sediment’ and kumul ‘sandhill’. Tack it on to ko$- and you have ko$ul, which should mean, if anything, ‘attachment’. But it does not; it means ‘condition’, though it has not replaced $art in the sense of‘prerequisite’. This gives us the clue to gorev. It will be remembered that gormek, besides ‘to see’, means ‘to perform’ (compare the English ‘to see to’). In the old days when ‘duty’ was vazife [A], ‘he has done his duty’ was ‘vazifesini gormu§tur’. Just as ko$ul owes its existence to ko$mak, which in $art ko$mak is no more than an auxiliary verb, so gorev owes its existence to the auxiliary verb gormek. I don’t think that a Turk of any sensibility could bear to say ‘gorevini g6rmii$tur’; it has to be ‘gorevini yapmiftir’ or ‘gorevini yerine getirmi$tir’. The lexicographer D. Mehmet Dogan, however, in his volume of essays (1984:135), perversely combines the Ottoman for ‘to perform’ with this ill-conceived item of Ozturkfe, writing ‘gorevini ifa etmi$tir’. -ey/y is a zombie, like-it and-mef, raised from its long sleep and put back to work by the reformers. Before they got hold of it, it occurred in a handful of words, notably kolay ‘easy’; giiney, common in Anatolian dialects for ‘sunny place’; and kuzay, kozay or kuzey, anciently and in dialect ‘sunless place’. These forms were explained as follows in an illuminating paper by Jean Deny (1937).1 2 KoL, besides ‘arm’, anciently meant ‘hand’, as it still does in much of Central Asia. Gun means ‘sun’ as well as ‘day’: ‘Giin dogdu/batti’ (The sun rose/set). Kuz is the side of a mountain out of reach of the sun. The -ey/y adds the notion of being in the domain of what is denoted by the noun to which it is suffixed. As Deny puts it, ‘Les details que nous venons de donner permettent done, 4 notre avis, de rattacher en toute securite le mot kol-ay a la formation de derives en ey et d’en restituer le sens 1 The Arabic sunna means ‘practice of the Prophet’. Its Turkish form siinnet has the special sense of ‘circumcision’. 2 I am indebted to Professor §ukrii Ei^in for a copy of this article. Ingredients 97 primitif dans ces termes: “qui est expose d Vemprise de la main, qui est sous la main, bien en main, maniable”. ’ Tarama Dergisi (1934) gives kuzey as one of ten possi¬ ble replacements for $imal ‘north’, with a note: ‘Golgede kalan yer man. [= manasina]. “Giiney” ziddi’ (In the sense of place staying in shadow. Opposite of giiney). Kuzey (the non-harmonic form being due to analogy with giiney) and giiney are now usual, even in speech, for ‘north’ and ‘south’ respectively. The reformers, who were unlikely to have seen Deny’s paper (and if they had?), added -eylayly indiscriminately to verb-stems, nouns, and adjectives. From ol- ‘to be, happen’, uza- ‘to extend’, and dene- ‘to try’, they made nouns: olay ‘incident’, uzay ‘space’, and deney ‘experiment’; from yap- ‘to make’, the adjective yapay ‘artificial’; from yon ‘direction’ and yiiz ‘face’, the nouns yoney ‘vector’ and yiizey ‘surface’; from the adjective diiz ‘flat’, the noun diizey ‘level’. In 1938, when the Turkish Navy required names for its new ‘Ay’ class of submarine, the same hard¬ working suffix was added to the verbs atil- ‘to assail’, batir- ‘to sink’, saldir- ‘to attack’, and ytldtr- ‘to daunt’: Atilay, Batiray, Saldtray, Yildiray? It is hard to deduce from these examples what the function of -ay was supposed to be. Yiizey, diizey, and birey'individual’ all appear in Cep Ktlavuzu (1935). Birey, which had already appeared in Tarama Dergisi (1934), is of more respectable ancestry than the rest of what we might, taking a leaf from the Turkish Navy’s book, call the Ay class of neologism. Birey is the form that biregii ‘individual’, used in Ottoman between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, would have taken if it had survived. -ge. Turkish has an abundance of word-building suffixes but not all of them seem to have a specific meaning.4 Take -ge/ga, for instance. In OT it was used mostly as an ending of names of birds, animals, and insects, many still extant: karga ‘crow’, fekirge ‘locust’, ‘grasshopper’. It also appears in a few other nouns, such as siipiirge ‘broom, dalga ‘wave’, yonga ‘wood chippings’. The reformers used it to make a number of neologisms, including dizge'system (diz- ‘to arrange in order’), genelge ‘circular, notice’ (genel ‘general’), gosterge ‘indicator’ (goster- ‘to show’), and the question-begging sdmiirge ‘colony’ (sdmiir- ‘to exploit’). -gi/ki is a respectable old suffix, forming numerous nouns from verb-stems: from duy- ‘to feel’, duygu ‘feeling’; from as- ‘to hang’, aski ‘hanger’; from sar- ‘to wrap’, sargi ‘bandage’. A number of successful neologisms have been made with it, such as bitki ‘plant’ from bit- ‘to grow’, and tepki ‘reaction’ from tep- ‘to kick’. One neolo¬ gism formed with it, however, has a bad name among conservatives: from et‘to do’, etki ‘influence’, ‘effect’, which has largely supplanted tesir [A]. The word exists in the speech of several regions of Western Anatolia, but not in that sense; its meanings are ‘ill treatment, distress, excessive difficulty’, less commonly 5 Saldtray was commissioned in July 1938, the other three in 1939, Battray in March, Atilay in May, Ytldtray in August. 4 One is reminded of the Esperanto suffix -um: ‘suffixe peu employ^, et qui re<;oit differents sens aislment sugg£r£s par le contexte et la signification de la racine & laquelle il est joint’ (Zamenhof t93i: 177)- 98 Ingredients ‘witchcraft’. But the conservative scholar Faruk Timurta§ (1979: 47-8) sees more in it to object to than that: Yardimci fiillerden prensip itibariyle yeni kelimeler turetilmez ... ‘etmek’ kelimesi, bazan halk agizlarinda, zikredilmesi uygun olmayan veya ayip sayilan kelimelerin yerini tutmak tizere kullanilir. Mesela, buytik ve kii^iik abdestini yapmak ‘etmek’ kelimesiyle anlatihr. Boyle bir kullanih; Istanbul agzinda ve yazi dilinde de goriilur ... Hi$bir agizda etki’ye ‘tesir’ manasi verilmemi^tir. Bu mana sonradan Kurumca uydurulmu^tur. In principle, new words cannot be derived from auxiliary verbs... The word etmek is sometimes used in popular dialects to replace words that it is unseemly or considered shameful to mention. For example, answering either call of nature is conveyed by the word etmek. Such a use is seen both in the spoken language of Istanbul and in the written lan¬ guage ... In no dialect has etki been given the sense of tesir. This sense has been concocted ex post facto by the Language Society. -im/m. The flood of new words incorporating this suffix seems to have started with anlam, which has now virtually displaced mana ‘meaning’. Anlam was one of fourteen alternatives offered in Tarama Dergisi (1934), which noted it as used instead of mana in the vilayet of Konya. Derleme Sozlugu (1963-82), however, shows anlam as used in just two villages, not for mana but for anlayi$ ‘sagacity’ or duygu ‘feeling’. Those who recorded it must have either misread their notes or doctored them, -m originally indicated a single action, as in oliim ‘death’, dogum ‘birth’. Long before the language reform got into its stride, this limitation had begun to weaken, Yanm ‘a single act of splitting’, a verbal noun of yar- ‘to split’, became a concrete noun, ‘half’. The meaning of alim, from al- ‘to buy’, was extended from a single act of purchase to purchasing in general, and the same happened with satim from sat- ‘to sell’, so that ‘alim satim’ came to mean not a single transaction but buying and selling, business. Similarly dikim from dik- ‘to sew’ means not just one stitch but sewing. The suffix has been enormously pro¬ ductive: basim ‘printing’, dagitim ‘distribution’, anlatim ‘narration’, oturum ‘session’, sefim ‘election’, iiretim ‘production’, and countless more. Kalitim ‘hered¬ ity’ was not made from a verb but from Ata^’s kafir‘inheritance’. Ortam ‘environ¬ ment, ambiance’ and toplum ‘community, society’, which one sees and hears all the time, are equally illegitimate, ortam being from the noun orta ‘middle’, and toplum from the adjective toplu ‘collective’. -it/t. An ancient addition to verb-stems: gepf‘mountain-pass’ or ‘parade’ from gef‘to pass’, if it (archaic) ‘drink’ from if- ‘to drink’, binit (provincial) ‘animal for riding’ from bin- ‘to mount’. It has produced many serviceable neologisms: konut ‘abode’ from kon- ‘to settle’, tapt ‘vehicle’ from tap- ‘to carry’, dikit ‘stalagmite’ from dik- ‘to plant’, sarkit ‘stalactite’ from sark- ‘to hang down’, yakit ‘fuel’ from yak- ‘to burn’. The ingenious soyut‘abstract’ from soy- ‘to strip’, which has replaced miicerret, was due to Ata^, but to replace its antonym miifahhas ‘concrete’ he added the suffix to the adjective som ‘solid’, not to a verb-stem. Nobody seems to mind; soyut and somut make a neat pair. Orgtit for ‘organization’, however, has its critics. Ingredients 99 It is the result of cross-breeding between orgti ‘plait’ and organ, a late nineteenthcentury borrowing from the French organe. Orgen, a face-saving Turkicization of organ, will be found in dictionaries but is unlikely to be encountered in real life. A postage stamp issued around 1988 featured Organ Bagi$i ‘Organ Donation’, and Organ Nakli'Organ Transplant’. This followed in the tradition of an earlier stamp dedicated to Sitma Eradikasyonu ‘the eradication of malaria’. Orgiit has acquired a sinister connotation, being used mostly of terrorist organizations, except by some newspapers, notably Cumhuriyet, that are committed to Oztiirkfe. The remainder of the press and most individuals prefer the Ottoman te$kilat or the French organizasyon. Other current malformations using -it/t are fcaqif‘contrary’, one of Ata^’s, from the postposition karp ‘opposite’, and q:f ‘equal’ from the noun q ‘mate’. Tarama Dergisi (1934) gave qif as used in Istanbul for ‘equal’, but the absence of the word from the twelve-volume Derleme Sozlugu (1963-82) makes one wonder. -mef/maf. A vice to which the reformers were prone was the use of suffixes that had ceased to be productive—that is, that had anciently been used in word forma¬ tion but were no longer. How would English-speakers receive some Big Brother’s decree outlawing the Latin ‘corporation’ and replacing it with ‘bodydom’? Kamile Imer (1976: 57) has a pertinent observation: Tiiretme yoluyle yeni sozciikler yapihrken dilin i$lek eklerinin kullanilmasi dil devrimin bir an once, uzun sure istemeden ba;anh olmasim saglayabilir. frleklik yitirmi§ eklere bu dzelliklerini yeniden kazandirmak gut; olmakta, belki uzun sure gerekmektedir. Bu nedenle i§lek olmayan eklerle turetilen sozciikler, kokii bilinse bile, dili kullananda kavramla ilgili <;agrisima yol at;amamaktadir. Ornegin, -mafl-mef ekine (sarmaf ‘bigudi’, dilmaf ‘terciiman’, v.b. [ve ba$kalari]) Turk Dil Devriminden sonra i$lerlik kazandirilmaya <;ali§ilmaktaysa da, §imdilik bu ekle yapilan sozciiklerin dilin i§lek ekleriyle yapilan sozciikler oraninda tutunmadigi goze <;arpmaktadir. When new words are being made by derivation, the use of the productive suffixes of the language can ensure that the language reform is successful very soon and will not take a long time. It becomes difficult, and may take long, to restore this quality to suffixes that have lost their productivity. That is why words derived with the help of unproductive suffixes, even if their roots be known, are incapable of arousing in the user of the language any relevant association of ideas with the concept. For example, since the start of the lan¬ guage reform there have been attempts to put the suffix - maf/mef (as in sarmaf ‘hair-curler’, dilmaf ‘interpreter’, etc.) back to work. At the moment, however, it is obvious that words constructed with this suffix have not caught on to the same extent as words constructed with the productive suffixes of the language. She does not make it clear that sarmaf and dilmaf are not on the same level. While dilmaf is an old word (though its Turkish origin is far from certain), sarmaf, from sar- ‘to wrap’, was a failed attempt to replace bigudi, a French word still current among Turkish coiffeurs and their clients. If dilmaf really is Turkish, it is the only example of -maf attached to a noun and one of the very few examples until xoo Ingredients modern times of its forming anything other than names of foodstuffs (Clauson 1972: pp. xliii, 500; Doerfer 1963-75: ii, §1010.) Among these names are tutmag, bulamag, and ugmag. Redhouse (1890) defines tutmag as a dish made of stewed mutton in gobbets, with chickpeas. In Redhouse (1968) it is fresh-made pastry cut in strips and cooked with meat and yoghurt. Redhouse (1890) ingeniously but unconvincingly explains it as tutma ag, ‘holding-food’, and either recipe would clearly hold one till the next meal. Doerfer (1963-75: ii, §876) records another popular etymology, no less ingenious but even less plausible: Alexander the Great and his comrades had lost their way and were wandering about with nothing to eat. They said to him, ‘Bizni tutma ag (Don’t keep us hungry).5 Where¬ upon Alexander, having been supplied with the name, invented the dish. The other two names of dishes are formed from the verbs bulamak ‘to bedaub’ and ugmak ‘to rub and crumble in the palm of the hand’, both being thick soups. Other pre-modern appearances of -mag are in donemef‘bend in a road’ (don‘to turn’), kamrtmag ‘lever’ (kamrt- ‘to bend’) and yirtmag ‘vent in a garment’ (yirt- ‘to tear’). Except in demeg ‘official statement’ {de- ‘to say’), which may owe something to demarche, it has been little used by the reformers. Gunlemeg, which was Tarawa Dergisis (1934) offering for tarih ‘date’, was spasmodically used during 1934 in draft legislation, notably in the clause ‘Bu kanun ne$ri giinlemecinden muteberdir’ (This law is in force from its date of publication), but every giinlemecinden was replaced by tarihinden before reaching the statute book. -men/man. One word that had to go was miitehassis ‘expert’, not just because its initial m and its lack of vowel harmony branded it as Arabic but also because it was too easily confused with another Arabic borrowing, miitehassis ‘sensitive’. Its replacement was uzman, said to have been invented by Koprulii, although he never used it himself. The first syllable was an old word for ‘skilled craftsman’ and the second might have been the intensive suffix seen in gigman ‘fat’ and kocaman ‘huge’. But it was not; it was another -man, long familiar to Turks in the word vatman ‘tram-driver’ (sometimes used in place of asansorcii for the operator of a lift or elevator). For the benefit of readers born since the heyday of the tram or streetcar, it should be explained that vatman is the Turkish spelling of the French wattman, compounded of the two English words watt, the unit of electric power, and man. Fired by the success of uzman, the reformers went around adding the suffix to verb-stems, producing such misbegotten words as ogretmen ‘teacher’, yazman ‘sec¬ retary’, okutman ‘lector’, and segmen ‘voter’. Koruman ‘trustee’ is found in legal lan¬ guage. Less successful was the attempt to replace cerrah [A] ‘surgeon’ by yarman, from yarmak ‘to split’. Its failure was due to the good sense of Turks at large and of Turkish surgeons in particular, who prefer to call themselves operator anyway. 5 For bizni, see von Gabain (1950: 92). Alexander the Great’s men of course spoke Old Turkic, not modern Turkish. Ingredients 101 This suffix also helped to inspire the creation of tegmen ‘first lieutenant’.6 After the promulgation of the Surnames Law in 1934, Ibrahim Necmi, for many years Secretary-General (‘Genel Yazman’) of the Language Society, chose ‘Dilmen’ for his surname, compounded of Turkish dil ‘language’ and non-Turkish man. The suffix appears also in barmen ‘barman’ (which by the mid-1990s had acquired a feminine form, barmeyd, replacing the earlier kadtn barmen), formen ‘foreman’, sportmen ‘sportsman’, and rekortmen ‘record holder’. It is not clear why the last syllable of all these words except uzman (the inspiration for the man of which is plausibly reputed to be the second syllable of German Fachmann ‘expert’) is -men rather than -man as the laws of vowel harmony and the analogy of vatman would have led one to expect. It may be significant that Russian uses rekordmen, whereas recordman is a French invention (1889). In the early 1950s the facade of the Inonii Stadium in Istanbul bore the slogan ‘Sportmen, Centilmen Insandir’ (The sportsman is a gentlemanly person), but sporcu is more usual nowadays. Other proposed -men words, which fell by the wayside, were savagman ‘warrior’, of men ‘vengeful’, bakman ‘inspector’, ugman ‘aviator’, and okmen ‘judge’. -sel/sal is the most controversial of all the products of the language reform. In brief, its origin is the suffix of the French culturel and principal. The purifiers wanted a native substitute for the Arabic and Persian adjectival suffix -i as in tarihi ‘historical’ and siyasi ‘political’. They failed to find one, because Turkish, thanks to its use of nouns as qualifiers, has no need of an all-purpose adjectival ending. -li does not fit the bill; tarihli means ‘having a history’, as in ‘$anh tarihli bir $ehir’ (a city with a glorious history), or ‘bearing a date’ as in ‘4 Haziran tarihli mektubunuz’ (your letter dated 4 June), but it does not translate ‘historical’ as in ‘his¬ torical research’, the Turkish for which is ‘tarih ara?tirmalari’. As Ziya Gokalp (1923: 112-13) pointed out, the use of -i ought to be and easily can be avoided;7 there is no need to say ‘Edebi Hafta’ for ‘Literary Week’, the Turkish for which is Edebiyat Haftasi ‘Literature Week’. For ‘vital problem’ we don’t have to say ‘hayati mesele’ when we can say ‘hayat meselesi’. Gokalp was not calling for the total abandon¬ ment of -i; he would never have given up akli, for example, the meaning of which—‘pertaining to the mind, intellectual’—was quite different from that of akilli ‘possessed of mind, intelligent’. 6 Miil&zim, the Ottoman term for‘lieutenant’, also meant ‘adherent’, so the teg- must be from tegmek (a variation on degmek'to touch’), given in Tarama Dergisi (1934) for temas etmek‘to make contact’ and presumably the source of Ataturk’s teget ‘tangent’. Tegmen may well be an echo of segmen (from the Persian sagban ‘dog-keeper’), originally the keepers of the Sultan’s hounds, later incorporated in the Janissaries. Segmen or seymen survives as the name for the armed and mounted young men in regional costume who feature in processions at weddings and on festal days. 7 Gokalp made two exceptions: when it was added to Turkish names to make musical terms, such as varsagi (now written and pronounced varsagi), a ballad-metre of the Varsaks, a Tatar tribe of southern Anatolia, and when it was added to Turkish nouns to make adjectives of colour, such as kurfuni ‘leaden’ and giimiifi ‘silvery’, for it then became a Turkish suffix, words thus formed being exclusive to Turkish. 102 Ingredients Unaware or heedless of Gokalp’s advice, the reformers took the ending of the French culturel and used that.8 It was not until 1983 that Ttirkge SozliXk came clean and showed both kultiir and kultiirel as borrowed from French; previous editions had shown the noun but not the adjective as a French borrowing, the implication being that the latter was derived from the former by adding a Turkish suffix. In 1934 Ahmet Cevat Emre put a French -el on to ses ‘voice’ to make sesel for ‘vowel’, to which for good measure he added -ik for the French -ique, making seselik for ‘vocalic’. He also manufactured a word for ‘euphonic’, yeggavlik, from OT yeg ‘good’ and gav ‘voice’, plus -lik for the French -lique as in vocalique. Let no kindhearted reader mistake the lik of yeggavlik for the Turkish abstract-noun suffix; the lack of vowel harmony—lik not lik—shows that it is not.9 From the obsolete sti ‘army’, Ibrahim Necmi Dilmen manufactured stiel for ‘military’ in 1935 (Ulus, 1 July 1935; Levend 1972: 423). Until then, Turkish had had no denominal suffix in l,'° but that did not deter the reformers. The Arabic siyasa ‘politics, policy’ being, as they claimed, obviously derived from the Turkish (actually Mongolian) yasa ‘law’, they saw no need to discard its Turkish form siyaset. But siyasi ‘political’ was another matter, because for some inscrutable reason they never claimed that the Arabic suffix -i, whence Turkish -1, was originally Turkish. They therefore replaced siyasi with siyasaV1 Next for the high jump was milli ‘national’. The Arabic millet having been dis¬ lodged by the Mongolian ulus, milli became ulusal—that is to say, the ‘pure Turkish’ replacement for the Arabic milli is half Mongolian and half French, a curiously outlandish way for a Turk to express ‘national’.12 Then there was kudsi ‘holy’, the Arabic kudsi. Kuds plus -al should have added up to kudsai, but, as the first syllable happened to resemble the Turkish kut ‘good luck’, the d of kudsi was replaced by the t of kut, while its s was retained, and ‘holy’ became kutsal. As the excuse for this word’s existence was that it derived from kut, if one subtracted kut the remaining sal had to be a suffix. Coupled with the fact that the -al of siyasal and ulusal as well chanced to be preceded by an s, that seems to have been what 8 The more obdurate Oztiirkfeciler such as Haydar Ediskun deny this, vigorously but unpersuasively. See the controversy between him and Zeynep Korkmaz in the pages of Turk Dili, 15-16 (1965-7). See also Tahsin Banguoglu, ‘Nispet Sifatlari ve -sel, -sal’, four articles in Dunya, 15-17 Sept. 1965 and 19 Sept. 1965, repr. in Banguoglu (1987: 264-77). 9 These two words, seselik and yegfavlik, occur in Emre’s paper presented to the Second Kurultay: ‘Turkcenin Hint-Avrupa Diliyle Mukayesesi’, Kurultay 1934 (= Turk Dili, 11 (1935), 2-12). 10 OT had a deverbal adjective-suffix: -I after vowels and -il/il after consonants, as in kiziTted' from kiz- ‘to be hot’. " Gallagher (1971: 169) says that siyasal was ‘actually an innovation of the nineteenth century Tanzimat period for the Arabic-Turkish siyasi’, a dubious assertion for which he gives no evidence. 12 The National Library has retained its name of Milli Kutuphane. Some years ago the author asked the Librarian how it had escaped becoming Ulusal Kitaplik. With evident glee she replied that its name was enshrined in its charter, which no one had got round to amending and, since the state takeover of TDK in 1983, with luck no one ever would. It is fair to add that a reputable youngish Turkish scholar with whom I discussed the alternative words for ‘library’ did not find Milli Kutuphane more impres¬ sive than Ulusal Kitaplik, but generously told me that kutuphane not kitaplik is still regularly used of one’s personal library. Ingredients 103 launched -sel/sal on its merry way: elektriksel and fiziksel, kimyasal ‘chemical’, tarihsel ‘historical’, and so on ad infinitum. The lusty infant was not slow to extend its sway; having started life as a denominal suffix, it soon became deverbal too: gorsel ‘visual’ from gor- ‘to see’, with a matching ifitsel ‘auditory’ from ifit- ‘to hear’. For ‘educational’, egitimsel has an even less legitimate rival: egitsel. And now, to change the metaphor, in the written language -sel sweeps all before it.13 It has even produced a noun, sorunsal from sorun ‘problem’, to translate the French la problematique, English ‘problematic(s)’. Those who claim -sel/sal as an authentic Turkish suffix adduce two words in justification: uysal ‘compliant’ and kumsal ‘sandy tract’. Uysal must be connected with uy- ‘to conform’ (OT ud- ‘to follow’), but no one knows quite how. One sug¬ gestion is that the ancient deverbal suffix -/ was added to uy-sa- ‘to want to conform’; compare susa- ‘to thirst’ and miihimse- ‘to regard as important’ and its Ozturkfe replacement dnemse- (Lewis 1988:230). The trouble is that -se- was never added to verb-stems but only to nouns and adjectives. As for kumsal, while Redhouse (1890) and the Kamus give it only as a noun, all recent dictionaries, includ¬ ing Redhouse (1968), give it also as an adjective, ‘sandy’. One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that it was not an adjective until the reformers set out to justify their new adjective-suffix -sel/sal. Time was, to express ‘psychological illness’ you would say ‘ruh hastahgi’ (illness of the psyche). Now you say ‘ruhsal hastahk’ (psychish illness), unless you prefer ‘psikolojik hastalik’. The use of -sel/sal may speed the task of translation from works in West European languages, but it goes against the grain of Turkish and has markedly affected the style of much modern writing, particularly on techni¬ cal matters. ‘Literary criticism’, once ‘edebiyat tenkidi’, became ‘edebiyat elejtirisi’, then ‘yazin elejtirisi’. Some writers talk about ‘yazmsal electin’, which is a direct translation of ‘literary criticism’ but to a literate Turk does not convey criticism of literature but criticism which is literary. Kamile Imer (1976: 57) strikes a warning note: Dil devrimi sirasmda herhangi bir kavramin anlatiminda, onu kar$ilayacak sozciik dilde bulunamiyor ve tUretilemiyorsa yabanci dildeki anlaminin etkisi altmda yerli dil ogeleriyle <;evirme i§i yapilabilir. Bu yontem her ne kadar yerli dil ogelerinin kullammini saglamaktaysa da 90k bayvuruldugunda dilin kendi anlatim ozelliklerinden uzakla§masma yol a^abilecegi du$iinmeli ve zorda kalmadik<;a ba$vurulmamalidir. C^unkii her ulusun kavramlari adlandtn§indaki tutum—kimi benzerlikler olmasma kar;m—genel olarak degi§iktir. In the course of language reform, if, in expressing any concept, no word corresponding to it can be found in the language or can be derived, it is possible to do a job of translation with elements of the native language under the influence of its meaning in the foreign lan¬ guage. One must bear in mind that, while this method ensures the use of elements of the native language, if it is resorted to overmuch it can open the way to the language’s becom- 13 The author’s excuse for changing the metaphor is that, although Turks do not go in much for puns, he imagines that some lovers of the older language must have reflected that sel [A) means ‘torrent’. 104 Ingredients ing distanced from its own characteristic modes of expression, and it should not be resorted to unless one is forced to it. For every nation’s attitude in its way of finding names for concepts—despite the existence of some resemblances-—-is generally different. Many Turks dislike -sel intensely. Nurullah Ata<;, the great neologizer, used it and defended it, but he did not like it. Perhaps significantly, it was not mentioned in a TDK brochure on word construction published in 1962 (Dizdaroglu 1962).14 Yet its defenders include many writers and scholars whose opinions cannot be brushed aside. This is what Fahir lz,15 lexicographer and historian of literature, has to say about it: Bir de -sel eki var ki, o ba$h ba$ma bir yazi konusu olabilir. Burada kisaca §unu belirteyim ki, bizim bu eke gereksemeniz sinirlidir. Avrupa dillerindeki sifat tamlamalari bizde ad tamlamasi olur. Biz, Avrupa dillerinde oldugu gibi misirsal <;ar§i, denizsel ticaret, demeyiz Mistr^ar^isi, deniz ticareti, deriz. Fransizca ya da Ingilizce degil de Tiirk<;e dii§iinursek tanmsal ilac; yerine tarim ilaci, ftiirsel sanat yerine $iir sanati, parasal sorun yerine para sorunu der de yazariz. Bununla birlikte, kimi durumlarda dilde bu eke gerekseme vardir: sinirsel nefes darligi, tanrisal komedi v.b. gibi. (lz 1984:13) There is also the suffix -sel, which could of itself be the subject of an article. Here let me briefly say this: our need for this suffix is limited. The adjective-groups of European lan¬ guages appear with us as noun-groups. We do not say ‘Egyptian Market’ and ‘maritime commerce’, as in the European languages, but ‘Egypt Market’ and ‘sea commerce’. If we think not in French or English but in Turkish, in place of ‘agricultural chemical’, ‘the poetic art’, ‘monetary problem’, we say and write ‘agriculture chemical’, ‘the poetry art’, ‘money problem’. Nevertheless, in some situations the language does have a need for this suffix, as in ‘nervous shortage of breath’, ‘The Divine Comedy’, and so on. So erudite a man as Aydin Sayili (1978: 468) found -sel useful and necessary: Ozel terimler kullanma ihtiyacimn baskisim kendilerinde hissedenler ve mevcut terimlerin yetersizliginin yarattigi sikmtiyi duymak durumunda bulunanlar iipn sel ve sal eklerinin bir cankurtaran gibi bir^ok gii^luklere <;are getirdigi de bir vakia olarak ortadadir. Bu ekleri biiyuk bir <;ogunluk yadirgamamaktadir. Ilkin sel ile sail tereddiitle kar$ilami§ken sonradan bunlara ah$mi$, yararli olduklanni gbrmu§ ve bunlarda Tiirk^enin selikasina ve estetigine uymayan bir taraf bulundugu du§iincesine iltifat etmemeye karar vermi$ kimselerin sayisi da az degildir. It is a manifest fact that for those who feel a pressing need to use special terminology and who find themselves constrained by the inadequacy of existing terms, the suffixes sel and sal are a lifeline remedying a good many difficulties. A large majority do not find these suffixes strange. There are also not a few people who were at first hesitant about sel and sal but have subsequently grown accustomed to them, seen that they were useful, and decided to disregard the notion that there was something about them that did not conform to correct Turkish usage and the aesthetics of the language. 14 Nor is it mentioned in Korkmaz (1969). In view of Korkmaz’s exposure of its illegitimacy during the controversy referred to in note 8 of this chapter, that is hardly surprising. 15 lz (1984) is a privately printed brochure summarizing the author’s previous writings and lectures on Ozturkfe. Ingredients 105 Peyami Safa, no great admirer of Oztiirk^e, regarded -sel as incorrectly formed and never used it unless he had to, but his taste was offended by having to add the Arabic -»to French words. Reproached by a conservative critic for using fiziksel instead of fiziki for ‘physical’, he replied that he found words such as fiziki, lojiki, matematiki, and muziki irritating, and preferred the forms in -sel/sal (Safa 1970: 189-90). He went on, ‘“Dudaksal” demeyelim de “Dudaki” mi diyelim? Yahut yine buyurun Arap<;aya: “$efevi”! Bu gidi$le oyle olacak gibi’ (Are we not to say dudaksal [‘labial’, from dudak ‘lip’] but dudakP. Or by all means revert to the Arabic: $efevil At this rate, it looks as though that’s how it’s going to be). So, like it or not, Turkish is stuck with it, and the language of the intellectuals moves further and further away from that of the people. Social anthropologists and writers in glossy magazines may talk of country life as ktrsal ya$antt; villagers prefer kir hayati. -tay. This new suffix was extracted from kurultay, originally kuriltay, the form taken in Turkish by the Mongolian kurilta ‘assembly of the nobles’,16 borrowed in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Like the modern reformers who resuscitated it, their forebears must have felt it to be derived from Turkish kurulmak ‘to be set up’ because, in three of the first four citations of the word in Tarama Sozlugu (1963-77)) it is used in conjunction with that verb, one example being ‘Kuriltay kuralim, mejverete oturahm’ (Let us convene an assembly and sit down to take counsel together). Tarama Sozlugu misspells it kurultay, although the correct vocalization is shown in the Kamus.'7 The last citation in Tarama Sozlugu, from a Turkish translation of an eleventh-century Persian-Persian dictionary, deserves quoting in full, not least because it shows that kuriltay was not in use in Turkey in 1789, when the translation was completed: Gavga [Fa.]: Qgilti ve ses ve $amata ve arbede ve karka$a manasinadir ve enciimen ve meclis ve cemaat manasinadir, Qagatayca kuriltay derler. Gavga [P]: Confused animal noises, sounds, hubbub, tumult, dispute; also meeting, assem¬ bly, gathering; in Chaghatay they say kuriltay. One supposes that the last three words of the Turkish apply only to the second set of meanings. Once kurultay was established, its last syllable was added to the originally Middle Persian kamu ‘all’, the Ozturkge for ‘public’, making Kamutay, intended to replace Biiytik Millet Meclisi ‘Grand National Assembly’. The new suffix was also added to the noun yargi ‘decision’ and to two verb-stems, danq- ‘to consult’ and sayi$- ‘to settle accounts’, making Yargitay ‘Supreme Court of Appeal’, Dam$tay 16 From kuri- ‘to gather’ and the suffix -Ita. See Poppe (1954: §163) and Doerfer (1963-75): i, §305). The latter discusses the suggested origins of the final y, one being that the Turks equated the last syl¬ lable of kurilta with toy ‘festal occasion, banquet’. 17 I have corrected the spelling in quoting from Tarama SOzliigii. io6 Ingredients ‘Council of State’, and Sayi^tay ‘Exchequer and Audit’.18 These three survived (though by 1983 Dam$tay had become Dani$ma Meclisi), but Kamutay did not; it never stood much of a chance, because everyone knew Meclis, whereas few had ever heard of the other three institutions or cared what those who did know about them might choose to call them. One oddity should be recorded: kamutay, with a small k, appears in Article 24 of the 1945 Constitution, the Anayasa, where the 1924 Constitution had ‘heyet-i umumiye’ (plenary body): 1924: Tiirkiye Biiyiik Millet Meclisi heyet-i umumiyesi her te§rin-i sani iptidasinda bir sene i^in kendisine bir reis ve ii<; reis vekili intihab eder. 1945: Tiirkiye Biiyiik Millet Meclisi kamutayi her kasim ayi ba$mda kendine bir yil i<;in bir Balkan, U9 Ba$kanvekili se9er. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey in plenary session shall, at the beginning of every November, elect for itself a chairman and three deputy chairmen. Ata<; made an Ozturkfe word for ‘academy’ by adding - tay to the neologism for ‘science’: bilimtay. This won no currency, doubtless because there is no interna¬ tionally recognized Turkish Academy: when scholars wistfully talk about one, as they periodically do, the word they use is Akademi. 18 The former names were respectively Divan-1 Muhasebat or Muhasebat Divam. Temyiz Mahkemesi, ijura-yt Devlet or Devlet §urast, and 8 Concoctions In the Introduction I mentioned three nineteenth-century English neologisms: birdlore, foreword, and folklore. What happened to them? While birdlore sank without trace, so completely have foreword and folklore been accepted into the lan¬ guage that few are aware that they were deliberate inventions. There are parallels in Turkish. Many neologisms have passed away, such as utku for ‘victory’, tun for ‘night’, yazgaf for ‘pen’. On the other hand, a great many neologisms have become so much a part of the Turkish vocabulary that they are used even by the most vehement opponents of the reform, either because they do not recognize that they are inventions or because they know that the older words will not be understood by a mass audience or mass readership. People nowadays say genel because it is the only word they have for ‘general’, umumi being close to obsolescence, though umumiyetle is still used for ‘generally’ alongside genellikle. Some neologisms survive but with meanings other than their inventors intended. Folklor is current in Turkey for ‘folklore’, though young people use it for ‘folk dancing’. The inven¬ tion proposed in Cep Kilavuzu (1935) for tayyare ‘aeroplane’ was ufku, which did not win popular favour, perhaps because it was too reminiscent of ufkur ‘trouserbelt, pyjama-cord’. Ugak, now the only word for ‘aeroplane’, was originally offered in Cep Kilavuzu as a replacement for tayyare meydam ‘airfield’. One would have expected the Language Society to keep records of who invented which neologism and when, but it does not. The result is that, while information about the origin of this or that word may occasionally be gleaned from scholarly works, one is mostly thrown back on anecdotal evidence, either oral or in popular books and articles with no scholarly pretensions. Nor has the Society yet got round to producing the dictionary on historical principles that has been high on its list of priorities since its inception. At the head of the title-page of the first Tarama Sozliigu (1943-57) are the words ‘Tiirkiye Tiirk^esinin Tarihi Sbzliigu Hazirliklanndan’ (Part of the Preparations for the Historical Dictionary of the Turkish of Turkey), but they do not appear in the second (1963-77). Two nonTurkish scholars have gone a long way towards filling the gap, Sir Gerard Clauson with his Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (1972), and Gerhard Doerfer with his Tiirkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (1963-75); why has the Society done nothing? Certainly one reason is that the scholars who should have got on with the task in the middle 1930s were reluctant to follow the ethos of the time by ascribing Turkish origins to words that they well 108 Concoctions knew to be Arabic or Persian. Happily, the Society announced in 1995 that the preparation of a historical dictionary was once more on the agenda. in§allah, we shall see. It will be remembered that three methods were prescribed for producing the words required to make Turkish independent of foreign vocabulary: drawing on the resources of the spoken language (why say ‘commence’ when you can say ‘begin’?), and of old texts (why say ‘Parliament’ when you can resurrect ‘Witenagemot’?), and compounding existing words and suffixes (why use ‘ornithology’ when you can manufacture' ‘birdlore’?). But in addition—though the Society seems never to have sanctioned, much less prescribed, this fourth method officially—the reformers felt free to use their imagination to invent replacements for the doomed Arabic and Persian words. To enlist the help of Lewis Carrol for this final example, why say ‘a white badger with long hind legs and stag-like horns, living chiefly on cheese’ when you can fabricate ‘tove’? The Society published a number of works offering guidance on how to create neologisms.1 2 Few of the reformers seem to have paid much attention to them, or to Sayili’s (1978) brilliant study. The sad truth is that a great many of the new words were the work of people with no qualifications for the job, a category that included a number of the Society’s salaried experts. Nihad Sami Banarh, who was a consultant to TDK’s Technical Terms Com¬ mission, tells of an incident at the Sixth Kurultay, in 1949, which did not find its way into the published proceedings (Banarh 1967). A question was asked from the floor about the principle governing the formation of new technical terms. The ensuing embarrassed silence was eventually broken by Saim Ali Dilemre, the chairman of the Linguistics and Etymology Commission. An amiable doctor of medicine, not of language, he could stand it no longer: ‘Arkada$lar, kemkum etmiyelim. Bizim prensipimiz mirensipimiz yoktu, uyduruyorduk!’ (Friends! Let’s not beat about the bush. We had no principle or anything of that sort. We’ve been making them up as we went along!). Incidentally, one of TDK’s two stock responses when accused of uydurma, ‘faking’ (the other being to deny it) was to claim to be continuing a longestablished Ottoman practice. Many Ottoman words were in fact manufactured by Turks. Nezaket ‘politeness’ looks Arabic but was made in Turkey from the Persian nazuk, which Turks spell nazik and pronounce /nazik/, as if it were an Arabic present participle like katip ‘writer’. Another such Turkish creation was felaket ‘catastrophe’, on the same Arabic pattern as nezaket, from mafluk, which, although it appears in dictionaries of modern Arabic as well as of Persian, is not classical Arabic but a Persian invention, quasi-Arabic for ‘afflicted’, made from the 1 The Language Society did not talk about ‘manufacturing’ but ‘derivation’, tiiretme. The Society’s opponents prefer uydurma ‘making up, faking’ and some of them call Oztiirkfe'Uyduruk^a’ (Fakeish), or ‘Kurumca’ (Turk Dil Kurumu-ish). 2 Agakay (1943), Atalay (1946), Dizdaroglu (1962), Korkmaz (1969), Ozdemir (1973), Hatiboglu (1974)- Concoctions 109 Arabic falak ‘celestial sphere’ and so ‘destiny’.3 In the main, Ottoman creations were made from Arabic roots in accordance with the rules of Arabic. It was not an Arab but a Turk who was responsible for tahtelbahir ‘submarine’ (‘under the sea’, whereas the Arabs use gawwafa ‘diver’). The identity of one such inventor is known: tayyare ‘aeroplane’ was derived from the Arabic ta ra ‘to fly’ by Fazil Ahmet Aykat;, an educationalist and minor poet (1884-1967).4 Critics of the Society called it ‘Alayhlar Dernegi’ (The Regimentals’ Associa¬ tion). Alaylilar was an old-fashioned term for army officers risen from the ranks, as distinct from Mektepliler, officers who had been through military school. Giiltekin (1983: 73-4) defends the former, not very persuasively: Ataturk, dil £ah§malarini sadece uzmanlarin i$i olarak gormedi. Uzmanlarin yalniz ba$larina bunu ba;armalan miimkun degildi. Ama(, konu§ma dili ile yazi dili arasindaki farkltligi ortadan kaldirmak, halkin konu$tugu dili geli$tirmek olunca, bu £ah$malara btitun bilim ve ktiltur emek^ilerinin, hatta halkin da katilmasi bir zorunluluktu. Osmanlicamn tasfiyesi ve Turk^enin geliftirilmesi demokratik bir geli§meydi. Halkin dil c;ali§malarina katilmasi, bu demokratik geli^menin sonucudur. Ataturk did not see working on language just as the business of the experts. It was not pos¬ sible for the experts to make a success of this on their own. Since the aim was to eliminate the difference between the spoken and the written language and to enhance the language spoken by the people, it was essential that all who laboured in the fields of scholarship and culture, and even the people as well, should participate. The purging of Ottoman and the advancement of Turkish was a democratic advance. The people’s participation in the work on language is the consequence of this democratic advance. There are two flaws in the argument. The first is that most people’s participa¬ tion in the language reform was limited to answering the village schoolmaster’s questions, and can rarely have gone beyond ‘Round here we don’t say spades, we call ’em shovels.’5 The second is that there was no excuse for denying the mektepliler a voice in vetting the contributions of all the people, including those who laboured in fields of scholarship other than language—in this context, the alayltlar. The trouble with the alayhlar was that they tended to resort to inventing words unnecessarily, because they gave up too soon on trying to make words from Turkish roots and Turkish suffixes, not having thought deeply enough about either. 3 The adverbial use of the Arabic accusative ending (tanwin), as in resmen ‘officially’ and feklen ‘in form’, gave rise to some solecisms: from Persian pipn‘in advance’came pe$inen with the same meaning, as well as an Arabic feminine plural pe$inat ‘down payment’; from Turkish ayn‘separate’ came aynyeten ‘separately’. More recently, from the Western culture and normal came killturen (culturally) and normalen (normally), both still heard. Then there is yakinen, good Ottoman for ‘certainly’, often used nowa¬ days to mean ‘closely’, as if it were not from Arabic yaqtn (certain) but Turkish yaktn (near). 4 Some of these Turkish inventions were adopted into Arabic. Tayyara, for example, is the usual word for aeroplane in spoken Arabic, though in the written language t3 ira is preferred. 5 One recent contribution made to the language by the people is the growing use of ‘Alo’—the ‘Hallo’ one says when answering the telephone—to mean ‘telephone number’; it can be seen preced¬ ing the number on shop fronts and even on police cars. An older contribution was cankurtaran, lit¬ erally ‘life-saver’, for ‘ambulance’. no Concoctions In the early days of the reform, however, someone must have thought to good effect about the suffix -i which, added to verb-stems, had made nouns or adjec¬ tives such as yazi ‘writing’, dizi ‘line, row’, dolu ‘full’, old ‘dead’. That someone— who, to be fair, may for all we know have been an alayli—had the idea of adding it to more verb-stems. Already in 1934 Tarama Dergisi gave kazi (from kaz- ‘to dig’) for hafriyat [A] ‘excavation’, and am (from an- ‘to call to mind’) for hatira [A] ‘memoire, reminiscence’. The Kamus gives ‘tercume etmek’ (to translate) as one of the senses of fevirmek ‘to turn’, but feviri ‘translation’ is not in Tarama Dergisi— i.e. it was created after 1934. So were ba$ari ‘success’, from ba$armak ‘to succeed’,6 and many other benign neologisms. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gave konu, from kon- ‘to be placed’, as ‘= 1. Saded, mevzu; 2. Husus, bab’ (‘scope’, ‘subject’, ‘matter’, ‘chapter’). Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942) came down in favour of it as the equivalent for mevzu ‘subject’, which by now it has largely replaced.7 It must be emphasized that the neologisms singled out here for criticism are in a minority, though a large one; most of those made by compounding existing words and suffixes are blameless. For ‘computer’, bilgisayar ‘bit-of- information counter’ is neater than the earlier elektronik beyin ‘electronic brain’ or kompiiter, altyapt, literally ‘under-structure’, is surely preferable to the French borrowing enfrastriiktur and, if netice [A] ‘end, result’ had to go, its replacement sonuf ‘latter end’ is not at all bad. Nor is fagn$im ‘association of ideas’, a caique on tedai [A], both meaning ‘mutual calling’. Tekel ‘single-hand’, one of Aksoy’s coinages, has replaced inhisar ‘monopoly’. And there are many more, ingeniously and regularly formed and not intrinsically unattractive. English, unlike Turkish, is an unreformed language; if proof of this statement were needed one has only to consider the two words ‘osteopath’ and ‘psychopath’ and decide how one would explain to a foreign student the meaning of their final syllable. Or why, given the noun ‘destruction’ and the verb ‘to destroy’, the verb belonging to ‘construction’ is not 'to constroy’. English-speakers take that sort of anomaly for granted, but one cannot help thinking that while the Turks were reforming their language they could have been more logical and systematic. In their words for ‘geography’, ‘geology’, and ‘geometry’—cografya, jeoloji, geometri— they still keep three different versions of the Greek ge ‘earth’: c, je, ge. They do have a neologism for ‘geology’—yerbilimi—but not for the other two. Taken as a whole, the neologisms exhibit very little trace of direction or plan¬ ning. Nothing in yazim ‘spelling’, yazin ‘literature’, and yaztt ‘inscription’ gives any hint of what they are intended to mean except that they have something to do with writing. Soru was an old word for ‘question’, rarely used since the seventeenth century until it was resurrected to replace sual [A], but there is no intrinsic reason 6 ‘The secularization of Turkish life finds expression in the replacement of Arabic muvaffak “suc¬ cessful” and mansurox muzajfer“victorious”, originally denoting that God has given success or victory, with Turkish ba$anli and yener, which indicate man’s own achievement.’ (Heyd 1954: 94.) 7 Konu is a caique on a caique: mawdu [A], literally ‘placed, put down’, whence Turkish mevzu, is a caique on the Latin subiectum. Concoctions m why the neologisms sorun and sorum, both derived from sor- ‘to ask’, should mean respectively ‘problem’ and ‘responsibility’ (for which the derivative sorumluluk is more usual). Sorun, incidentally, can be a bit of a nuisance, since it may mean either ‘the problem’ or ‘your question’ (soru-n), and as their genitives look and sound identical (sorun-un, soru-nun) it is a toss-up whether sorunun qozumii means ‘the solution of the problem’, ‘the solution of the question’, or ‘the solution of your question’; similarly, yazintn can be the genitive of yazi ‘writing, article’, or yazin ‘your article’, or yazin ‘literature’, though perhaps this is of no great moment. Another cluster, of words seemingly derived from kur- ‘to set up’, is kurum ‘society, corporation’, kural ‘rule, norm’, kuram ‘theory’, and kurul ‘committee’. Both kuram and kurum are old words. Kuram occurs in DLT with the meaning ‘in order of rank’ (Dankoff and Kelly 1982-5: iii. 147; Clauson 1972:660). Cep Kilavuzu (i935) gives it as a Turkish equivalent for btinye [A] ‘physical structure’. There is no apparent justification for that, any more than for its now meaning ‘theory’, except that somebody or some body said it should. Kurum is recorded in Tarama Sozliigu (1963-77) as occurring in two dictionaries, one of the fourteenth century, the other of the eighteenth and nineteenth, in the sense not of ‘society, corpora¬ tion’ but of‘form, shape’. Since that was the original meaning of heyet [A], used in Ottoman for ‘committee’, kurum may have been resurrected as a caique on heyet. As for kurul, it looks like an arbitrary truncation of kurultay. Kur, given in Cep Kilavuzu as — Heyet = Corps’, could be another such, but the resemblance between it and corps is suspicious. Another and more likely source is suggested by the entry in Cep Kilavuzu under ‘Genel Ba§kanhk Kuru’: ‘= Umumi Riyaset Divam’ ‘General Presidential Board’. Kur for divan could be the French corn, meaning ‘court’, just like divan. The assumption behind the change of vocabulary was that the meaning of neologisms constructed from Turkish roots and suffixes would be readily intelli¬ gible to everybody, unlike Ottoman words; while a Turk might not know mefhum [A] ‘concept’, he could at once understand kavram, manufactured from kavra- ‘to grasp’ plus -m. Well, he might, unless he was from one of the many regions of Anatolia where it means ‘handful’. And when the suffix was itself a neologism he would be even worse off, especially if it coincided in form with a familiar word. Theoretically, while an unschooled Turk could make nothing of miiselles [A], he would immediately understand ilqgen to be a triangle, or could at least guess the meaning from the context. He might if he were a townie, but if he were a villager he would recognize it only as meaning ‘three fallow fields’. A villager from the neighbourhood of Isparta would have no difficulty with ozek, the regular word in those parts for ‘centre’. To most other Anatolians, however, it would mean only the pole of an ox-cart. A townie, knowing oz ‘own’ and ek ‘patch, addition’, would never guess that it was the official replacement for merkez ‘centre’. The old word for ‘conscience’ was vicdan, Arabic wijdan, from the root of wajada ‘to find’. The new word is a caique on that, bulunq from bulun- ‘to be found’ plus the suffix seen in utanq ‘shame’ and sevinq ‘joy’. The snag is that, if 112 Concoctions you were not an Arabic scholar, the most you could make of bulunf was that it had something to do with being found; ‘foundling’? To replace kultiir for ‘culture’, Ziya Gokalp produced hars, the Arabic hart ‘tillage, agriculture’, which never achieved wide currency. Among possible alter¬ natives for it, Tarama Dergisi (1934) offered ekin from ek- ‘to sow’.8 This seconddegree caique is used by some writers but has not superseded kultiir, while kultiirel is probably more usual for ‘cultural’ than ekinsel. To country folk ekin means what it has always meant, ‘crop, sowing’. Plenty of peculiar creations are to be found in Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri, the little book of philosophical and grammatical terminology published in 1942. They include alma$ ‘alternation’, degpnim ‘mutation’, koram ‘hierarchy’, sonurgu ‘result’, uran ‘industry’, simge ‘symbol’, imge ‘image’, and yontem ‘system’, ‘method’. An odd collection; without spending too much time on it, one may say offhand that the first syllable of alma$ is more likely to derive from the French alternation than from al- ‘to take’, that degpnim results from a deliberate maiming of degif- ‘to change’, and that there is no discernible reason why uran should mean ‘industry’. As for koram, it is shown in Tarama Dergisi (1934) as meaning muahharen ‘sub¬ sequently’ in three Siberian dialects. How it came to be offered as an equivalent of‘hierarchy’ is anybody’s guess. The suffixes of alma$ and sonurgu confound the imagination. More worth spending a little time on are the last three words in the above selection, simge, imge, yontem, not only because they are all current today but because they have been trawled from the lowest depths to which the language reformers ever sank. The headwords (in bold italic) of the following notes on the more controver¬ sial or otherwise interesting neologisms are in alphabetical order, except for two pairs that are closely connected: fogun comes after zor, and imge after simge. Araf ‘means’ and gereq ‘material’ both appear in Cep Kilavuzu (1935), araf being glossed as ‘= Vasita = Moyen’, geref as — Levazim, malzeme = Materiel’, and both are current. Like vasita before it, araf is used for ‘vehicle’ as well as for ‘means’, and is the fashionable new term for ‘car’. Timurta$ (1979: 26) does not approve of either araf or gerep, araf was made from ara ‘space between’, but -f, he says, is no longer productive as a denominal suffix. He should have known, however, that the average Oztiirk^eci had a mind above that sort of consideration. As for geref, he assumes that it was arbitrarily made by adding -f to gerek ‘necessary’ minus the final k, a change for which there is no justification. There is, however, another possibility: that its basis was not gerek but the verb germek ‘to stretch’, and that it was intended as a caique on madde [A] ‘material’, which is from the Arabic root M-D-D ‘to stretch, extend’. Whatever its origin, it could serve as an example of a word apparently made from a non-existent root and a dubious suffix. 8 TDK published two books on the theme of language and culture. The first, Baydur (1964), was entitled Dil ve Kultiir, the second, Koksal (1980), Dil ile Ekin. Concoctions 113 Bagtmsizlik is the established replacement for istiklal [A] ‘independence’. Cep Kilavuzu (1935), in the second part, from Turkish to Ottoman, has baginsiz for ‘independent’, while Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942) has baginla$ma for ‘inter¬ dependence’. It is not clear who changed the n into m, and when, but it had hap¬ pened by 1955. -im is a deverbal suffix, but there is no verb bag-, so the root has to be the noun bag ‘tie, bond, impediment’. That is not its only fault, as Timurta§ (1979: 41) notes: ‘Bagimsiz kelimesi, sadece, bakimsiz kelimesinin fonetik degi§iklige ugrayan §ekli olabilir. (Tiirk<;ede iki sesli arasmdaki L’lar yumu§ayip g olmaktadir: toprak-i topragi, ak’tan agarmak gibi) (The word bagimsiz can only be the form taken by the word bakimsiz [‘uncared-for’] when it undergoes pho¬ netic change. (In Turkish, intervocalic ks are softened, becoming g: toprak-i becomes topragi, and agarmak is from ak)). All one can say for bagimsizhk is that its meaning is not so unguessable as that of its partner dzgurluk (see below). Bay, Bayan. ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs, Miss, Ms’. The purpose of this innovation was to replace the old titles Bey and Hamm, which followed the name, by titles preceding it, as in the Western languages. In OT, bay meant ‘rich, a rich man’, and ‘nobleman’. It was so used in Turkish, and the phrase ‘bay u geda’ [P] (rich man and beggar) occurs in Ottoman poetry into the nineteenth century. Both bay and bayan are found in Tarama Dergisi (1934), but not as replacements for Bey and Hamm. Nor do they appear in Cep Kilavuzu (1935), which must have been in the press on 26 November 1934, when the Grand National Assembly was debating Law No. 2590: ‘Efendi, bey, pa§a, gibi lakab ve unvanlarm kaldirildigma dair kanun’ (Law on the abolition of such appellations and titles as efendi, bey, and pasha). Several Deputies suggested that Bay and Bayan could be used in place of Bey and Hamm, and Dahiliye Enciimeni, the Assembly’s Committee on Home Affairs, took the same view: Tiirkler hususi muhabere ve muhaverelerde bir kimseye ve cemaate hitap ederken adm dniinde gelmek $artile erkege, ere yani erki§iye bay, kadina da bayan diye hitap edebilirler. Bu tabirler oz tiirk<;edir ve Turklerin ilk devirlerinde kullamlmi§tir. Teveffuk ve imtiyaz ifade etmez.9 When addressing somebody or a group of people in correspondence and conversation, Turks may address a male, a man, that is to say, a male person, as ‘bay’, and a woman as ‘bayan’, on condition that it precedes the name. These terms are pure Turkish and have been used in the first era of the Turks. They do not express superiority or privilege. There is no clear reason why bayan, a Mongolian word for ‘rich’, was chosen to be the feminine counterpart of bay. Eyuboglu’s etymological dictionary ignores it. Ornekleriyle Ttirkfe Sozliik (1995-6), the Ministry of Education’s new fourvolume dictionary, does not give etymologies, but the compilers’ feelings about 9 TBMM Zabit Ceridesi (1934), Devre iv, Cilt 25: 40-52, at 52 (Minutes of the Grand National Assembly, session 4, vol. 25). The odd ‘erkege, ere yani erkifiye’ (a male, a man, that is to say, a male person) must be due to inadequate editing, understandable in view of the speed with which this law was rushed through. 114 Concoctions Ozturkge in general and bay in particular are evident from the sole example they give of its use, a couplet by Necip Fazil Kisakurek, who was, to put it mildly, a rabid reactionary: Bir §ey koptu benden, her §eyi tutan bir $ey; Benim adim Bay Necip, babaminki Fazil Bey. Something has been wrested from me, something embracing everything; My name is Bay Necip, my father’s was Fazil Bey. Bey has in fact never fallen out of use. Men named, say, Hasan Ozturk have gen¬ erally been called Hasan Bey in speech and in private correspondence, though the envelope of the letter would be addressed to Bay Hasan Ozturk or, more recently, Sayin Hasan Ozturk. Similarly, letters for his wife Ay§e, though addressed to Bayan or Sayin Ay$e Ozturk, will begin ‘Sevgili Ay$e Hamm’. The use of‘Bey’ has indeed extended lately: taxi-drivers used to be addressed as §ofor Efendi, but in the late 1990s the usual form is Jjofor Bey. Boyut ‘dimension’ might have been derived from Turkish boy‘length’ by suffixing -it, but in fact it was one of Atatiirk’s ingenious essays at providing native ety¬ mologies for Ottoman words, in this case bu’ut, Arabic bitd. Aksan (1976: 25-6) defends it in a footnote of which the first sentence is mendacious, while the second tries moral suasion to make the first acceptable: Sozciik Ar. buufan Tilrk^ele^tirilmi^i degil, boy’dan tiiretilmi? yeni bir ogedir. Onu Ataturk’iin ttirettigini de burada eklemeliyiz. The word is not the Turkicized form of Arabic buut, it is a new item derived from boy [‘length’]. Here we should add that it was Ataturk who derived it. Budun. Erer (1973: 187-8) has a tale to tell (from Ali Fuad Ba$gil) about Cemil [Bilsel], who taught Devletler Hukuku, International Law, at the School of Law in Ankara. On his way to class one day in 1932, he ran into Sadri Maksudi and asked him how to translate the name of his subject into Ozturkfe, and was immediately told, ‘Budunlann ara yargisi’. Budun is given in Taratna Dergisi (1934) as an OT word for ‘people’; the true form, as we have seen, was bodun. Yargi is shown in the same work as meaning adalet ‘justice’ or hukiim ‘judgement’, but Sadri Maksudi was misusing it in the sense of hukuk ‘law’. Cemil went into his class and, slightly misremembering what Maksudi had said, began his lecture with ‘Budunun ara yargisi...’. The students, understanding the first two words in their normal mean¬ ings—‘of his/her/your thigh’ and ‘space between’—and recognizing yargi as some¬ thing to do with yar- ‘to split’, began to giggle. The unfortunate lecturer hastily began again, with ‘Devletler Hukuku ...’, but it was too late; by that time the class was out of control. Degin, dek. These old words for ‘until’ have never quite died, though they have long had difficulty in competing with kadar [A], and still do, in spite of the Concoctions 115 encouragement given to their use by the language reform. ‘From Istanbul to Edirne it’s level ground all the way’ can be expressed as istanbul’dan Edirne’ye degin/dek/kadar hep diiz yerlerdir’, but saying ‘degin’ or ‘dek’ in such a sentence sounds not so much Ozturkfe as provincial. In writing they are more frequent, but not as common as kadar. Denli. This word, anciently tenlig ‘equal’, ‘as much as’, appeared in Ottoman as denlil, but by the late seventeenth century it had been driven out of literary use by kadar. The reform resurrected it, but while ‘Ne denli?’ (How much?) and ‘bu denli’ (this much) are seen in writing, as in ‘Bu denli onemli mi?’ (Is it so impor¬ tant?), in conversation almost everybody sticks to ‘Ne kadar?’ and ‘bu kadar’. Doga has not totally ousted tabiat for ‘nature’, though its adjective dogal ‘natural’ is more common in writing than tabii. In speech, tabii remains in full use for ‘of course’, ‘naturally’, though in writing it is often replaced by ‘dogal olarak’. Dogal appears in Tarama Dergisi (1934) as found in Konya for gubar [A] ‘dust’, though with a query. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives doga for mizac ‘temperament’, and Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942) gives it for ‘nature’, together with dogal for ‘natural’. The compilers of the latter work may or may not have known that doga already existed in various regions of Anatolia with such diverse meanings as ‘kid’, ‘turkeycock’, ‘small-eared lamb born with horns’, and ‘the flat upper surface of a knuckle-bone’. Timurta? (Bozgeyik 1995: 76) makes an interesting non-grammatical point: Bati dillerinde ‘nature’ var, ‘dog-’ manasina Latince bir kelimeden geliyor. Halbuki bizim inam;imiza gore ‘tabiat’ dogmuyor, yaratiliyor. Demek ki bu da, mefhum bakimindan, mana bakimindan yanliy Biz ‘doga’ diyemeyiz. Qiinkii tabiat kendiliginden dogmu§ degil. Cenab-i Hak tarafindan yaratilmi§tir. The Western languages have ‘nature’, which comes from a Latin word meaning birth. According to our belief, however, what is called ‘nature’ is not born but created, which means that this [word doga] is wrong, conceptually and semantically. We cannot say‘doga’, for nature was not spontaneously born; it was divinely created. Egemenlik. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) defines it as ‘= Hakimiyet = Souverainete’. Eyuboglu (1988: 102) explains egemen as ege or iye ‘owner, master’ plus -men. Tarama Sozlugii (1963-77) shows eye or iye as in use from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, but Eyuboglu spoils it by citing egemen as used ‘halk agzmda’ (in the popular language) for ‘master’, an assertion not borne out by Derleme Sozlugii (1963-82). Nor does he explain how the intervocalic g of egemen escaped softening to g. As egemenlik is obviously derived from the Greek hegemonia (which Ziya Gokalp had long ago borrowed as hegemonya), we need spend no more time on it. It should be noted, however, that it appears on the wall of the Grand National Assembly chamber in the slogan ‘Egemenlik Kayitsiz fjartsiz Milletindir’ (Sovereignty belongs unrestrictedly and unconditionally to the Nation), with an attribution to Atatiirk. But Atattirk never said that; the word he used for 116 Concoctions sovereignty when he enunciated the formula was hakimiyet, in keeping with the Ottoman nature of the rest. In his Ozttirkfe period he said ‘Egemenlik kayitsiz $artsiz Ulusundur’, leaving the two middle words in Ottoman. Ko$ul for ‘condition’ was not invented until nine years after Atatiirk’s death, nor has any one-word substitute for kayitsiz yet been devised. E$gudum ‘coordination’ is a much criticized word, omitted by at least two dictionaries, Dogan (1988) and Ornekleriyle Ttirkge Sozltik (1995-6). £? is ‘mate’ and giidiim is ‘direction’, a noun derived from gut-, originally ‘to drive (animals) to pasture’, more recently ‘to manage, to direct’ (‘gudumlii mermi’ means ‘guided missile’). E$gtidtim has its following, but most people involved in such matters prefer koordinasyon. Evrensel ‘universal’. This looks as if it were deliberately fabricated to resemble its West European equivalent, and so it was, but the closeness of the resemblance was a stroke of luck for whoever first thought of attaching the bogus -sel to the ancient and respectable evren. Evren is a genuine old word for ‘universe’, explained by Clauson (1972:13-14) as presumably a derived noun from evir- ‘to turn’: ‘if so, the general connotation is of something which revolves; hence “the firmament” which was regarded as a revolving dome ...’. No doubt via the idea of ‘coil’, it also meant ‘large snake’, ‘dragon’, in which sense it was used in Ottoman from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth. Ttirkfe Sozltik (1988) defines evren as the totality of heavenly entities, creation, cosmos, with no mention of snakes or dragons, though it does include the charming old evren pulu, literally ‘dragonscale’, for ‘mica’, now mika. Genel is shown in Cep Kilavuzu (1935) as ‘= Umumi = General’. Dogan Aksan’s defence (1976:32) of genel—the conventional one that it was formed by suffixing -el to gen, OT ken ‘wide’—does not explain why an adjective needs reinforcing by an adjectival suffix. Aksan does his best, however, by casually throwing in the words ‘gen admdan genet in tiiretili$i’ (the derivation of genel from the noun geri), doubdess hoping that the reader will have forgotten that he has made it perfecdy clear in his previous paragraph that gen was an adjective. In the recent innova¬ tion genelde, genel is used as a noun. This looks like a caique on the English expres¬ sion ‘in general’, which is what it means. Gereksintne, Ata^’s neologism for ihtiyaf ‘need’, is a puzzle. Gerek means ‘neces¬ sary’ or ‘necessity’, but it is not easy to see what -sin- is supposed to mean, especially as this is the only instance of it. There was an OT suffix of the same shape; added to ulug ‘great’ it made ulugsunmak ‘to consider oneself great’, but, if that was what Ata<; had in mind, how did he get from ‘consider oneself necessary’ to ‘need’? The word can only be regarded as an aberration, but it and, even more, gereksinim are used (though good writers prefer gerekseme, unless they remember the old hacet), to an extent that shows Timurta$’s (1979: 51) judgement Concoctions n7 on it to have been over-optimistic: ‘Dilimizin ne gibi bir ihtiyaci vardi ki, “gereksinme” kelimesi uyduruldu? “ihtiya^” varken gereksinme’ye muhta? olacagimizi hi<j sanmiyorum’ (What sort of need did our language have that led to the fabricating of gereksinme? While we have ihtiyag I don’t think we shall need gereksinme). The question he should have asked himself was how much longer will we have ihtiyaf. tlging ‘interesting’. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives ilgi for the Arabic alaka ‘interest’ and miinasebet ‘relationship’. It was not an invention; it is a legitimate derivative of il- ‘to tie loosely’ and ‘to touch’. Its adjective ilging, however, is far from legitimate, manufactured as it was from ilgi by adding -ng, a suffix previously attached only to verb-stems. Ata$ cannot be blamed for this one; his offering for interessant (in 1955) was iling, properly derived from il- on the analogy of numerous existing words such as seving ‘joy’ from sevin- ‘to be pleased’, and gulling ‘ridiculous’ from gtil- ‘to laugh’. It is a pity that, whereas iling, one of Ata^’s relatively few correctly formed inventions, never caught on, the linguis¬ tically monstrous ilging did. The probable reason for its success is that people associated it with ilgi, which they knew with the meaning ‘interest’, while iling conveyed nothing much. The Ottoman for ‘interesting’ was alakabah$ [AP] ‘interest-giving’, modernized as alaka uyandinci ‘interest-waking’, but most preferred enteresan [F]. Some still stick to enteresan, but ilging is regularly used even in conversation. Okul ‘school’. Under mektep, Tarawa Dergisi (1934) gives Okulag as having been recorded at Urfa. The entry under medrese is fuller: Okulag (‘Oku’ koktine Tag, lak’ yer eki getirilerek yapilmi$. ‘Yayla’ve ‘ki§la’da oldugu gibi son sessiz du§erek ‘okula’ §ekli de vardir.) Okulag (made by the addition of the suffix of place -lag/lak to the root oku [‘to read’]. With the dropping of the final consonant, there is also the form okula, as occurs in yayla and ki$la.)10 Yes, but never before had -lag/lak/la been suffixed to a verb-stem. The received story of the origin of this most firmly entrenched of all Oztiirk^e words is told by Besim Atalay (1940: 40-1): Bu kelime Yunancaya benzetilerek yapilmami$tir ... Ankarada Siyasal Bilgiler Okulu apldigi zaman Ataturk’e bir tazim telgrafi ^ekilmif, bundan pek ho§nut olan O Btiytik Adam bir cevap verilmesini istemi?, fakat mektep kelimesi yerine tiirkije bir kelime arami$lar, o siralarda (Urfa)dan Dil Kurumuna bu anlamda okula kelimesi gelmi?, kendisine bu soylendigi zaman <;ok begenmi$ ve mektep i<;in en giizel karfilik olmak uzere kabul buyrulmu$. Aradan bir ka<; gun ge^tikten sonra kelimenin sonundaki a sesi atilarak okul $eklinde kullamlmasim emretmi$ler. 10 Yayla, earlier yaylak, means ‘summer pasture’, from yaz ‘summer’, while kt$la, from fcif ‘winter’, means ‘winter quarters’ and then ‘barracks’. n8 Concoctions This word was not made on the analogy of the Greek [schole, whence ultimately French ecole] ... Atatiirk was sent a congratulatory telegram on the opening of the Ankara School of Political Sciences. Very pleased, he wanted a reply to be sent, but they lacked a Turkish replacement for mektep ‘school’. Around this time the word okula, with that meaning, came to the Dil Kurumu from Urfa. When Atatiirk was told this, he liked it a lot and it was accepted by him as the best equivalent of mektep. A few days later, he directed that the final a of the word should be dropped and the word used in the form okul. And indeed Cep Kilavuzu (1935) gives ‘Okul = Mekteb = Ecole.’ Tahsin Banguoglu (1987: 303), however, has a more circumstantial story, in no way inconsistent with Atalay’s (apart from the latter’s first sentence) but adding two pieces of information: the identity of the correspondent from Urfa who had claimed that okula was a real word currently used in his native city, and the fact that it was no such thing: Dikkat ediniz, burda inkilap hareketinin bilhassa hizi Arap^aya kar§idir. Arap^a kelimeleri atmali da, ne gelirse gelsin. CJunkii Arap<;anm hakimiyetinden bikrm§ bir nesil. Onun yerine Fransizcasi gelse olur. Schola Latince. Biri diyor ki ‘Efendim bu bizim okumak mastarmdan gelir.’ Bir ba$kasi, daha kurnazi, ‘efendim diyor, bizim Urfa’da okula derler mektebe’. Ben do^enttim henuz, Dil Fakiiltesinde, dedim ki ‘bu okula kelimesi eger Urfa’da mektep manasma varsa ben kendimi asarim, bu Fakultenin kapisma’... Ben Tiirk^e kelime yapimi hakkmda bilgime dayanarak konu$uyordum. Ama sonradan yine Kurumdan biri kulagima egildi: ‘Bizim Urfa mebusu Refet uydurdu’ dedi... Ondan sonra okula demi§ler, daha sonra okul demi^ler, sonundaki a'yi atmi$lar. Mark this well: the thrust of the reform movement is specifically against Arabic. Arabic words have to be discarded come what may, for this is a generation that is fed up with the domination of Arabic. If the French equivalent were to replace it, that’s fine. Schola is Latin. Somebody says, ‘My dear sir, it is is from the stem of our okumak'. Someone else, someone craftier, says, ‘My dear sir, in my native Urfa they call school okula! I was a lecturer at the time, in the Language Faculty, and I said, ‘If this word okula exists in Urfa in the sense of school, I shall hang myself from the Faculty gate.’... I was speaking on the basis of my knowledge of Turkish word formation. But subsequently someone else from the TDK whis¬ pered to me, ‘It was Refet, our Deputy for Urfa, who made it up.’... After that, they said okula. Later on, they said okul, chucking away the final a. Some people’s refusal to face facts is well exemplified in Eyuboglu (1988: 237): OKUL, tr. Okumak’tan ok-ul/okul. Koke gelen ul ekiyle soz iiretme: og-ul/ogul, ko§ul/ko§ul (Kir. ko§ul-ta§il/kari$mi§, kari$ik), yumul yumul (halk ag.). OKUL, Turkish. From okumak, ok-ul/okul. Word production with the suffix ul coming to the root: og-ul/ogul, ko$-ul/ko$ul (Kirghiz ko$ul-tapl ‘mixed, confused’), yumul yumul (popular speech). Was there ever such a farrago? The stem of okumak is not ok- but oku-. If the suffix is -ul, the addition sum is wrong; oku- plus ul makes not okul but *okuyul. If the root of okul is the verb-stem oku-, its suffix must be l. Nor is ogul ‘son’ Concoctions 119 divisible into og and ul." Enlisting the misbegotten ko$ul in support of okul can only be described as impudent. What yumul yumul means in popular speech is not immediately ascertainable, as the expression seems to be unknown to the lex¬ icographers or any of the author’s Turkish friends. In short, the article can fairly be described as an attempt at blinding the reader with nescience. Dogan Aksan (1976:39) sees no fault in okul, which he explains as derived from oku- and the suffix were it not for Banguoglu’s account of the word’s origin one might almost have believed him. Olanak is the Oztiirkge for imkan [A] ‘possibility’. Adile Ayda says of it and of olasilik.'2 icat edilen yeni bir kelime Turk dilinin kurallanna gore yaptlmt? olsa bile ^agri^im yolu ile ho? olmayan, ho?a gitmeyen bir ?eyi veya kelimeyi hatirlatiyorsa, u<; be? adamdan ba?kasmm bu kelimeyi benimsemesi miimkun degildir. olanak ile olasi kelimeleri bu alanda en iyi brneklerdir. ‘Olanak’ kelimesi Turk^eyi iyi bilen, zevk sahibi bir Turk i$in firkin gortinen, kulaklari tirmalayan bir kelimedir. Neden? (Jmnku insana, ?uur plantnda degilse bile, ?uuralti plantnda ‘nak’ hecesi ile biten bunak, avanak kelimelerini hatirlatmaktadir. even though a newly invented word has been constructed in accordance with the rules of Turkish, if, by an association of ideas, it is reminiscent of some unpleasant or distasteful thing or word, it is impossible that it should be adopted except by a handful of people. The best examples in this category are olanak and olasi. For a Turk who knows Turkish well and has taste, olanak is a word that looks ugly and offends the ear. Why? Because it reminds one, if not on the conscious then on the subconscious level, of words ending with the syllable nak bunak [‘imbecile’] and avanak [‘gullible’]. Olasilik, one of Ata^’s inventions, has made great inroads on the domain of ihtimal [A]. Some Turkish-English dictionaries will tell you that olasilik, like ihtimal before it, means ‘probability’, but Turkish cannot express that concept in a single word; ihtimal in fact conveys a lesser likelihood of realization than imkan ‘possi¬ bility’. The proof-text is Hisar (1966:199): ‘ihtimalleri imkanlar halinde duymaga ba?layinca’ (when he began to feel that the maybes were possibilities). In standard Turkish -esi/asi is chiefly used for curses (Lewis 1988:115); kor olasi does not mean ‘it is possible/probable that he will go blind’, but ‘may he go blind!’ An accurate substitute for muhtemel [A], the adjective of ihtimal, is belkili (characterized by ‘perhaps’), though few use it. But all the West European languages have words for ‘probable’ (wahrscheinlich, sannsynlig, probabile), and one would not be surprised if the meaning of olasi were gradually to shift towards that of ‘probable’ rather than of ‘maybe’. " For an effective demolition of the theory that it might be, see Doerfer (1963-75: ii. §82). 12 Quoted in Ya^ayan Tiirkfemiz (1981: ii. 62-3). The second of the three volumes of this spirited, entertaining, and occasionally vituperative compilation on the language reform, published by the conservative newspaper Tercuman, is devoted to ‘Uydurma, yanli? yapilan, yanli? manalandirilan, yanli? kullamlan, Turk^eyi bozan, ne oldugu bilinmeyen kelimeler’ (Words that are fake, wrongly constructed, given wrong meanings, wrongly used, ruining Turkish, of unknown pedigree). 120 Concoctions Oran, oranti. Oran is an old word for ‘measure’, ‘proportion’, or ‘moderation’. The reform has fixed it in the meaning of‘ratio’, in which use it receives unusual praise from the conservative Temel Tiirkfe Sozluk (Tulum 1985-6): ‘Kullamlmamasi biiyuk uziintii sebebi olacak kelimelerdendir’ (It is one of those words that it would be a great inconvenience not to use). Oranti, the new term for‘proportion’, was derived from it by the illegitimate addition of the deverbal suffix -ti. Ornek, ornegin. The first of these has been current for centuries with the meaning ‘pattern, example’. Nobody seems to have taken exception to it until Atatp, seeking a replacement for mesela ‘for example’, thought of adding to ornek the old instru¬ mental suffix -in. For some reason this evoked much criticism, partly because a good Turkish way of expressing that already existed: soz geli$i. It was during the ensuing controversy that ornek was charged with being a borrowing from Armenian, which it pretty certainly is not. The word is now part of the language, though there are people who, not feeling quite at home with it, use the old and the new together, saying ‘mesela ornegin’, literally ‘e.g. for instance’. Ozgurluk, Ata^’s successful replacement for hiirriyet ‘freedom’, is a mess, both in form and in meaning. Oz is ‘self’ and gtir is ‘abundant’. It could be that the form he first thought of was dziigur,li which he then decided would be more euphonious without the first u, but ‘abundant of self’ is hardly ‘free’. Aksan (1976:47-8) puts up his usual spirited defence of the indefensible. He finds reason to believe that ozgiirluk was invented before ozgiXr, in which case oz is an adjective qualifying giirluk and the word is therefore ‘kurallara uygun bir birle$tirme’ (a combination in accordance with the rules). Maybe so, but what can it mean other than ‘pure abundance’? Cer¬ tainly not‘freedom’. Emin Ozdemir (1969:23), another zealous partisan of Ozturkge, puts up an ingenious apologia for dzgur(luk) in which he implicitly acknowledges that no one could guess what it means. He begins by saying that the trouble lies with the writers and language experts who oppose the reform and have not dwelt sufficiently on the structure of Ozturkge words. He goes on: ‘Bilindigi gibi bile$ik sozciiklerin bir boliigiinde... bile$tirilen sozciikler sozluk anlamlarindan uzakla$ir. Akbaba, demirba$ orneklerinde oldugu gibi, Qzgur sozcugiindeki durum da boyledir’ (As is well known, in one category of compound words ... the words compounded become remote from their dictionary meanings. Just as in the ex¬ amples akbaba and demirba$,14 so is it with ozgtir). That is to say, a knowledge of the meanings of their components is no help in determining what the compounds mean. This may be expected with natural words that have a history of their own, but not with a word that one man deliberately invented. 13 A bapbozuk construction (see Lewis 1988: 259-60). 14 Akbaba, literally ‘white father’, means ‘vulture’. Demirbaf, ‘iron-head’ and so ‘stubborn’, was the epithet applied by the Ottoman chroniclers to Charles XII of Sweden. After his crushing defeat at Poltava by Peter the Great of Russia in 1709, he took refuge in Turkey, where he remained till 1714. It was presumably because he outstayed his welcome that demirbaf came to mean fixtures and fittings, the contents of an inventory. Concoctions 121 Saptamak. This verb is Cep Kilavuzu’s (1935) replacement for tespit etmek'to estab¬ lish, confirm’. Whoever devised it was playing the 1930s game of finding what might have been the Turkish etymon of the Arabic word for which a replacement was being sought. There was a suffix -ta-, appearing in the archaic yastamak ‘to lean’ and yastamak ‘to grow old’, superseded since the fifteenth century by yaslamak and ya$lanmak respectively. So, if saptamak had ever existed, its modern equivalent would probably have been saplamak. That, however, exists in presentday Turkish with the meaning ‘to thrust, pierce’. But your true Oztiirkgeci has no difficulty in disposing of that kind of objection. Aksan (1976: 48) notes that there is a Kirghiz word saptamak, meaning, among other things, ‘to wish, claim’. ‘Turkiye Tiirk^esinde saptamak’a yeni bir anlam yuklenmi§, bu da yadirganmami?, tutunmu§tur’ (In the Turkish of Turkey, saptamak has been given a new meaning, and this has not been considered odd but has caught on). Saytn. An old derivative of saymak‘to count, to esteem’, meaning‘highly regarded’, obsolete by the end of the nineteenth century. Cep Kilavuzu (1935) dug it up as an alternative to mubeccel and muhterem ‘revered’, ‘honoured’, and it is regularly used before the surname in addressing men or women, having steadily gained ground from Bay and Bayan. Fewer and fewer bus-conductors have addressed their pas¬ sengers as ‘Baylar’ since the late 1970s, the preference being for the old-fashioned ‘Beyler’. It is a pity that Saytn is not used as a noun, otherwise its plural could have made a neat expression for ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’. There is a modern folk-tale about a Minister of Education’s visit to Sivas. Among the welcoming committee were all the local mayors, whom he addressed as ‘Sayin Muhtarlar!’ The first muhtar, taking saytn to be the imperative of saymak ‘to count’ (in military parlance, ‘to number off’), said ‘Bir!’ ‘Iki!’ said the second, ‘0$!’ said the third, and so on. Simge and imge. For timsal [A] ‘symbol’, Cep Ktlavuzu (1935) proposed sim. This is recorded as used for ‘sign’ in the vilayet of Adana, though, in view of the number of Arabs living in that region, the resemblance to the Arabic sima in the same sense is more than a little suspicious. It never caught on, perhaps because the sort of people who talked about symbols were the intellectuals, to whom sim was, if anything, the Persian for ‘silver’. So it was given a bit more individ¬ uality by the addition of the -ge seen in fekirge ‘grasshopper’ and siipiirge ‘broom’, and as simge it is in active use, being more popular among intellectuals than the French sembol. (There is even a Hotel Simge in Istanbul, down the road from the Pera Palas.) It has an adjective simgesel ‘symbolic’ and a derived verb simgelemek ‘to symbolize’. And imge? It was put up as the Oztiirkfe replacement for hayal [A] ‘fancy, image’, its alleged origin being the OT im ‘password’, with the addition of the same -ge. The connection between ‘password’ and ‘image’ seems tenuous, but one only has to spell out imge and the French or English image to see the true etymology. 122 Concoctions Subay ‘officer’. This word was a borrowing into Azeri15 from Mongolian, in which language it first meant ‘sterile’, then ‘childless’, then ‘light cavalryman’ (because he travels the fastest who travels alone), then ‘(cavalry) officer’ (Doerfer 1963-75: iii, §1225). In Azeri it means ‘bachelor’. It was brought to Turkey by immigrants from Azerbaijan and is used in several places in Anatolia with the same sense and also that of‘lone, childless’. Tarama Dergisi (1934) lists it among possible equivalents for munferit ‘isolated’. Terim ‘technical term’. Onat, a respectable enough scholar apart from his obses¬ sion with the Turkish origin of Arabic, said (1952: 49-50) it was not a corruption of the French terme but was the Kirghiz form of the word appearing in the Turkish of Turkey as derim ‘assembly, gathering’; the form with initial t was chosen, he said, because derim would have looked like part of demek'to say’. And how do you get from ‘gathering’ to ‘technical term’? ilim, belli bir konu ile ilgili bilgi toplulugu oldugu gibi, terim de ilim ve sanatlann <;e§itli bahislerini, meselelerini ayn ayn adlar altmda derleyip toplayan bilim sozleridir; nitekim terim kelimesi de btitiin bu sozleri birlefik bir adla anlatmaya yaradigi i<;in bir bilim sozti olarak kabul edilmi§tir. As science is the totality of informating relating to a specific subject, so terim is the scientific expressions that collect and assemble the various topics and problems of science and the arts under separate names. So indeed terim has been accepted as a scientific word because it serves to express all these words by a common name. Which is rather like saying ‘library’ when you mean ‘book’ or, to use a closer analogy, ‘dustbin’ when you mean ‘rubbish’. Uygarltk. Medeniyet ‘civilization’ was of Arabic derivation, though it was a nineteenth-century Turk who did the deriving. The Ozturk$e replacement found for it was uygarltk, an arbitrary coinage based on the name of the Uyghur, a Turkish people who established an advanced civilization in Eastern Turkestan in the tenth to twelfth centuries. So it has far less claim to being pure Turkish than medeniyet, which still holds its ground. The adjective medeni continues in use in the legal term ‘medeni hal’, a translation of the French etat civil ‘marital status’, sometimes modernized into ‘medeni durum’. On the northern approaches to Izmir one sees notices erected by the Kar§iyaka municipality, reading ‘Yayaya Saygi Uygarliktir’ (Respect for the Pedestrian is Civilization). Assuming an idiot-boy expression, the author asked two affable taxi-drivers the meaning of uygarltk, and after briefly conferring they agreed that uygar meant the same as modern or gagda$ (contemporary). It emerged that they did not associate uygarltk with medeniyet, which they both knew, though the author did not try their patience by asking them to define it. 15 Azeri is the name of the people (and, with the suffix - ce, the language) of Azerbaijan. One wishes that BBC newsreaders would stop giving it the vowels of‘canary’ instead of‘mastery’. Concoctions 123 Ya$am, yaqanti. The first of these neologisms was intended to replace hay at [A] ‘life’, which it has not totally done; in fact one sometimes hears a non-intellectual talking about his or her life as ‘ya$am-hayatim’. Ya$anti was intended to mean ‘way of life’, a sense already conveyed unambiguously by ya$ayt$, or ‘experience of life, what one lives through’. It is far from being universally popular, because a number of words in -nti express unpleasant ideas: bulanti ‘nausea’, boguntu ‘suffocation’, falkanti ‘agitation’, garpinti ‘palpitation’, ka^inti ‘itching’, kusuntu ‘vomit’, sikmti ‘embarrassment’, supriintu ‘sweepings’, tiksinti ‘disgust’, uztintu ‘dejection’. Those who do not like ya^anti say that to them it conveys not ‘experience of life’ but ‘hayat bozmasi’ (an apology for a life). Not all words in -nti are distasteful—e.g. gezinti ‘stroll’—though pleasant examples are few and far between. Yontem, the neologism for ‘method, system’, has largely supplanted usul [A] and even metot, the French methode. Whoever devised it took yon, still existing in popular speech in the sense of‘direction’, and ostensibly added the suffix seen in erdem ‘manly virtue’. A word meaning directionness or directiondom may not seem a valid equivalent for ‘method’, and indeed it is not. In fact I am morally certain that its second syllable is really the second syllable of the French systeme. In case you think my moral certainty no better than an unworthy suspicion, let me tell you what somebody dreamed up to replace the Ottoman kiyas-i mukassem ‘dilemma’. It was ikilem, compounded of iki ‘two’ and the lemme of French dilemme. High marks for ingenuity, few for linguistic purity. The same can prob¬ ably be said of dnder‘leader’; Tarama Dergisi (1934) shows it as used at Polatli, but Derleme Sozliigii (1964-82) does not show it at all. It looks awfully like on ‘front’ plus the second syllable of English leader. Zor [P] ‘force’ and its Oztiirkfe derivatives zorunlu, zorunluk, and zorunluluk have unseated mecburi [A] ‘obligatory’ and mecburiyet [A] ‘obligation’. All one can say for zor and its offspring is that, though their initial z brands them as non-Turkish, they are not so conspicuously non-Turkish as mecburi and mecburiyet. The puzzle here is what the -un is supposed to be doing, and how the suffixes -lu and -luk came to be attached to a non-existent noun, for zorun will not be found in the dictionary. The -un is the old suffix of the instrumental case, as in Ata^’s neolo¬ gism ornegin ‘for example’, and in gtictin ‘by force’, a genuine Turkish synonym of zorun, still in use in the late nineteenth century. The un of zorun is not to be confused with that of zorunda, in which the «(«) is the third-person suffix and which after an infinitive means ‘under an obligation to...’, like the earlier mecburiyetinde. (Jogun, unlike its sister zorun—they share the same suffix—is in the dictionary (though rarely appearing anywhere else), with the meaning ‘often’. Its abstract noun fogunluk is in full use, in the sense not of ‘frequency’ but of ‘majority’, replacing ekseriyet [A]. 9 Technical Terms The Language Society did not forget that Atatiirk had wanted the work on tech¬ nical terms to continue. In 1948 it began publishing glossaries for subjects as varied as statistics and cycling, metallurgy and volleyball; they are listed in Brendemoen (1990: 490-2). Special tribute must be paid to the compilers of Orta Ogretim Terimleri Kilavuzu (1963), which provided Oztiirk(e equivalents of scientific terms for middle schools, with indexes in Ottoman, French, Latin, Greek, English, and German. No less impressive in Matematik Terimleri Sozlugu (1983) (‘Dictionary of Mathematical Terms’), a book of over 500 pages. Most of these glossaries, compiled as they were by large editorial bodies, bear no indication of authorship. This one was the work of just two people: Dogan Coker and Timur Kara^ay. But what came of it all? Two examples picked at random from the latter work: it proposed yoneyler i$lencesi for ‘calculus of vectors’, and kortaf for ‘coordinate’, but these words do not appear in recent dictionaries, neither the Society’s own Tiirkfe Sozliik (1988) nor the Ministry of Education’s Ornekleriyle Tiirkfe Sozliik (1995-6). It is sad to leaf through these products of manifest ingenuity, industry, and devotion, and to see how little effect they have had; truly love’s labour lost. This chapter discusses the terminology of medicine and law and, more briefly, computing, as being of the most general interest. There are also some remarks on the vocabulary of music, which is a special case. In Ottoman times, the medical vocabulary was Arabic. Ozon, in his dictionary of foreign words (1961a) says that after the sixteenth century, when the Jewish refugees from Spain had migrated to Turkey and taken over the medical profes¬ sion, a number of hybrid Spanish-Italian (‘Ispanyol-italyan kirmasi’) medical terms came into use. Unfortunately he gives no examples. In 1838 the Tibhane, the School of Medicine founded in 1827, and the Cerrahhane, the School of Surgery founded in 1832, were amalgamated and moved to Galatasaray. In his speech (which began ‘CJocuklar!’ (Children!)) at the opening ceremony, Sultan Mahmud II said: i§bu ebniye-i aliyeyi Mekteb-i Tibbiye olmak ttzere te;kil ve tertip ederek Mekteb-i Tibbiyei Adliye-i $ahane tesmiye ettim ... Bunda Fransizca olarak fenn-i tibbi tahsil edeceksiniz ... Sizlere Fransizca okutmaktan benim muradim lisani tahsil ettirmek degildir. Ancak fenn-i tibbi ogretip refte refte kendi lisammiza almaktir. (Onver 1940: 940) Technical Terms 125 Having fashioned and arranged these fine buildings to be the medical school, I have named it the Imperial School of Forensic Medicine... Here you will study the science of medicine in French ... My desire in having you taught in French is not to have you study French. It is just to teach you the science of medicine and to bring it gradually into our own language. For many years the teaching went on in French, most of the teachers being nonTurks, but eventually the students began agitating for Turkish to become the medium of instruction. In 1861 they managed to have some articles on this theme published in the Turkish-language press, which their teachers countered with art¬ icles in the French-language press. After a long war of words, Salih Efendi, the Supervisor of the School, took the side of the students, and in 1866 the Ottoman Medical Society, Cemiyet-i Tibbiye-i Osmaniye, was founded, its first task being to produce a Turkish medical dictionary. From 1870 onwards, medical students had their wish and were taught in Turkish or, to be more accurate, in Ottoman (Uludag 1940). That did not do them much good; they soon found that a know¬ ledge of French was indispensable, particularly because many of them completed their studies in France. As the Turkish saying goes, ‘o gun bugundiir’ (it’s just the same today). In medical parlance, alopecia is alopesi, whereas in common speech it is sagsizlik ‘hairlessness’. Caesarian, a doctor’s word, is sezaryen, whereas (umbilical) cord, a mother’s and midwife’s word, is gobekbagt ‘navel-tie’, with gobek kordonu as a more genteel alternative (see Table 9.1). TDK produced a glossary of medical terms, Hekimlik Terimleri Ktlavuzu, in 1978, with a revised and enlarged edition in 1980. It was a well-meaning work, inspired by the wish to free medicine ‘biiyiiden, gizemden’ ‘from spells and mystery’. It does not appear to have made a great difference, one reason being that much of it was Oztiirkfe that was not intelligible to all. Thus for ‘illness’ it uses sayrthk throughout, a word that had been dropped centuries before in favour of hastahk and that, though resurrected in Cep Ktlavuzu (1935), never caught on.1 Another reason is that not every practitioner of medicine wants to see it freed from the spells and the mystery; this the author realized some years ago, on reading the following in an Istanbul pathologist’s report: ‘Mikroskobik [sic] bulgular: Stromasi odemli endometrium dokusu gorulmektedir. Guddeler sayica artmi? olup, psodistratifiye silendrik epitelle dojelidir. Arada epiteloid histiositler, lenfositler ve Langhans tipi dev hiicrelerden olu?mu$ yuvarlak^a alanlar mevcuttur’. (Microscopic findings: Endometrium tissue with oedematous stroma visible. The glands have increased in number and are covered with pseudo-stratified columnar epithelium. Also present are epitheloid histiocytes, lymphocytes, and roundish areas formed of Langhans-type giant cells). But worse was to come. Yaman Ors (1989:18) quotes a specimen of the use of foreign terms in what purports to be medical Turkish: ' The first meaning of hasta [P] was ‘tired’. Its use in Turkish for ‘ill’ is exactly paralleled by the French use of fatigue(e) as a euphemism for malade. Technical Terms 126 Table 9.1. Names of ailments Ailment Doctor’s term anaemia anemi kansizlik (‘bloodlessness’) appendicitis apandisit apandis yangtsi (‘appendix inflammation’) cancer kanser incitmebeni (‘don’t hurt me’) cataract katarakt perde [P] (‘curtain’) cholera kolera diabetes diyabet $eker hastahgi (‘sugar disease’) dysentery dizanteri kanh basur [A] (‘bloody haemorrhoids’) gallstones safra (A) glaucoma glokom karasu (‘black water’) haemorrhoids emeroit basur leucaemia losemi kan kanseri (‘blood cancer’) lockjaw tetanos kazikh humma/atef (‘fever with stakes’) malaria malarya sitma (‘heating’) pneumonia pnomoni akciger yangist (‘lung inflammation’), batar (‘piercing’) rabies kuduz rheumatism romatizm scurvy iskorbut Popular term ta$lan stye tuzlubalgam (‘salty phlegm’) arpacik (‘little barley-grain’), itdirsegi (‘dog elbow’) tuberculosis tiiberkuloz tumour tumor ur typhoid tifo kara humma (‘black fever’) womb rahim [A] dolyatagi (‘foetus-bed’) verem [A] (‘swelling, tumour’) Yapitmda ‘(Antiepileptik ila<;larin) yayilmasmin bloke edilmesinde rol oynayan noronal etkileri arasmda eksitasyon e$igini yiikseltmeleri, refrakter periyodu uzatmalari, presinaptik ve postsinaptik inhibisyonu potansiyelize etmeleri sayilabilir. Ayrica norofizyolojide spontan repetitif de$arjlara e§lik eden bir durum olarak bilinen posttetanik potansiyalizasyon olayim inhibe ederler; bu olay iizerindeki inhibitor etkileri ile de§arjin yayilmasmi onlemeleri arasmda ili§ki bulunabilir’ diyen bir yazar, ‘epilepsi turlerinin uluslararasi simflandirilmasini’ verirken, ‘psikoduyusal (!) semptomatoloji gosterenlerden’, ‘ikinci olarak generalize olan kismi tutariklardan’ soz a^iyor.2 ‘Among the neuronal effects that play a part in blocking the spread of antiepileptic drugs, there may be counted: raising the excitation-threshold, extending the refractory period, and potentializing pre- and post-synaptic inhibition. Moreover, they inhibit the occurrence of post-tetanic potentialization, which is known in neurophysiology to be a situation accompanying spontantaneous repetitive discharges; there may be a relationship between their inhibiting effects on this occurrence and their preventing the spread of the discharge.’ 2 Ors has no compunction about identifying the writer and his book: O. Kayaalp, Rasyonel Tedavi Yonunden Tibbi Farmakoloji (Ankara: Garanti Basimevi, 1978). The quotation is from pp. 968-9. Technical Terms 127 The writer of the above, in the course of giving ‘the international classification of the vari¬ eties of epilepsy’, speaks in his work of‘those exhibiting psychosensory (!) symptomatol¬ ogy’, and ‘secondarily generalized partial seizures’. Ors then lists a number of individual words, mostly English, used by Turkish doctors, among them schedule, bowel movement, rounds, background, rule out, frac¬ ture, arterial tension, fever, handle etmek, history aimak (‘to record a patient’s medical history’), and idantifie etmek. The list reflects the general advance of English in recent years, and the growing number of Turkish doctors doing post¬ graduate studies in Britain and America. Ors’s source was a three-page commu¬ nication published in 1968 by the Hacettepe Committee for the Collection of Medical Terms, which commented: Turk^e kar§ihgi bulunabilen ve gerijekte uluslararasi bilimsel terimlerle de ilgisi olmayan sozcukler ve terimler sik sik kullamlmakta ve yayilmaktadir ... Yeni yeti§en ogrenciler de once bu terimler kar$ismda bocalamakla birlikte, sonralari bu duruma katilmakta ve yadirganan yeni bir dil ortaya <pkmaktadir. Ogrenciler boylece, hekimlikte ancak yabanci ter¬ imler kullamrlarsa bilgilerinin bilimsel deger kazanacagim sanmaktadirlar ... Bu yuzden Turk^e bilim dili olarak geli?memekte ve bir dil karga;ahgi egitimimizi etkilemektedir. Words and terms for which Turkish equivalents can be found and which really have nothing to do with international technical terms are frequently employed and are spreading... Newly trained students, while at first floundering when they meet these terms, then become part of the situation, and an incongruous new language is emerging. Students think that in this way, if they use only foreign terms in their profession, their knowledge will gain scientific value ... For this reason, Turkish is not developing as a language of science, and a linguistic chaos is affecting our education. Ors’s comment: Bu tur ornekleri <;ogaltmak, ne yazik ki kolay olacaktir; ger^ekten daha nice, nicelerini ekleyebiliriz... ‘Crifrre’ yerine ol^iit, ‘diagnose’ yerine tani kullanmak 90k biiyiik bir <;abayi mi gerektirmektedir? Oretilmif ya da ortaya $ikarilmi§ bir<;ok Tiirk<;e tip terimi, yabanci terimlerin anlamini genellikle tumiiyle kar$iliyorlar. ‘Hormon’, ‘konjenital’, ‘diffiuz’, sirasiyle i^salgi, dogu§tan, yaygin demektirler, ba§ka da bir §ey demek degildirler. Unfortunately it would be easy to multiply these examples; we really could add very many more ... Does it call for a great effort to use olftit instead of critere, tam instead of diag¬ nose? Quite a number of Turkish medical terms, derived or brought to light, as a rule com¬ pletely express the sense of the foreign terms. Hormone, congenital, and diffuse mean i(salgi [‘inner secretion’], dogupan [‘from birth’], and yaygin [‘widespread’] respectively, and that is all they mean. Alluding to the old argument about whether Turks should derive their techni¬ cal terms from Arabic and Persian, as the Western world does from Greek and Latin, Ors goes on to make a fair point: where, he asks, did the Greeks and Romans get their technical terms from? Tam anlamindaki diagnosis Yunanca biigi anlamina gelen bir kokten $ikmi$tir. Demek oluyor ki, bati dillerindeki terimler de Turk^e kar$ihklan gibi temelde genel dilden, halk 128 Technical Terms dilinden turemi$tir. ingilizce tip dilinde ortaya £ikan scanning, Turk<;edeki kar^ihgi olan ‘tarama’dan daha mi 90k ‘bilimseldir’? Fransizca donneuriin ‘verici’ den daha ileri bir ‘bilimsellik’ ta;idigi soylenebilir mi? Diagnosis, meaning recognition, came from a Greek root meaning knowledge. This amounts to saying that terms in the Western languages, like their Turkish equivalents, derived originally from the general language, the popular language. Is scanning, which has emerged in English medical language, more ‘scientific’ than tarama, its Turkish equivalent? Can the French donneur [‘donor’] be said to possess a more advanced scientific quality than verici? Apropos diagnosis, the old term for it was te$his [A]. The new term is tam, the stem of tammak ‘to know’. Both terms occur in one and the same document, the pathologist’s report referred to above, together with a third, diagnos. Such a wealth of synonyms, though appropriate to a literary text, is surely superfluous in a doc¬ ument of this nature; it calls to mind the ‘illiyet-nedenlilik-causalite’ mentioned at the end of Chapter 1. There was no mention of the technical terms of medicine in any of the papers presented in 1988 to the first Turkish Medical History Congress (TTK1992), which suggests that the participants were happy with the status quo. But it was surpris¬ ing to hear a medical man using in a broadcast talk on curative springs (Ankara Radio, 23 Jan. 1991) the sort of language that might have been immediately intel¬ ligible to a professional audience but could have conveyed little to the general public. He mentioned that some springs were beneficial for‘niirolojik ve muskiiler komplikasyonlar’. Any lay listener who knew muskiiler only as the plural of miiskii ‘amulet’ and failed to recognize in it the French musculaire, could be excused for supposing komplikasyon to be the latest Oztiirkfe for biiyu ‘magic spell’. After the change to the Latin alphabet in 1928, the Republic’s legal codes, pro¬ mulgated in 1926, had to be rewritten. The new version of the Civil Code appeared in 1934, when the move to ‘purify’ Turkish was just getting under way, and the drafters made a conscious effort to keep the language simple. But the passage of more than sixty years has made it virtually incomprehensible except to septuagen¬ arians, since few young lawyers have the time to gain proficiency in Ottoman. For most of them the practice of their profession would be hard indeed were it not for the existence of what may fairly be termed a bilingual edition, in which the 1934 text is given on the left-hand page and a translation into the Turkish of the 1970s on the right. A short sample, Article 414, is enough to demonstrate that we really are talking about two languages, or at least two dialects: (1934) Ku^iik iizerindeki vesayet, rii$t veya hakimin rii$t karan ile nihayet bulur. Mahkemei asliye, rii$de karar verir iken vesayetin hitami gttnunu tesbit ve kararini resmen ilan eder. (1979) Ku^ukler iizerindeki korumanhk, erginlikle veya yargicm erginlik karariyla sona erer. Asliye mahkemesi erginlige karar verirken korumanligm sona erme guniinu saptar ve kararini kamusal yoldan duyurur. (Velidedeoglu 1979: i. 220-1) Technical Terms 129 Trusteeship of minors terminates with maturity or the judge’s decision of maturity. The court of first instance, when giving its decision of maturity, shall fix the day on which the trusteeship terminates and announce its decision officially. For the 1934 version’s ‘resmen’ (officially), Velidedeoglu regularly uses ‘kamusal yoldan’ (publicly), literally‘through the public way’. He wanted to avoid the Arabic adverb, but ‘kamusal yoldan’ was not a good substitute. For‘resmen’, Tiirkfe Sozliik (1988) offers the half-Turkicized ‘resmi olarak’, which is current, and ‘devlet^e’, which can serve for ‘officially’ only when the official body concerned is the state. Even though the sense of the right-hand pages may not always be crystal dear now, the lawyer can extract the gist from them, while quoting the original text from the left-hand page to impress his client or the court. There is a similar treatment of the Criminal Code. Here is the text of Article 361 in both versions (Giiner 1981: 274-5): (1926) Her kim iltizam ettigi taahhudu icra etmeyerek resmi bir daireye veya bir hizmeti amme ifasina yahut bir musibeti ammenin oniinii almaga elzem olan erzak ve efyantn fikdanma sebebiyet verirse bir seneden 119 seneye kadar hapse ve yirmi be§ liradan a$agt olmamak ttzere iki yiiz liraya kadar agir cezayi nakdiye mahkum olur. Taahhudiin icra olunmamasi failin yalniz ihmal ve teseyyubiinden ileri gelmi$ ise bir seneye kadar hapse ve ytiz liraya kadar agir cezayi nakdiye mahkhm olur. (1981) Her kim kabullendigi yiiklenmeyi yerine getirmeyerek kamusal bir daireye ya da bir kamu hizmeti yapilmasma yahut bir genel musibetin onunii almaya pek gerekli olan yiyecek ve nesnelerin yokluguna yol a^arsa bir yildan U9 yila degin hapse ve iki yuz liraya degin agir para cezasma cparptinlir. Yuklenmenin yerine getirilmemesin su<;u i$leyenin yalmz savsama ve ozensizliginden ileri gelmifse bir yila degin hapse ve yiiz liraya degin agir para cezasma ^arptirilir. Anyone who, by not carrying out the commitment he has undertaken, causes the absence of food and goods essential to an official department or to the performance of a public service or to prevent a general disaster, will be condemned to imprisonment for one to three years and a heavy fine of up to TL200. If the non-performance of the commitment is due only to carelessness and oversight on the part of the culprit, he will be condemned to imprisonment for up to one year and a heavy fine of up to TL100. The field in which new words constantly arise is computing, and in this the Turks, like other nations, have been tempted to take the easy course of using the interna¬ tional—i.e. the Anglo-American—terms. Computer people have not succumbed totally to the temptation. For the computer itself, bilgisayar is the only name. There are words for the printer (yazici), the hardware (donamm ‘rigging’), the software {yazilim), and the print-out (pkq),3 but for the most part the international terms prevail. The purpose ofYalpner and §ahin’s (1993) excellent dictionary is to explain the meaning of computer terms, not to advance the language reform. So its entry 3 For ‘print-out’, Yalpner and §ahin (1993) gives not ftktf but yazili fikti ‘written output’. 130 Technical Terms under OCR is ‘optik karakter tamma. Bkz. [Bakiniz ‘see’] optical character recogni¬ tion'. Under that heading you find: ‘Fotoelektrik ddnu$turiiciiler veya i$ikla kagit iizerine yazilmi$ ya da bastlmi$ olan karakterlerin bulunmasi, tamnmasi ve makine diline ^evrilmesinde kullamlan bir teknik’ (A technique used in the finding, recog¬ nizing, and translating into machine language of characters written or printed on paper by photoelectric transformers or by light). The enter or return key is explained as enter tu$u or return tu$u, tu$ being touche [F]. Where a Turkish or Ozturkge term exists, it is shown, as in the entry for graphic mode: grafik mod, fizgesel mod. The explanation of ‘boot’ is bilgisayari afmak, ‘to switch the computer on’. The dictionary does not note the new transi¬ tive use of girmek ‘to enter’ in the sense of ‘to input’, but provides an example in ‘girilecek’ in the following: garbage in garbage out (G1GO); £dp girerse 9dp fikar Bir bilgisayar sistemine girilecek veri ile ilgili olarak, verinin hatali olmasi halinde iiretilecek, <;iktinin da hatali olmasi durumu. Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO): if garbage goes in, garbage comes out. In connection with data to be entered in a computer system, the state of affairs where if the datum is wrong the output that will be produced will also be wrong.4 The text of an advertisement in the magazine Nokta of 31 January 1993 shows why a Turkish computer-user might need such a dictionary: ‘macworld turkIye sesyazi grafik animasyon film multimedya demo disketi hyperdcard [sic] vizerinde QuickTime ile hazirlanmi? multimedya uygulamasi macworld /turkIye §ubat sayisi ile birlikte tiim okurlarimiza bayilerde’ (macworld turkIye sound, writing, graphics, animation, film, multimedia demo disket, multimedia applica¬ tion prepared with QuickTime on hypercard, for all our readers, with the Febru¬ ary number of macworld /turkiye at the newsvendors). The non-harmonic bayi (bd’i' [ A]) ‘(news)vendor’looks incongruous among all those ultramodern terms, but the word retains its popularity against gazete saticisi. To give an idea of ordinary people’s computer-speak, here are the texts of two letters in Okur Postasi (Readers’ Mail) in the magazine PC! of 15 July 1997: SATILIK 486 PC. 486 DX 2-66, 8 MB RAM, 14" 0.28 SVGA renkli monitor, 3.5" 1.44 FDD, 420 MB HDD, 1 MB ekran karti, Windows 95 Tiirk9e klavye + mouse ozellikleri olan bilgisayarimi 480 $’a satiyorum. 486 PC FOR SALE. I am selling for $480 my computer with these features: 486 DX 2-66, 8 MB RAM, 14" 0.28 SVGA colour monitor, 3.5" 1.44 FDD, 420 MB HDD, 1 MB screen card, Windows 95, Turkish keyboard + mouse. PC TAKASI. 14 in^ Monokrom ekran 90k temiz hard diskli PC bilgisayarimi satmak istiyorum. Yaninda yazicisiyla birlikte 30.000.000 TL. Amiga veya Sega ile takas yapihr. 4 Another example comes from the newspaper Sabah, 29 Dec. 1997: ‘RP’nin [Refah Partisi’nin] internetine porno sayfa giren muzipler’ (the mischievous people who input pornographic pages into the Welfare Party’s internet). Technical Terms 131 PC EXCHANGE. I want to sell my hard-disk PC computer, in very good condition, 14-inch monochrome screen. Along with its printer, TL30,000,000. Will exchange for Amiga or Sega. TDK has not produced a glossary of musical terms, though in 1954 it published a twenty-seven-page brochure entitled Terim Anketleri: Mtizik, the work of Turkey’s greatest composer, Adnan Saygun (1907-87). With no introductory material, this consisted simply of a list in three columns, headed ‘Fransizca’ (French), ‘Eski Terimler’ (Old Terms), and ‘Kullamlan veya teklif edilen terimler’ (Terms in use or proposed). There was little change from column to column; the terms for ‘sharp’ and ‘flat’, for example: ‘Diese-Diyez-Diyez’ and Bemol-Bemol-Bemol’. Sometimes a Turkish word was added: ‘A//egreffo-Allegretto-Allegretto; ^abuk^a’; ‘Allegro-Allegro-Allegro; <;abuk’; ‘Appasslonafo-Appassionato-Appassionato; heyecanh’; ‘Rallenfando-Rallentando-Rallentando (yava$hyarak)’. Rarely does a Turkish word stand alone in the third column: ‘ Reponse-Repons; cevap-Cevap’. Rarer yet, an Ozturkfe word: ‘Transcnphon-Transkripsiyon-C^evriyazi’; ‘Alteration-Tagyir, tefhin-Degi$im’. This is what one would expect of Turkish musicians and musicologists, who adopted Western music complete with its technical terms. In her 252 pages on problems of music, Filiz Ali (1987) mentions no problem of terminology, nor does Sozer (1986) give any hint in his encyclopaedia that an alter¬ native terminology exists.5 He defines bemol: ‘Bir notamn dogal sesinden yanm perde (aralik) daha pestlejecegini (kalmlafacagmi) belirten i$aret’ (The sign indi¬ cating that a note is to be lowered a semitone below its natural pitch). The definition of DiYEZ is on similar lines. Yet there is an alternative terminology, taught and used in the Department of Music at the University of the Aegean, but consistently disregarded not only by most musicians and musicologists elsewhere but also by Turkish lexicographers, including those of TDK, whom one would have expected to take an interest in an academic haven of Oztiirkfe. The existence of this terminology is due to Giiltekin Oransay, the gifted and influential musicologist who founded the Department, and to Adnan Saygun.6 Turkish musicians in general use the French terminology, with do diyez major for C sharp major, and mi bemol major for E flat major. The school of Oransay calls these biiyiik dikdo and biiyuk yonmi respectively, using dik for sharp and yon for flat. For ‘composer’ it uses not bestekdr [P] but bagdar, while for ‘music’ it uses not mtizik [F] or musiki [A] but Ata^’s ktig, with kiigsel for ‘musical’. Its word for ‘singer’ is not $arktct but irlagan, which differs from dik, yon, and bagdar in having an obvious etymology: trlamak is a provincial word for ‘to sing’. 5 Some time before 1986, Bilgi Yayinevi, an Ankara publisher, produced a Mtizik Kilavuzu, which I have not seen. 6 Some information about Saygun may be found in Gedikli (1987: n) and in Ilhan (1987). The second of these two articles, however, is not as informative about musical terms as one could have wished. 132 Technical Terms While we are on the subject of music, here is a perhaps gratuitous note for the benefit of any reader who may have formed the impression that saz [P] is the name of the long-necked stringed instrument that holds so important a place in folk-music. The name for this, however, is baglama; saz means just ‘instrument’, be it piano, drum, flute, or anything else. Some musicians use the French enstriiman, some the Turkish (algt, but saz is the usual term. Stringed instruments are telli saz, percussion instruments are vurma saz, wind instruments nefesli saz. 10 The New Yoke The Franglais which so exasperates the Academie Franchise is as nothing com¬ pared with Titrkilizce,1 some examples of which we have already met. This devel¬ opment was foreseen in 1954 at the Seventh Kurultay, in a contribution from a schoolmaster named Abdi Tevfik Yegul (Kurultay 1954: 82). He spoke of the ques¬ tions his pupils were constantly asking him about the new technical terms; why was this one or that one adopted, and would he please explain it? ‘Hocam bu Trafik kelimesi ne demektir?’ dediler ve ^ocuklardan birisi devam etti. ‘Jjemseddin beyin lugatma babamla birlikte baktik, manasi ticaret, ihtikar, demiryollarmda e§ya nakli ve yolcu nakli gibi i$lerin yapilmasi manasina geliyor’ dedi. f^ocuk devam etti. ‘Babamla Larousse’a da baktik. Burada da trafigin ticaret ve seyritsefer anlamma geldigini’ soyledi. Demek ki bugiine kadar Fransiz mandasi altma girmi$ olan lisammiz bundan sonra lusmen Ingiliz mandasi altina girecektir. Bunu yapmayalim. They said, ‘Teacher, what does this word “trafik” mean?’ One of the children went on: ‘My father and I looked at §emseddin Bey’s dictionary [Kamus]; it means doing things like com¬ merce, profiteering, and transporting goods and passengers on railways.’ The child contin¬ ued: ‘My father and I looked at Larousse as well. There too it meant commerce and traffic.’ That means that our language, which till now has been under French mandate, from now on will come in part under British mandate.2 Let’s not do this. The same point had been made over seventy years before, by Ahmet Midhat in Terceman-t Hakikat (no. 112 (1881)): ‘Va esefa ki, biz fimdiki halde bir lisan dilencisiyiz. Gah Arablann gah Acemlerin ve hele $imdi de Frenklerin kapilarim $alarak lafizca kavaidce sadaka-i ma’rifetini dileniyoruz’ (Alas! At present we are mendicants in quest of a language. We knock at doors, sometimes the Arabs’ doors, sometimes the Persians’, and now particularly the Europeans’, begging for a charitable gift of knowledge in the shape of words and rules) (Levend 1972:129). The time when TDK’s principal business was seeking Ozturkfe replacements for Arabic and Persian words has long passed; much of the post-1983 TDK’s effort goes into devising and disseminating Turkish equivalents for English words in common use. It sets an example in its journal Turk Dili by giving its fax number 1 The earliest use 1 have spotted of this splendid conflation of Tiirkfe and Ingilizce is in Balkan (1975k 2 The speaker’s choice of metaphor was due to memories of the years immediately after 1918, when some Turks favoured an American or British mandate over their country. 134 The New Yoke under the heading ‘Belgege^er (Faks)’. Whether everyone in TDK’s offices says ‘belgege^er’ (document-passes) rather than ‘faks’ is another matter; just as one wonders whether ail French civil servants really call this useful device by its pre¬ scribed name, ‘telecopie’. When TDK’s campaign was being waged only in the pages of its journal, it did not seem likely to be very effective, preaching as it was to the converted. In 1997, however, the Society began to spread the message wider, by bringing out and circulating to schools a striking poster headed ‘Burasi Tvirkiye mi?’ (Is this Turkey?). It showed a city street with an abundance of signs such as ‘Happy New Year’, ‘Hotel’, ‘Real Estate Center’, ‘Photo Colour’, and ‘Chicken House’. The French contribution was limited to ‘La Famme [sic] Boutique’. It is not hard to see the reason for the present torrent of English. Just as the Turks’ acceptance of Islamic civilization led to their adoption of large numbers of Arabic and Persian terms, so, though to a lesser extent, did the increasing expo¬ sure of Turkish intellectuals to Western civilization in the nineteenth century bring Italian and, even more, French words surging into their vocabulary.3 Cevdet Kudret (1966) remarks on the substitution of French words for Arabic, when hekim began to be supplanted by doktor, baytar by veteriner, katip by sekreter. He mentions the replacement of the Italian locanda'inri and agente ‘agent’ (in Turkish used more often for ‘agency’), and the Greek panegtiri ‘festival, fair’ by the French restaurant, agence, and foire. 4 bu kadarla da kalmadi, daha once girmi§ Frenk<;e sozctikleri dahi degi$tirip yerlerine ba$ka Frenk^e sozctikler aldik: musiki yerine tntizik, lokanta yerine restoran, acente yerine ajans, panayir yerine fuar diyoruz artik ... Dikkat edilirse, Ttirk^e a$evi en a§agi, en ucuz yemek evleri i$in kullamlmaktadir. Lokanta sozctigti yava$ yava§ halk arasinda da yayilmaga ba$layinca, ytiksek tabaka kendisi i<;in daha ba;ka bir soz arami;, restoran’i bulmu§. Afevi halkin, lokanta orta simfin, restoran ytiksek simfin yemek yeridir. Boylece, kendimiz halktan uzakla§tik<;a diiimiz de Ttirk<;e’den uzakla^maktadir. Frenkijeyi aldik^a, <;ok inceldigimizi santyoruz. Sozgelimi, halk ayakyolu’na ve aptesane’ye, orta tabaka held’ya, biz okumu$larsa tuvalet’e gideriz; son zamanlarda bir de W.C. qkti, arasira oraya da gidiyoruz. (Kudret 1966: 74-5) Nor did it stop there; we have changed European words that had entered earlier also, taking other European words to replace them. Now we say mtizik instead of musiki, restoran instead of lokanta, ajans instead of acente, fuar instead of panayir... If you look into it you will see that the Turkish word afevi is used of the commonest and cheapest eating houses. As lokanta began to spread gradually among the populace too, the top stratum sought for themselves yet another way of saying it and found restoran. Afevi is the eating place of the populace, lokanta of the middle class, restoran of the upper class. Thus the further we distance ourselves from the populace, the further our language departs from Turkish. The more we adopt European language, the more refined we think we are becom¬ ing. In that connection: the populace goes to the ayakyolu and the aptesane, and the middle 5 Fashions in words do change, without any intervention by a Language Society. Until the Second World War, the colloquial English for 'Are you trying to make fun of me?’ was ‘Are you taking the mike out of me?’ Warriors returning from overseas in or after 1945 were surprised to find that the current expression was—as it still is—‘Are you taking the micky?’ The New Yoke 135 class go to the held, whereas we educated folk go to the tuvalet-, moreover the WC has recently turned up, and now and again we go there as well.4 For over a century the usual Turkish for ‘furniture’ was mobilya.5 6 The old words dd$eme and mefru$at [A] had ceased to serve; they meant alaturka6 ‘Turkish-style’ furniture, whereas the new Italian-style furniture brought its own name with it. In those days, ‘furnished’ was mobilyali. Peyami Safa used moble, the French meuble, for ‘furnished’. More recently, however, mobilya has had to compete with another moble, not from meuble but from meuble ‘furniture’.7 After the irruption of Italian and then French, now, in the American century, it is the turn of English.8 To some degree the language reform must be held responsible: older people are sometimes aware that the word that comes to their lips may not be understood, but are uncertain about finding the right new word to express what they want to say in what purports to be their mother tongue, so they resort to a foreign and unambiguous word. A far larger class of users of foreign words are professional people—especially doctors, as we have seen in the previous chapter—when they think the obvious word is not sufficiently techni¬ cal. A friend who at one time edited a Turkish medical magazine told me that when he used beslenme for ‘nutrition’ a doctor corrected it to niitrisyon. Nowa¬ days that doctor would probably have chosen the English nutri$in, following the trend illustrated in a cartoon in Cumhuriyet of 13 December 1993. It shows two men, both marked as intellectuals by their spectacles, walking along the street. One of them is saying: ‘Tiirk^e yerine Ingilizce konujanlara kil oluyorum abi... operasyon yerine opereyfin, spektilasyon yerine spekiileyfin diyenler ytizde sekseni buldu. Hie; olmazsa fifti fifti kullansak yabanci sozciikleri be abi!’ Friend, I’m getting fed to the teeth with people who talk English instead of Turkish. The number of those who say ‘operey$m’ instead of ‘operasyon’, ‘spekuleyjin’ instead of‘spekulasyon’, has risen to 80 per cent. If at least we were to use [Turkish words and] foreign words fifty fifty, my friend!). 4 He omits to mention another term used by the halk ‘yuz numara’ (number one hundred), the door being marked with two zeros. Popular etymology ascribes this to an early Turkish visitor to Paris who mistook the French ‘sans numero’ for ‘cent numero’, but the French term is ‘le numero cent’. 5 It still is in popular speech, which also preserves another old Italian borrowing, familya, in the sense not so much of‘family’ as of‘wife’. Aile [A] ‘family’ is the word used to avoid explicitly saying kan ‘wife’. To put it bluntly, familya is a euphemism for aile, once a euphemism for kart but now, to the unsophisticated, virtually synonymous with it. 6 This useful word is borrowed from the Italian alia turca. Its antonym is alafranga, Italian alia franca ‘European style’. 7 Compare the final es of kilometre kare, one standing for the French mute e, the other for i. The Turkish form of neutre [F] is notr ‘neutral’, with no final e, so moble does not need its final e to rep¬ resent meuble, except that, if you want to say ‘furnished’ but scorn both mobilyali and do$enmi$ as being outmoded, mobleli is the word for you, whereas *mobllu would have been unpronounceable. 8 English had in fact been the main source of maritime terms since the early t8oos, according to the erudite though sometimes erratic Bedros Effendi Kerestedjian (1912: 143): ‘Disons, une fois pour toutes, que les termes de marine et d’instruments de fabrique que [sic] etaient empruntes, autrefois, a l’italien, sont aujourdhui pris generalement de la langue anglaise: les officiers instructeurs de la marine et des fabriques imperiales, en Turquie, etant depuis pr£s d’un sifccle recrutes en Angleterre.’ 136 The New Yoke The following, from an article by Miimtaz Soysal (1990) is cited not only for its manifest good sense but also for the vigour of its style.9 The Head of State referred to was President Turgut Ozal: Turkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin devlet ba;kam sabah, ak$am ‘transformasyon’ dan soz eder, bakanlar ‘stibvansiyone’ bile degil, ‘siibvanse’ edilen giri^imleri anlatir ... Bir okuyucunun isyan ederek duyurduguna gore, Izmir Belediyesi’nin camdan otobiis duraklari ‘hem indoor hem outdoor, hem visible, hem invisible’ imi$. Ya halkm kullandigi telefon. Telefonlann uzerindeki ‘jeton iade holti’ne ne demeli? Haydi ‘jeton’la ‘iade’yi anladik da, ‘hoi’ nesi? Tiirk^e ‘delik’ demek varken Ingilizce ‘hole’ u imdada ^agiran densizi bulup Dil Kurultay’imn biitun uyeleri onunde e$ek sudan gelinceye kadar sopaya $ekmedik<;e, galiba bu $e$it zipirliklarm sonu gelmeyecek. The Head of State of the Turkish Republic speaks morning, noon, and night of transforma¬ tion. Ministers talk of enterprises that are not even subventionnebut subvense... According to information supplied by a reader in revolt, the Izmir Municipality’s glass bus-shelters are described as being ‘both “indoor” and “outdoor”, both “visible” and “invisible” ’. And what about the public telephones? What can one say of the words they bear: ‘Token Return Hole’? All right, let us concede that we understand jeton [F] and iade [A]; what is hole’ Until we find the dim-witted oaf who, it being open to him to say the Turkish delik, enlists the aid of the English hole, and he is given a sound thrashing in the presence of all the members of the Language Congress, I suppose there will be no end to daftnesses of this kind.10 The use of hoi for ‘hole’ was particularly ill conceived, because hoi had long been known to Turks in a different sense; it was another English borrowing, from ‘hall’ in the sense of a large public room or the entrance hall of a house. But perhaps they may get used to having hoi with two disparate meanings, as they already have kot with five: it means a type of cotton material, the jeans made from it, altitude, and code," and also appears in kotdi$t pazar ‘marche de valeurs non-cotisees’, ‘unlisted securities market’; this from the French ‘cote’ ‘Stock Exchange quotation’. Supermarket now figures in the dictionaries, and so does super, defined in such terms as ‘Nitelik, nicelik ve derece bakimindan iistun olan’ (Superior from the point of view of quality, quantity and degree). Superdevlet is in regular use for ‘superpower’ but has not yet got into the dictionaries. Sports writers call the player who scores the most goals ‘en skorer oyuncu’. The normal word for a bodyguard, or bouncer or chucker-out at a night-club, is koruma ‘protection’, but the with-it word is ‘bodyguard’, spelled like that. There is, however, no shortage of French. 9 For the writer’s distinction too. Professor Soysal, while Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara, suffered greatly for upholding freedom of thought in the bad days of the early 1970s. 10 The daftnesses continue, and not only in Turkey. 1 have in front of me a leaflet entitled ‘The Patient’s Charter’, published by HM Stationery Office in 1991 for the Department of Health. It promises that in due course there will be, inter alia, a Turkish version, ‘Pey$mt Uartir’. " This makes a verb kotlamak. If, when using the telephone, you are asked ‘Adinizi kotlar misiniz?’ (Will you spell out your name in code?), you should reply, if your name is Mehmet or Meredith, ‘Mugla’daki M, Edirne’deki £’ (Mas in Mugla, Eas in Edirne) and so on. The New Yoke 137 The slip of paper your waiter gives you when, dinner over, you ask for ‘hesap’, will probably have the printed heading ‘Adisyon’. The Turkish for ‘ambulance’ is cankurtaran ‘life-saver’, but the legend you will see on the front of most ambulances in Turkey is Ambulans. Mumtaz Soysal (1993)12 has an ingenious explanation of how this may have come about: Sozcuklerin dogu§unu, ya$ayi§im ve 6lii§unu izlemek her zaman ilgin^tir. ‘Ambiilans’ soziinu ahn. Ni<pn dogdu? Daha dogrusu, £agda$ Turktpenin en giizel sozcuklerinin biri olan ‘cankurtaran’i nasil oldiirdii? Belki de cankurtaranlann can kurtarmamaya ba$lamasiyla birlikte oldu bu degi$iklik. Kimbilir, $ehir duzenleri bozuldu, yollar tikandi da, <;agrilan cankurtaranlar zamamnda gelmeyince hastalar, yarahlar hastaneye kaldmlmadan oldiiler. Gee; gelen cankurtaran, adiyla $eli§en bir ara<;tir. Adi herhalde bundan degifti. Oysa, ‘ambulans’ oyle mi? Admin ne anlama geldigini bilen yok ki, get; gelince kizilsm. ‘Can kurtamayan ambulans da olabilir’ diye du$Unmeye ba$hyor insanlar ve bu sozde alafrangalikla birlikte mtithif bir ;arklihk, adamsendecilik, olmamasi gereken bir hofgorii yerle§iyor. It is always interesting to trace how words are born, how they live, and how they die. Take the word ambulans. Why was it born? More to the point, how did it kill off cankur¬ taran, one of the most attractive words in contemporary Turkish? It may well be that this change took place just when the life-savers began not saving lives. Who knows, urban order deteriorated, the roads became clogged, and, when the life-savers that were summoned did not arrive in time, the sick and injured died before being removed to hospital. The lifesaver that arrives late is a vehicle that belies its name. It was surely because of this that the name changed. But is that so with ambiilans1. There is no one who knows what the name means, so why should anyone feel angry when it arrives late? People start to think, ‘A non-saver of life may just as well be an ambulans [as anything else],’ and in those words, despite the occidental flavour, there nestles a terrible oriental quality, a ‘So what?’ attitude, a tolerance which ought not to exist. In an earlier article Soysal (1986) said: Kendi dilini geli$tirmek yerine ba;kalarimn dilini boylesine yalan yanh§ benimseyen bir bafka toplum da yoktur ... Radyolarinda harfleri bile gavurca okuyup ‘er-a$ pozitif ’ diye kan isteyen ve lO§inografi Dairesi’nin bildirilerini okuyan bir toplum bu tarzancayla mi kendi du§iincesini iiretecek? Nor is there any other society that, instead of developing its own language, adopts in so cockeyed a fashion the language of other people ... A society which even pronounces on its radio the names of the letters of the alphabet in the manner of the heathen, asking for ‘er-a$ pozitif’ [Rh positive] blood, and which reads notices from ‘the Department of Oceanography’—is it going to produce its own ideas in this monkey-talk [Tarzanish]? The pronunciation of‘Rh’ as /er-a$/ reflects the French training of many Turkish doctors, while the English-language domination of the field of electronics is 12 The article in entitled ‘Atmasyon’ (Showing off), from atma ‘bragging’ plus the French suffix of such words as telekomunikasyon. See Lewis (1988:172). 138 The New Yoke shown by the pronunciation of the abbreviation TV for television; some do say /te-ve/, but /ti-vi/ is at least as common. FM for frequency modulation is universally pronounced /ef-em/, not /fe-me/. On Fridays, some newspapers’ front pages carry a promise that tomorrow’s issue will bring next week’s television programmes: ‘Yarin TV Guide’. Friends I have consulted cannot guess how that last word is pronounced by readers igno¬ rant of English. Even when one knows that okeylemek means ‘to OK’, that fizibilite raporu has long been the Turkish for ‘feasibility report’,13 and kalite kontrolii for ‘quality control’, one can still be startled by new developments in Turkilizce. The programme of the 1998 International Conference on Turkish Linguistics included a paper entitled: ‘Turk^e’de Kompleks Predikasyonlar i^indeki Gerundium Grubu Ogelerinin Relativizasyonu’ (‘Relativization of Elements of the Gerund-Group within Complex Predications in Turkish’). If that does not startle you, how about this? The notice outside the places where they measure your vehicle’s emission of exhaust-gas reads: ‘Egzos Gazi Emisyonu Ol^um Istasyonu’. Beyond saying that dlgtim means ‘measurement’, just this once I shall break my rule about leaving no Turkish quotation untranslated. Another new borrowing is -kolik, from the suffix of alcoholic and its offspring chocoholic and workaholic, the Turkilizce for the last-named being gali$makolik or i$kolik. Tea addicts are called gaykolik. An older such suffix is -matik as in bankamatik, a cash-dispensing machine. Lately its use has spread in unlikely directions: Devlet Bakani I§ilay Saygin, ilk kez tapu i$lemlerinin bankamatik kartlari gibi manyetik kartlarla yuriitulmesini saglayan ‘Tapumatik’ sisteminin a^ili^im yapti. (‘Tapular artik tapumatike’. Hurriyet, 12 Agustos 1997, haber)... Bu arada yeri gelmi$ken u<; derginin adindan da soz etmeliyim. ‘Haftalik Ekonomi, Politik, Finans, Borsa Dergisi paramatIk’, bilmece-bulmaca dergileri ZekamatIk ve Cozmatik. (Sakaoglu 1998) Minister of State I§ilay Saygin has performed the opening of the Tapumatik system, which for the first time makes it possible for land-registration operations to be conducted by means of magnetic cards resembling cash-cards (‘Title-Deeds at Last Automated’, Hurriyet, 12 Aug. 1997, news item) [ tapumatike is a quasi-French past participle from tapu ‘title-deed’ plus -matik ] ... This brings me to14 the names of three magazines: Paramatik, the Weekly Journal of Economics, Politics, Finance, and the Stock Market, and the riddle and puzzle magazines Zekamatik and (Jozmatik [para ‘money’, zeka ‘intelligence’, gdz- ‘to solve’]. A less obvious example of the influence of English is a new phenomenon: the current greeting Selam in place of Merhaba. This is not evidence of increasing reli¬ giosity, but is due to the prevalence of English-language films on television, which results in what is called dublaj Turkgesi ‘dubbing-Turkish’. The aim when dubbing is to use Turkish words requiring lip movements similar to those of the original, 13 There are two correctly derived words for ‘feasibility’, olurluk and yapilabilirlik, only nobody much uses them. For ‘report’ there exists the neologism yazanak, but it is nowhere near as common as rapor. 14 Literally, ‘At this point, now that its place has come, I must also mention’. The New Yoke 139 and the lip movements for ‘Selam’ are closer to those for ‘Hello’ than to those for ‘Merhaba’. Other such phenomena may be on the way. Another instance of tele¬ vision’s effect on speech: according to Hasan Pulur, writing in Milliyet of 4 Feb¬ ruary 1995, Vay anasim! is no longer the normal way of expressing surprise, its replacement being Vavvvv! ‘Wow!’ What Ataturk would have made of all this is an interesting topic for specula¬ tion. It is clearly not what he had in mind when he spoke of liberating Turkish from the yoke of foreign languages. Maybe he would have welcomed all the Angli¬ cisms and Gallicisms as evidence of his country’s Westernization, preferring them to Arabisms and Persianisms. But what he wanted his countrymen to speak and write was Turkish. 11 The New Turkish There are two questions we have to address: has the reform eliminated the gap between the language of the intellectuals and the language of the people, and has it impoverished the language? The answer to the first question is that the gap, though not so huge as it once was, is still there. But that is natural, because some people need and use more words than others. No one ever expected the intellectuals to stop talking about bacteriology or astronomy or political science or whatever their particular interests might be. The hope was simply that they would give up the use of Ottoman words for everyday concepts; they would not, so to speak, say ‘domicile’ when they meant ‘house’, or ‘animadvert on’ when they meant ‘find fault with’, or ‘I shall exercise cogitation on this topic’ when they meant ‘I’ll think about it’. And they don’t. To that extent the reform has been a success. On the other hand, the spread of Ozturkge and the influx of English have hardly changed the speech habits of non-intellectuals; the language spoken today by the agricultural labourer, the shopkeeper, and the small craftsman is not markedly different from that spoken by their grandparents. These people keep much of the old language alive. To this extent the gap has widened and the reform has failed. Certainly most of the dispossessed Arabic and Persian words are gone for ever, and many Turks feel that their language has already been damaged beyond repair. Since 1983, however, it has begun to settle down and enjoy a new period of con¬ valescence, although, given the endless deluge of English borrowings, it is too early to say ‘of natural development’. In the new TDK’s suggested replacements for those borrowings, Oztiirkge is far from predominating; some of them are what we may call proper Turkish and what the old TDK would have called Ottoman. The list in Turk Dili for November 1997 included sihhi for hijyenik, and fizik tedavi uzmani ‘physical treatment expert’ for fizyoterapist. For kemoterapi ‘chemotherapy’ we are even given a choice of adjective: kimyasal/kimyevi tedavi. For ertformel ‘informal’, resmi olmiyan. The best they could do for klonlamak ‘to clone’ was kopyalamak, the Italian kopya having long since supplanted the Arabic istinsah ‘copy’. Aksoy (1982:115-16) says: Ben tasfiyeci degilim: Dilden, butiin yabanci sozcuklerin atdabilecegine inanmiyorum. Ama tasfiyecileri su^lamak aklimin ko$esinden ge^miyor. Onlar biitiin yabanci sozctiklere Turkije kar$iliklar bulma cpabasi i^indeler. Bu, alki$lanacak bir tutumdur. Biliyorum ki 'yiizde yuz ba$ari’ ya ula$amayacaklardir. Ama <;abalari, dile birtakim degerler The New Turkish 141 kazandirabilir. ‘Tasfiyeci’, dilin zenginle^mesi i<jin hi<; <;aba gostermeyen 'tutucu’dan daha yararli bir ki§idir. Unutulmamahdir ki tasfiyeciler var diye dil <;iginndan (pkmaz. §imdiye degin binjok tasfiyeci gelmi? ge$mi§tir. Onerileri ne olifude ger<;ekle§mi$tir? Toplum, <;ali;ma verimlerinin hepsini suzge?ten gecprir, i$ine yarayam ahr. I am not a purifier: I do not believe that all foreign words can be expelled from the lan¬ guage. Yet it never crosses my mind to find fault with the purifiers. They are endeavouring to find Turkish equivalents for all foreign words, an attitude to be applauded. I know they will not be able to achieve one hundred per cent success, but their endeavours may win a number of valuable items for the language. The ‘purifier’ is more useful than the ‘conser¬ vative’ who makes no effort to enrich the language. One must not forget that the language won’t go off the rails just because of the existence of purifiers. A good many purifiers have come and gone before now. To what extent have their proposals materialized? Society filters all the results of their work and takes what suits its purposes. It does indeed. That is why ytiklenici, for example, though correctly formed from a Turkish root and Turkish suffixes (yiikle-n- ‘to take on a burden’, and -id denot¬ ing regular activity), has not caught on. It was intended to replace mtiteahhit'con¬ tractor’, but builders who have spent their working lives with contractors do not know the new word and continue to refer to them as mutahit. Cep Kilavuzu gave team for ticaret [A] ‘commerce’, and tedmer for tticcar [A] ‘businessman’. Any businessmen who ever seriously called themselves tedmer have left no mark; tticcar is still the word. There may be some writers who talk about tecim, but if so they are living in the past: Ttirkge Sbzltik (1983) did not include tecim though it still gave tecimsel for ticari ‘commercial’. The 1988 edition includes neither, and marks tecim evi for ticarethane [AP] ‘place of business’ as obsolete. Fahir iz, doyen of scholars of Ottoman and modern literature, does not doubt that the reform has been a success (iz 1984): ‘Biigunku Tiirk<;ede dilin yapisma uymayan kirk elli soz vardir. Terimlerde bu sayi yiiz dolaymdadir. Bunlar yazi diline kazandirilan binlerce soz yaninda devede kulaktir’ (Present-day Turkish has forty or fifty words incompatible with the structure of the language. In the case of technical terms the figure is around a hundred. Beside the thousands of words won for the written language by the reform, this is insignificant [‘the ear on a camel’]. He rather skates over the fact that the reform has had little effect on the way ordinary people talk; in his text he mentions just one neologism that has entered the spoken language, the malformed ilging ‘interesting’. In his summingup he says: ‘Biigun artik Dil Devrimi’nden geri doniilemeyecegi kesindir. Halkin konuftugu dili birakip tekrar Arap^aya ve Fars^aya donmek hi^bir zaman soz konusu olamaz’ (By now there can definitely be no turning-back from the Lan¬ guage Reform. There can be no question of the people’s ever abandoning the lan¬ guage they speak and turning once more to Arabic and Persian). He spoils the effect, however, in the next paragraph: Artik kimseye sefim yerine intihabat, seamen yerine miintahip, basin yerine matbuat, yayin yerine ne$riyat, ba$yazar yerine ser-muharrir, yazi kurulu yerine heyet-i tahririye, takma ad yerine nam-i mustear, Akdeniz Adalari yerine Cezayir-i Bahr-i Sefid, Oniki Ada yerine 142 The New Turkish Cezayir-i lsnaa§er, Kuzey Buz Denizi yerine Bahr-i Muhit-i Muncemid-i $imali yazdirmanm ve soyletmenin yolu yoktur. There is no way of making anyone write and say the Ottoman instead of the Ozturkfe for ‘election’, ‘voter’, ‘the Press’, ‘publication’, ‘editor-in-chief’, ‘editorial committee’, ‘pseudonym’, ‘Islands of the Mediterranean’, ‘Dodecanese’, and ‘Arctic Ocean’. The title of his brochure is ‘The Turkish of Us AH’, but who are the ‘us’? I cannot believe that any of those words, new or old, with the exception around election time of sefim and possibly segmen, are often on the lips of the habitues of the tea houses of Kirklareli or Bayburt. Are these the ‘people’ who are not going to turn once more to Arabic and Persian? How are they to turn or not to turn ‘once more’ to two languages they never knew? The standpoint of Faruk Kadri Timurta? (1979) is very different, as the title of his book reveals: ‘Dictionary of New Words, Fake and Otherwise’. He himself uses kelime not sozctik for ‘word’, but sozltik for ‘dictionary’ rather than lugat, which now sounds highly archaic; he thus avoids the cacophonous sozcukler sozltigti. Though not so tolerant of illegitimate creations as Fahir Iz, he is no diehard;1 witness his comment on igerik, the new word for muhteva ‘contents’ (1979: 54-5). Son yillarda uydurmacilarin <pok<;a kullandiklari kelimelerden biri de icperik’tir, ‘muhteva’ m^nasma geliyormu§. Dilimizde i<;eri kelimesi bulunmakla birlikte, i^erik diye bir kelime yoktur ... Muhteva kelimesinin artik eskidigi ve herkes tarafmdan bilinmedigi dogrudur ama, bunun kar;ihgi ic^erik degildir. Muhteva yerine ‘it;, oz’ kullamlabilir. Another word much used by the fakers in recent years is iferik, purporting to mean muhteva ‘contents’. Although iferi exists in our language, there is no such word as iferik... It is true that muhtevd is antiquated and not known to everyone, but the replacement for it is not iferik. If or oz may be used instead. Where he would not agree with Fahir iz is on the number of illegitimate forma¬ tions in Ozturkge. He lists more than three thousand neologisms, which he places in three categories: words correctly formed, incorrectly formed ‘fakes’, and words that, though semantically or morphologically incorrect, have become so widely used that they qualify as galat-i meghur, the Ottoman term for ‘error legitimized by usage’. Averaging the results of a spot check of one-fifth of the list shows 40 per cent in the first category, 37 per cent in the second, and 23 per cent in the third, making a total of just under two thousand incorrect forms; a far cry from Iz’s ‘forty to fifty’. Giiltekin devotes a chapter—‘Yeni bir Se^kin Dili Tehlikesi var midir? (1983: 97-101)—to a discussion of whether there is a danger of the emergence of a new elite language. He decides that there is not: Turk yazi dili son elli yilda 50k buyiik degi§iklikler ge<;irdi. Elli yil once yazilan bircjok yazi bugiin anla§ilmiyor, bu normaldir. Ama bundan sonra da aym ol^ude bir degi$iklik siireci ' He was responsible for a neat linguistic term: kendileftirmek literally ‘to make one’s own’ for ‘to assimilate’, previously temsil etmek (Aksoy 1982:114). The New Turkish 143 beklememek gerekir. Elli yil sonra, bugun yazilan yazilarin anla§ilmamast gibi bir durum olmamalidir ve olmayacaktir. Written Turkish has undergone very great changes in the last fifty years. A good many writ¬ ings of fifty years ago are unintelligible today; this is normal. But from now on, a process of change of the same order must not be expected. Fifty years ahead there should not and will not be a situation in which what is being written today is unintelligible. The calm ‘bu normaldir’ that ends the second sentence gave me a cold grue. Thinking that I might have misunderstood, I searched the dictionaries to see whether normal had recently acquired some new significance, but found none. There was no getting round it; when Giiltekin says it is normal for something written fifty years ago to be unintelligible, he means exactly that; a shocking tribute to the success of the language reform. In Chapter 11 mentioned the ‘translations into modern Turkish’ and ‘simplified versions’ of standard authors to be seen in the bookshops. Here is a pertinent comment by Fuat M. Andie, quoted in Cumhuriyet of 7 May 1995: Galiba ge<;en sene idi, Babtali’de Yakup Kadri’nin bir kitabim, Erenlerin Bagtndan’i ariyorum. Hi<;bir yerde yok. Onun birifok kitabim basmi$ bir yayinevi, Erenlerin Bagmdan'i neden basmadimz sualime ‘O kitabi Tiirk<;ele$tirecek kimseyi bulamadik’ diye cevap verdi. Bin dokuz yuz otuzlu yillarda basilan ve benim orta mektepte okudugum bir kitabi bugun Tiirk^ele^tirmek lazimmi§! Qince mi yazmi§ acaba Yakup Kadri? Ustelik o Turk<;eyi anlayip da uydurmacaya $eviren bulunamiyor! It must have been last year that I was looking in Babiali2 for one of Yakup Kadri’s books, Erenlerin Bagtndan. It was nowhere to be found. I asked a publishing firm which had printed a number of his books why they had not printed that one. They replied, ‘We haven’t been able to find anyone to put it into Turkish.’ Apparently a book printed in the Thirties, which I read at middle school, today has to be put into Turkish! Did Yakup Kadri write it in Chinese, I wonder? And, to crown it all, no one can be found to understand that Turkish and turn it into fakeish! Those who condemn the old TDK and all its works usually round off their argu¬ ment by saying that parents and children no longer understand one another: ‘Baba ile evlat birbirini anlamaz hale gelmiftir.’ This is an exaggeration. If the children, busy with their homework, grumble about how much ev odevi their teacher has assigned for this evening, it should not take the parents long to work out that ev odevi is what they used to call ev vazifesi. Children will understand what their parents mean by hakkinda ‘about’, though they themselves will use ile ilgili or -e ili$kin. Some of them may even use hakkinda in school just to show off, and this could be the salvation of some older words. I recall my grandson, at the age of 7, coming home with an involved tale about something that had happened that day at school. It ended with, ‘So you see it was the other way round. Or, as you big people would say, vice versa! One’s recognition vocabulary is always larger than one’s working vocabulary. 2 The street of bookshops, stationers, and newspaper offices, below the Babiali, the old Sublime Porte. 144 The New Turkish The reform left the Turks with virtually no choice of levels of discourse. To write as one spoke seemed a laudable aim at a time when 90 per cent of the pop¬ ulation could not read much of what was being written, nor fully understand it even if it were read out to them. A minister invited to open a new bridge or con¬ ference or exhibition in the old days would never use agmak for ‘to open’; the only permissible verb was ku$ad [P] etmek. But in present-day Turkish it is not easy to rise to a solemn occasion unless one risks baffling most of one’s audience by resorting to Ottomanisms.3 When Turks try to express themselves by employing an Ottoman word, not surprisingly they sometimes get it wrong—for example, ‘Muste$ekkiriz’ (for ‘Mute$ekkiriz’), which was an Istanbul waiter’s response to being over-tipped. An English approximation might be ‘I am gratificated!’4 Even well-educated Turks are just as liable to be unclear about the meanings of some neologisms as about the meanings of Ottoman words. There is, for example, a confusing cluster of neologisms beginning with oz, in addition to the old words ozen ‘care, attention’, dzge ‘other’, and dzenti ‘counterfeit’: oze and ozgii ‘peculiar (to)’, ozgiir ‘free’, ozek ‘centre’, ozel ‘private’, dzerk ‘autonomous’, ozet ‘summary’, ozgtil ‘specific’, and ozgiin, which was intended to replace asli ‘original’ but is used by many for ‘authentic’. But in the latter sense ozgiin does not have the field to itself; in Turkey you can buy audio-cassettes labelled ‘Otantik Halk Oyunlarimiz’ (Our Authentic Folk-Dances). One wonders how much that first word conveys to most people who see it, though it may be no less meaningful to the young than the posters one sees nowadays in Britain advertising ‘An Evening of Acoustic Songs’. It cannot be too often remarked that many of the creators of new words were salaried employees of TDK, the others being enthusiastic amateurs. Very few in either group were experts on the language. Consequently, many of the neologisms were not based on Turkish roots and Turkish suffixes. This fact did not bother the man in the street. He learned the new words first at school, as the steady stream of new coinages from the Language Society was channelled through the Ministry of Education. He then saw them constantly in newspapers and on public notices. Although people with a feeling for language may not have liked the new words, they soon found themselves obliged to use at any rate some of them if they wished to communicate. But in Turkey as elsewhere few knew or cared anything about the origins of the words they used, which is why one hears bolgevi for ‘regional’ and onemiyyet for ‘importance’, both being Oztiirkge words with Arabic suffixes. Despite that sweeping generalization, one must own to being taken aback by a speech made by the Minister of Culture in May 1992. Having publicly expressed 3 For a way in which plain aftnak can be elevated for a ceremonial occasion, however, see afihfim yapmak on page 138. 4 Of course it is not only Turks who get words wrong. Not every British journalist distinguishes between mitigate and militate, and one longs to see some public figure sue a newspaper for accusing him of prevarication when all he has been guilty of is procrastination. The New Turkish 145 his heartfelt thanks to TDK for all the new words it had given the nation, he con¬ tinued: ‘Ornegin, Turk Dil Kurnmunca tiretilen Kurul, Kurultay, Yurt, Olke, Tanri, Tore, Tuziik, Yargit;, Savci, Giysi, Ezgi, 1st, Evren ve Ama^ gibi sozciikler, Orta Asya’mn degi$ik bolgelerinde oldugu gibi, bugiin Tiirkiye’de de yaygm bir fekilde kullamlmaktadir’ (For example, words produced by TDK, such as kurul... amag, are widely used today in Turkey as in various regions of Central Asia) (Surekli Turk Dili Kurultayi 1992: 7). Well, not quite. Of those fourteen words, TDK pro¬ duced just three, none of them used in Central Asia: kurul ‘committee’, yargig ‘judge’, and savci ‘prosecutor’. The rest are centuries older than TDK, except that the old TDK could have claimed any credit there might be for reducing the double s of issi ‘warmth’ to a single s. Amag is a Persian borrowing (amaj). Here is another part of Miimtaz Soysal’s (1986) article ‘Tiirk^enin Dii§manlari’, already cited in Chapter 10: Turk^e koklerden kalkarak saglam bir du$unce ve bilim dili yaratmaktan ba$ka (faremiz yok. Anlaf ilir ve bilinir olam da Turk^ele^tirmek hevesine kapilmadan, dili yoksulla$Urmayip tarn tersine zenginle§tirerek, ‘teblig’ ile ‘beyanname’ nin farkli kavramlarin kar$iligi oldugunu bilip, ‘bildiri’ diyerek kesip atmak yerine, ‘bildiri, bildirge, bildirim’ farklanni yaratarak. Fakat, bir yandan da, ge$mi$inden kopuk bir toplum olamayacagi i<;in, yeni ku$aklara, birazcik da olsa, Osmanhcayi da ogreterek. Yabanci dilleri bulbul gibi konu$up ecdadinm dilini anlamayan ^ocuklar yeti$tirmi$ bizden ba;ka bir toplum yoktur herhalde. The only expedient open to us is to create a sound language of thought and science by starting from Turkish roots, without yielding to the impulse to Turkicize what is intelli¬ gible and familiar, not impoverishing the language but, on the contrary, enriching it; by knowing that teblig and beyanname represent two different concepts [‘communication’ and‘declaration’] and creating the distinctions bildiri, bildirge, bildirim [‘communication’, ‘declaration’, ‘notification’] instead of cutting the Gordian knot and saying bildiri. But also, since no society can exist severed from its past, by teaching the new generations some Ottoman, even if it be only a tiny bit. Surely no society but ours has brought its children up to speak foreign languages fluently but not to understand the language of their forebears. One of the many significant passages in that article is where Soysal speaks of the need for bildiri, bildirge, and bildirim, to obviate using bildiri in all three senses. Much the same point was made by Ali Puskiilliioglu in Cumhuriyet of 6-7 August 1996, in two articles devoted to the word soylem. This neologism was intended to mean soyleyig ‘manner of speaking’, or sdyleni§ ‘pronunciation’,5 though it was per¬ verse to create it when the language already possessed those two regularly formed and unambiguous words. Piiskiilluoglu’s thirty-odd citations show that different writers use it in different senses. The days when neologisms were regularly circu¬ lated to schools are past; when hearing—or, more often, reading—a new word such as soylem for the first time, one knows only that it has something to do with saying. Few will bother to look it up in a dictionary but, like Humpty Dumpty, 5 So Turkfe Sozliik (1988). It is not given in Ornekleriyle Tiirkfe Sozluk (1995-6), presumably because the compilers saw no reason for its existence. 146 The New Turkish will use it to mean just what they choose it to mean. And why shouldn’t they? Isn’t that what its inventor did? One of Piiskulluoglu’s many examples: ‘Tutamayanlar’i diger Turk romanlarindan ayiran ... tiirlii bi^emlere ve ozya$am6ykiisu, ansiklopedi, giinliik, fiir, tiyatro, mektup gibi ^efitli soylemlere yer vermesidir’ (What sets Tutamayanlar [Atay 1986] apart from other Turkish novels is that it finds room for sundry styles and various soylems such as autobiography, ency¬ clopaedia, diary, poetry, theatre, letters). Here soylem must mean ‘genre’. In others of Piiskiilliioglu’s citations it seems to be used for ‘style’, ‘communication’, ‘manner’, ‘contents’, ‘tone’, and ‘language’. One also sees it used for ‘expression’ and for ‘rhetoric’. In Omer Asim Aksoy’s spirited defence of the reform (1982:115) he gives (with no specific reference) a moving quotation from Falih Rifki Atay: ‘Vaziyet’ soziinun Tiirk^eye yerle§tigi inancmda oldugumuzdan lugatte bu kelimeye iki kar$ihk koymu§tuk: ‘Position’ manasma ‘vaziyet’ kalacakti. ‘Situation’ kar$ihgi ‘durum’ kullanacaktik. Siz $u i§e bakin: Onceleri alay sozii olarak yazilan ve soylenen ‘durum’, Tiirk^eden hi<;bir zaman <;ikmayacagmi sandigimiz ‘vaziyet’ i biitun manalari ile dilden kovdu. Hk tutmayacagim sandigimiz ‘genel’ aldi yurudii. Dogrusu benim zevkim ‘sel’ve ‘sal’ nispetlerine isyan etmi$tir. Ama ne $ikar bundan, yani benden?... Butiin yeni ku$agin dili o. Ben ki yirmi, yirmi be§ yil kadar Turk<;enin oniinde ytirudiim, yeni ku§ak $imdi benim onumdedir. Tiirk^enin kendi zevkim Sl^uleri i$inde hapsolmamasma kizmali miyim? Hayir. Because we were confident that the place of vaziyet in Turkish was secure, we had put two equivalents for it in the dictionary [Cep Kilavuzu]. In the sense of‘position’, vaziyet would remain. For ‘situation’ we would use durum. Just consider this: vaziyet, which we had supposed would never disappear from Turkish, has in all its senses been chased out of the language by durum, which in the beginning people used in writing and speech as a joke. Genel, which we had supposed would never catch on, is now all the rage. I must say that my taste rebelled against the adjectival suffixes -sellsal, but what effect did that have?—I mean, what effect did I have? That is the language of all the new generation. I, who for some twenty or twenty-five years marched in the vanguard of Turkish, now find the new generation ahead of me. Should I be angry that Turkish is not imprisoned within the dimensions of my taste? No. Aksoy misses something that can be read between the lines of Atay’s generous con¬ fession: the disappointment felt by him and his colleagues, who thought they had enriched the language by finding two separate words for the two separate senses of vaziyet, only to see it impoverished when durum usurped both senses. Nor could they have been best pleased when the new word eventually found for ‘position’ turned out to be konum, which they had offered in Cep Kilavuzu as a replacement for tevdiat and mevduat ‘bank deposits’ (now yatirim). Agah Sirrx Levend, Secretary-General of TDK 1951-60 and President 1963-6, said in reply to a question at a meeting of its administrative committee in Sep¬ tember 1951: ‘Bir anlamda turlii kelimeler bulunmasi, o dilin zenginligine delalet etmez. Mesela Arap^ada “Aym” kelimesinin 40 anlami vardir: “deve”nin 50 adi The New Turkish 147 vardir. Bu bir zenginlik degildir’ (The existence [in a language] of various words in one meaning is no indication of the richness of that language. In Arabic, for example, the word ‘ayn has forty meanings, the camel has fifty names. This is not richness) (Turk Dili, 1 (1951), 54-5). One does not like to contradict Levend, but it is indeed richness if you are a desert Arab whose whole way of life depends on camels. One might as well say that English is not a rich language because it has a multitude of names for struc¬ tures: house, office building, mansion, hut, factory, school, warehouse, block of flats ... The camel has in fact only one generic name in Arabic, bctir, and a col¬ lective noun ibil ‘camels’. The other names making up Levend’s ‘fifty’ are specific to the age, sex, and use of the individual creature in question: jamal is a he-camel, naqa a she-camel, rabila a she-camel fit to be saddled, buwar a baby camel from the time of birth until weaned, and so on and so on.6 Never mind about Arabian cameleers; what about Turkish writers who like to have a choice of words? Levend should have remembered that once upon a time Turkish was probably the only language that came anywhere near English in the richness of its vocabulary. It had individual words expressing the senses of to state, to affirm, to declare, to assert, to impart, to communicate, to report, to convey, to comment, to hint, to remark, to narrate, and more. To express all these senses, the Turks for the most part now have to make do with anlatmak ‘to tell’, soylemek ‘to say’, and bildirmek'to inform’, with adverbs to supply the nuances. So, for ‘to hint’, if they wish to avoid or do not know the old ima etmek, they have to say ‘iistii kapali soylemek’ (to say covertly) or ‘dolayh anlatmak’ (to tell indirectly). This is what we might call Basic Turkish. Those who deplore Ozturkge and call it ‘Turk Esperantosu’ overlook the extreme regularity of Esperanto. Basic English affords a closer analogy, having all the idiosyncrasies of English but none of the sub¬ tleties.7 Various words for seeking knowledge were once available to the Turks. There was istisfar'to ask someone to explain a text’, istiknah, ‘to seek to plumb the depths of a problem’, istilam, ‘to make an official request for information’, istizah ‘to seek clarification’, istimzaf, ‘to make polite enquiries about someone’s well¬ being or to enquire whether someone is persona grata to a foreign government’. Only the last two find a place in Tiirkge Sozliik, the dictionary most widely used in Turkey, which marks both of them as antiquated. Orhan Okay (1981: 274) made a shrewd observation about the titles of the Turkish translations of four French philosophical works, the Pensees of Pascal, the Meditations of Lamartine, the Reflexions of La Rochefoucauld, and the Idees of Alain. He notes that the ‘Thoughts’, the ‘Meditations’, the ‘Reflections’, and the 6 As to 'ayn, ‘forty meanings’ is an exaggeration, unless kirk is being used in its metaphorical sense of‘umpteen’, but there may be over twenty, though to get the figure that high you have to count hole, small aperture, eye of a needle, and eyelet as four distinct meanings. 7 Basic English, with a vocabulary of 850 words, was invented in the late 1920s by Charles Kay Ogden, as a vehicle for international communication. It attracted considerable attention in the 1930S> but nothing has been heard of it since the Second World War and the subsequent emergence of non-basic English as the international language. 148 The New Turkish ‘Ideas’ all come out in the new Turkish as ‘Du$unceler’ (Thoughts), whereas the older language offered a choice among du$unceler, murakabat, tefekkurat, tefelsuf teemmul, and mulahazat. The same writer also remarks that takdim etmek‘to offer humbly’, arzetmek ‘to offer respectfully’, ihsan etmek ‘to bestow’, bah$etmek ‘to confer’, lutfetmek'to offer graciously’, and it a etmek' to grant’ have all been replaced by vermek'to give’ and sunmak‘to present’. Aksoy (1982: 23) positively advocates impoverishment. He comes out strongly against the view that maintaining Ottoman synonyms is a way of enriching the vocabulary and avoiding repetition: ‘Yinelemeden kurtulmamn yolu da yabanci sozciige ba$vurmak degil, yazi yazmasim ogrenmektir. Yinelemek zorunlu olan yerlerde ise bundan ka^inmamak gerekir. Araptja ya da Fransizca yazan ki$i, bir sozciigii ikinci, u^iincii kez yinelememek i<;in onun Tiirk^esini, Almancasim mi kullamr?’ (The way to escape repeating oneself is not to have recourse to foreign words; it is learning to write. In places where repetition is unavoidable, one must not abstain from it. Does someone writing in Arabic or French use a Turkish or German equivalent to avoid repeating a word for a second or third time?). He gives short shrift to the objection that ili$ki ‘relation’ cannot replace miinasebet in every¬ day expressions such as ‘ne miinasebet?’ (what’s the relevance of that?),8 ‘miinasebetsiz etmeyiniz’ (don’t behave in an unseemly fashion), and ‘miinasebet almaz’ (it is not seemly). He explains (pp. 57-8) that miinasebet in these expressions does not mean ili$ki but is an inseparable part of the whole expression. The question he does not address is whether anyone can be expected to drop these and a host of other expressions which contain non-Ozturk^e words. An effective voice on the other side is Fatma Ozkan (1995: 974-81): Bir dilde, bir kavram, nesne veya varligi kar$ilayan birden fazla kelime varsa, zamanla bu kelimelerin arasmda ince anlam farklan dogar. Aralarmda boyle niianslar bulunan kelimelerden birini dile dolayip digerlerini unutturmak, dilimizin ifade imkanlanni daraltir. Mesela, son zamanlarda, ‘begenme, takdir etme, ho$lanma, hazzetme, zevk alma’ kelimelerinin hepsini birden kar$ilamak iizere, keyf alma sozti dillere pelesenk9 oldu ... Aym §ekilde, affedersiniz, kusura bakmaymiz, oziir dilerim ibarelerinin yerine, bagtfla demek, dili¬ mizin ifade gucunii azaltmaz mi? Hatta, hepsini bir kenara itip, Ingilizce I am sorr/nin terciimesi olan iizgiinum soziiyle meram anlatmak hangi mantikla a^iklanabilir? §eref haysiyet, gurur, kibir, izzetinefis kelimelerinin yerine sadece omir’u koymak; ftiphe, endive, merak kelimelerinin yerine yalmzca kufku'yu getirmek, dilimizin kaybi mi, kazanci midir? If a language possesses a plurality of words to express a concept, a thing, or an entity, fine distinctions of meaning eventually arise among them. To let one of them be on everybody’s 8 I am reminded that over forty years ago, in the days when Istanbul men about town were still addressing each other as ‘Mon cher’, 1 ran into a friend who was in a state of fury at what had just happened to him in a smart shop on istiklSl Caddesi, where he had gone to buy a tie. It seems that the shop assistant had greeted him with ‘Monsieur desire?’ Spluttering, he had replied, ‘Monsieur mu? Monsieur mu? Quelle miinasebet?’ 9 This misuse of pelesenk ‘balsam’ for persenk ‘buzzword’ is not uncommon. ‘Buzzword’ seems to be our closest equivalent, though one is a little put off by a remark in Time Magazine for January 1980: ‘The air is thick with devalued buzz words, including “buzz words”.’ The New Turkish 149 lips and let the others be forgotten means reducing our language’s capacity for expression. For example, keyf alma [‘relishing’] has recently become the buzzword standing for begenme [‘approval’], takdir etme [‘appreciation’], hoflanma [‘liking’], hazzetme [‘rejoic¬ ing’], and zevk alma [‘taking pleasure’]. Similarly, does it not diminish our language’s power of expression to say bagi$la [‘spare (me)’] instead of affedersiniz [‘forgive (me)’], kusura bakmaym [‘excuse me’], and oziir dilerim [‘I beg pardon’]? Even more, what logic can help to explain pushing all of these to one side and expressing your meaning with uzgiiniim, a translation of the English ‘I’m sorry’? Is it a gain or a loss for our language to replace }eref [‘honour’], haysiyet [‘self-respect’], gurur [‘pride’], kibir [‘self-esteem’], and izzetinefis [‘dignity’] just by onur, to introduce ku$ku [‘suspicion’] alone as a substitute for fiiphe [‘doubt’], endive [‘anxiety’], and merak [‘worry’]? Onur, originally the French honneur, is not a creation of the language reform, though its Oztiirkfe status seems to be due to its being plugged by TRT, the state broadcasting service. It is shown in Tarama Sozliigii (1963-77) as used in several places in the vilayets of Bilecik, Bolu, Ankara, Kayseri, and Hatay, for kibir ‘selfesteem’ and falim ‘swagger’.10 For ‘personal honour’, ordinary people’s speech retains namus, originally the Greek nomos. (Oddly enough, onur appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as an obsolete form of honour.) An idea of the dimensions of the impoverishment can be gathered by brows¬ ing in a modern Turkish-Turkish dictionary, particularly in the pages containing many words of Arabic origin: those beginning with m and, to a lesser extent, t and i. Look for words that have only a definition, as distinct from those for which a one-word equivalent is given. Every word in the former category represents a failure on the part of the reformers. English has no exact equivalent of the lovely Ottoman word selika [A] ‘the ability to speak well and write well’. Nor has modern Turkish. Tiirkfe Sozliik (1988) marks it as antiquated. But why did TDK permit it to become antiquated without devising an Oztiirkfe substitute? Perhaps the cynics’ answer is the right one: why bother to create a word for an obsolete concept? But there are everday concepts that used to be succinctly expressed and no longer are. Miiddet ‘period’, mtihlet and mehiVrespite’, ‘permitted delay’, and vade ‘term’ have all fallen before sure, a Frankenstein’s monster whose progenitors were the Turkish stir- ‘to continue’ and the French durie ‘duration’. For that useful verb tevil etmek ‘to explain away’, ‘to interpret allegorically’, Tiirkfe Sozliik (1988) gives ‘soz veya davram$a ba$ka bir anlam vermek’ (to give another meaning to a statement or an action). Turkfe Sozliik does not, however, mention here the Oztiirkfe equivalent, fevrilemek, although that word is defined in the same dictionary as ‘^evriye ugratmak [“to subject to translation”], tevil 10 I have had occasion to refer in uncomplimentary terms to Eyuboglu’s etymological dictionary (1988); nevertheless 1 note his explanation of how this French word entered Anatolian rural dialect, just in case some fact is lurking in it. His story is that it came through the speech of Greek-speaking Anatolian intellectuals who studied French in the foreign schools. That does not begin to explain how the French honneur appears in the dialects of a swath of provinces across Central Anatolia but not in the cities where there are or were foreign schools, notably Istanbul, Izmir, and Tarsus. Its use in Hatay is understandable in view of the French influence that for many years was strong in that region. 150 The New Turkish etmek’. Anyway, it never caught on, probably because it was too easily confused with another neologism, fevrelemek ‘to surround’, and it does not occur in Ornekleriyle Tiirkge Sozluk (1995-6). So tevil may survive. Consider the nuances of the many words expressing the concept of change. In English, besides change, we have alteration, alternation, mutation, variation, per¬ mutation, vicissitudes, deviation, modification, transformation, metamorphosis. Many of these can be paralleled in Ottoman, i.e. early Republican Turkish: istihale, tahawul, tebeddiil, tebeddiildt, tagayyur, takalliip, and so forth, whereas the modern Turk’s choice is pretty much restricted to degi$mek ‘to change’ and ba$kala$mak ‘to become different’. True, biologists if they wish may call on the neologism degfike (not in Ornekleriyle Tiirkge Sozliik (1995-6)), for which Tiirkge Sozluk (1988) gives: ‘Her canlida di$ etkilerle ortaya qkabilen, kahtimla ilgili olmayan degi^iklik, modifikasyon’ (Change unrelated to heredity, which may emerge under external influences in every living thing; modification). The vast resources of Ottoman Turkish were at the disposal of the reformers. They did not have to perpetuate the whole exuberant vocabulary; they were free to pick and choose, but they deliberately elected to dissipate their heritage. They should have been aware of the danger that their work would lead to a depletion of the vocabulary if they failed to find or devise replacements for the words they were striving to eliminate. Had Sayili (1978) been written earlier, and had the reformers read it and taken it to heart, they could have done better, but the damage had been done forty years before. Yet all is not lost. Language is a set of conventions, which ordinarily just grow. What the reformers did was to create conventions; to say that henceforth the tra¬ dition will be thus and thus. Once a convention has been established, it makes no difference if it has slowly matured over the centuries or was manufactured last week in an office in Ankara or a study in Istanbul or a cafe in Urfa. But learning a new word does not automatically banish the old word from one’s memory. I had a fascinating conversation in Istanbul with an elderly taxi-driver, who wanted to know what I was doing in Turkey. I told him that I was particularly interested in the language reform. He replied that he had never heard of it; the language was one and unchanging. For ‘language’, incidentally, he used the old lisan [A] and not dil. So I asked him, ‘What about onemli [‘important’], which some people now use instead of miihimV ‘Oh no,’ he answered, ‘they’re quite different. Suppose the Municipality says that that building over there isn’t safe and it’s onemli to repair it, that means it may be done five or ten years from now. But if they say it’s muhirn, that means work will start tomorrow.’ To him the old Arabic word was the more impressive of the two, and he was not aware that onemli was totally artificial. This incident lends support to the view of a Turkish friend, that nuances of meaning are emerging and will continue to emerge between old words and their Oztiirkge replacements; he himself did not feel medeniyet and uygarlik to be synonymous. If he was talking about a particular civilization or the history of civ¬ ilization, he would use the former, and for ‘civilized’ he would say ‘medeni’. Uygar, The New Turkish 151 on the other hand, conveyed to him something more dynamic: civilized and vig¬ orous and progressive. The story in Chapter 8 of the two Izmir taxi-drivers who did not feel that uygarkik had anything to do with medeniyet is relevant in this context, as is the last sentence of Chapter 7 n. 12. Fatma Ozkan’s words quoted above appear to be borne out: ‘If a language possesses a plurality of words to express a concept, a thing, or an entity, fine distinctions of meaning eventually arise among them.’ Now that the creation of Oztiirkfe has been at a virtual standstill since 1983, there are signs that the process of impoverishment has begun to go into reverse. Not that discerning writers waited for 1983 before feeling free to choose whatever words they pleased, though it must be remembered that it took courage to do so when your choice of words could brand you as a communist or a reactionary. One who had such courage was Zeki Kuneralp, and this is what he wrote in the intro¬ duction to his memoirs of a long and brilliant career in diplomacy. Unlike him, I shall not apologize for the length of what follows (though I have abbreviated it somewhat), because, like him, I think the matter is important. Kitapta kullandigim lisandan da bahsetmek isterim, hatta biraz uzunca. Okurlanmdan onun i<jin oztir dilerim, ama konu bence miihimdir. Goriilecegi gibi eskiye ve yeniye aym derecede iltifat ettim, ne Osmanhca, ne de ari Tiirk<;e yazmaktan urktiim. Her iki §iveyi aym cumlede kullanmaktan bile ifekinmedim. Turkey kelime bulamadigim vakit, Turk^ele$tirilmi§ Frenk^eye ba$vurmakta dahi mazur gormedim. Kokii ne olursa olsun, hangi kelime fikrimi en iyi ifade ediyorsa onu se^tim... Ya memlekette o anda hakim siyasi havaya uymak, ya ideolojik tercihlerimize iltifat etmek i<;in eski veya yeni dilden yalmz birini kullanir, oburiinii topyekun reddederiz. Bunun boyle oldugunu anlamak i<pin Ankara’daki malum otobiis duragimn yakin mazimizdeki muhtelif isimlerini hatirlamak kafidir. Siyasi iktidara gore bu durak isim degi$tirmi§, kah ‘Vekaletler’, kah ‘Bakanliklar’ olmu§tur. Demokrat Parti iktidarimn sonuna dogru ‘Erkan-i Harbiye-yi Umumiye Riyaseti’ demege bile ba§larm$tik. 27 Mayis’dan sonra tekrar ‘Genelkurmay Ba§kanligi’ na dondtik. Bu biraz gulun^tiir, <pimkii bir dilin ne partisi, ne de dini vardir. thtilalci ve tutucu aym dili kullamrlar. Aym dille bir mukaddes kitap yazilabilecegi gibi bir a$k romam da yazilabilir. Dil bir ara^tir, gaye degildir, tarafsizdir. Biz, umumiyetle, bunun farkmda degiliz. Mesela fanatik $ekiide art Tiirkije taraftari isek istedigimiz manayi ta^iyan art Tiirk^e bir kelime bulmadik mi, diger bir kelimeye o manayi da yukletiriz, ihtiyacimizi miikemmelen kar§ilamakta olan Arab!, Farisi veya Frenki;e kelimeyi sosyo-politik inam;lanmizdan dtiirtt kenara iteriz. Boylece lisammizi fakirle$tirir, niianslari yok eder, vuzuhdan yoksun tatsiz bir §ekle sokariz. Halbuki bir lisan ne kadar <;ok kaynaktan kelime saghyabilirse o nisbette sarahat, renk ve viis’at kazamr... Ya§adigimiz diinya gittik^e ufaliyor, milletler birbirine yakla§iyor, dilleri birbirini etkiliyor ve bu suretle hep birden zenginle$iyor!ar. (Kuneralp 1981:15-17) I should like to say something, even at some length, about the language I use in this book. For this I ask my readers’ pardon, but to my mind the subject is important. It will be seen that I have shown the same regard for the old as for the new; I have not shied away from writing either Ottoman or pure Turkish. I have not even refrained from using both forms of language in the same sentence. Nor, where I have been unable to find the right Turkish 152 The New Turkish word, have I seen any harm in resorting to a Turkicized Western word. I have chosen whichever word best expresses my thought, no matter what its origin ... In order to conform to the political climate prevailing at the time or to gratify our ideological prefer¬ ences, we use only one of the two languages available to us, the old or the new, rejecting the other entirely. To see that this is so, it is sufficient to recall the various names borne in our recent past by that well-known bus stop in Ankara. This stop has changed its name according to the political party in power, becoming now ‘Vekaletler’, now ‘Bakanhklar’ [both meaning ‘Ministries’]. Towards the end of the Democrat Party regime, we had even begun to refer to the office of the Chief of the General Staff by its Ottoman name of‘Erkan1 Harbiye-yi Umumiye Riyaseti’. After 27 May [the day of the i960 coup d’etat] we reverted to the modern ‘Genelkurmay Ba§kanhgi’. This is somewhat ludicrous, because a language has no party or religion. Revolutionaries and conservatives may use the same language. A sacred book can be written in any given language, and so can a love story. Language is a means, not an end; it does not take sides. We generally fail to realize this. For example, if we are fanatical partisans of pure Turkish, when we cannot find a pure Turkish word to express the meaning we want, we load that meaning on to some other word and, for the sake of our socio-political beliefs, cast aside the Arabic, Persian or Western word that perfectly meets our needs. In this way we impov¬ erish our language, we obliterate its nuances, we deprive it of clarity and thrust it into a tasteless form. Whereas, the more numerous the sources a language can draw on for words, the more explicit, the more colourful, the more copious it becomes ... The world we live on is steadily diminishing in size, the nations are growing closer together, their languages are influencing one another and are thereby becoming jointly enriched. (Lewis 1992: 2-3) Since Kuneralp wrote that, more and more writers have been doing as he did and using whatever words they prefer. In the pages of any magazine, ‘Ottomanisms’ may now be seen that twenty years ago one would have thought obsolete: mefhuliimdiir'it is unknown to me’, -e tdbi 'subject to’, -e sahip ‘possessing’. Pleasant though it is for lovers of the old language to see and hear more and more elements of it coming back into use, they should not deceive themselves into assuming that the language reform is over and done with. The effects of fifty years of indoctrination are not so easily eradicated. The neologisms ozgiirluk and bagimsizhk have been discussed in Chapter 8. The objection most critics raise to these two words, however, is on grounds not of malformation but of lack of emo¬ tional content. Untold thousands of Turks, they say, fought and died for hurriyet and istiklal; how many would be ready to fight and die for ozgiirluk and bagimsizhk? There is an answer to this rhetorical question: you do not miss what you have never known. To those who have grown up since the 1950s, Hurriyet is the name of a daily newspaper and a square in Beyazit, while Istiklal is the name of a street in Beyoglu. To the majority of them, ozgiirluk and bagimsizhk mean what hurriyet and istiklal meant to older generations and what ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ mean to English-speakers, and yes, they are ready to fight and die for them if need be. If they think about the language reform at all, they see nothing catastrophic in it; the language they have spoken since infancy is their language. 12 What Happened to the Language Society The years from 1932 to 1950 were TDK’s high noon. It had the support of Atatiirk’s Republican People’s Party, which after his death was led by his faithful ismet tnonu. The Society, however, had no shortage of opponents. Those who disap¬ proved of Atatiirk’s secularist policies took exception to the change of alphabet and to the language reform, rightly judging that at least part of the purpose behind both was to make the language of the Koran less accessible. There were other opponents, including many who were broadly in favour of the reform but did not approve of eliminating Arabic and Persian words in general use. The strength of feeling on this matter may be judged from the conciliatory tone of the speech of Ibrahim Necmi Dilmen, Secretary-General of TDK, on 26 September 1940 at the eighth Language Festival: Yabanci dillerden gelme sozlere gelince, bunlar da iki turliidur: Bir takimi, kullanila kullanila halkin diline kadar girmi§ olanlardir. Bunlan, dilimizin kendi ses ve turetim kanunlarina gore, benimsemekte diyecek bir $ey yoktur. Ancak tiirkc;enin kendi dil kanunlarina uymiyan, halkin anlamadigi, benimsemedigi sozleri elden geldigi kadar <;abuklukla yazi dilimizin de di§ina qkarmak borcumuzdur. (Turk Dili, 2nd ser. (1940), 20) As for words from foreign languages, they are of two kinds. One category is words that with constant use have entered all the way into the language of the people. There is nothing to be said against adopting these in accordance with our language’s own laws of phonet¬ ics and derivation. But when it comes to words which do not obey the linguistic laws of Turkish and are not understood and not adopted by the people, it is incumbent on us to expel these from our written language too, as quickly as we can. In those days TDK was set on Turkicizing technical terms. The report on scientific terminology submitted to the Fourth Kurultay (Kurultay 1942: 20) included this: Ger^ekten inammiz odur ki bilim terimleri ne kadar oz dilden kurulursa bilim o kadar oz mahrmz olur. Terimler yabanci kaldik<;a, bilim de bizde ba$kalarmin egreti bir mail olmaktan kurtulamaz. Turkcjeden yaratilan bir terim, anlami ne kadar capra§ik ve karanhk olursa olsun, ne demeye geldigini Turk, <;ocuguna, Turk gencine az 90k sezdirir. Indeed it is our belief that scientific terms become our own in so far as they are based on the pure language. So long as they remain foreign, science in Turkey cannot escape being on loan from other people. 154 What Happened to the Language Society A term created from Turkish, however involved and obscure its meaning may be, will give the Turkish child and young person more or less of a perception of what it means. The ‘az $ok’ was a wise qualification. Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942) had been published in time for that Kurultay; we have seen some examples of its contents in Chapter 8. If children or young persons, in the course of their reading, came across books employing some of the terms prescribed in it, they might well find themselves lacking a perception of the meaning. A word like insanbigimicilik ‘human-shape-ism’ for ‘anthropomorphism’ they might work out,1 but what would they make of alma§ and koram? Or sann ‘hallucination’? Its first syllable could be the noun san ‘fame’ or the stem of sanmak ‘to suppose’. But might it not be the new san, the Ozturkfe for sifat ‘attribute’? Or could sann be a misprint for Tanri ‘God’? Poor children and young people! Over the next few years, however, the Society came to see that the steady influx of international terms was unstoppable, and in 1949 it officially changed its attitude: ‘Yabanci dillerdeki bilim ve teknik terimlerinin ileri milletlerce mii§terek olarak kullamlanlari, incelenip kabul edilecek belirli bir usule gore dilimize ahnabilir’ (Foreign-language scientific and technical terms used in common by the advanced nations may be taken into our language in accordance with a specific method which will be studied and accepted) (Kurultay 1949:146). In 1942 a start had been made on modernizing the language of officialdom, hitherto untouched. The building tax, bina vergisi to ordinary people, was still musakkafat resmi ‘duty on roofed premises’ to the tax authorities, while secret sessions of the Assembly, gizli oturum to the participants, were recorded in the minutes as celse-i hafiye. It was decided that the best way to begin would be to produce an Oztiirkge version of the 1924 Constitution, the Tejkilat-i Esasiye Kanunu (Law of Fundamental Organization). The 1942 initiative did not get very far, but in November 1944 the Parliamentary Group of the governing Republican People’s Party set up a commission to prepare a draft, and the result of their labours was Law No. 4695, the Anayasa, ‘Mother-Law’, accepted by the Assembly on 10 January 1945. Article 104 read: ‘20 Nisan 1340 tarih ve 491 sayth Te$kilat-i Esasiye Kanunu yerine mana ve kavramda bir degi§iklik yapilmaksizin Turk$ele$tirilmi$ olan bu kanun konulmu§tur’ (This law, which has been put into Turkish with no change in meaning and import, replaces the Law of Fundamental Organization no. 491 dated 20 April 1924). That was true, but it is not so much what you say as the way you say it; the new text was certainly intelligible to more people than the old had been, but the Anayasa aroused the ire not only of the habitual opponents of the language reform but also of lawyers and others who felt that the dignity of the Constitution was ' They might have raised their eyebrows at the form, seeing that in normal Turkish the third-person suffix is always omitted before -ci (Lewis 1988: 50). What Happened to the Language Society 155 diminished by the abandonment of the stately Ottoman phraseology.2 Here is the text of Article 33 in both versions: (1924) Reisicumhur, hastahk ve memleket haricinde seyahat gibi bir sebeble vezaifini ifa edemez veya vefat, istifa ve sair sebeb dolayisile Cumhuriyet Riyaseti inhilal ederse Buyiik Millet Meclisi Reisi vekaleten Reisicumhur vezaifini ifa eder. (1945) Cumhurba$kam, hastahk ve memleket di§i yolculuk gibi bir sebeple gorevini yapamaz veya olum, $ekilme ve ba§ka sebeplerle Cumhurba$kanhgi aqk kahrsa Buyiik Millet Meclisi Ba§kam vekil olarak Cumhurba$kanhgi gorevini yapar. If the President of the Republic is unable to exercise his duties for any reason such as illness or travel abroad, or if the Presidency falls vacant through death, resignation, or other reason, the President of the Grand National Assembly shall provisionally exercise the duties of the President of the Republic. The drafting of this Constitution was the occasion for modernizing the names of the four months Te§rin-i ewe/, Te^rin-i sani, Kanun-u ewel, and Kanun-u sani (October-January), into Ekim, Kasim, Aralik, and Ocak, because the second and fourth occurred in the text. There had been previous partial modernizations: Birinci and tkinci Te$rin and Kanun, and llkte$rin and Sonte^rin, llkkanun and Sonk&nun. The new name for January preserves the meaning of kanun ‘hearth’. With the new name for December it became the subject of jokes on the theme that the transition from December to January—Araliktan Ocaga—now meant passing through the gap into the fire.3 Tahsin Banguoglu fought and lost a long fight to save the language from the reformers’ worst excesses, a fight that began in 1949, when he was Minister of Education and President of TDK. Early in 1950 he set up an academic committee of the Society with the task of ensuring that work on devising technical terms should continue ‘in keeping with the phonetics, aesthetics and grammar of the language’. The Society did not take long to let it slip into oblivion. He was often reviled as an enemy of the reform, which he was not; he contributed at least one successful neologism, uygulamak for tatbik etmek ‘to apply, put into 2 Half a century later, something of the sort began to happen in England. Under the heading ‘Legal Reform could Declare Latin Phrases ultra vires’, The Times reported (28 Oct. 1994): ‘Proposals to streamline procedures under which the public can challenge government and local authority decisions in court were unveiled by the Law Commission yesterday. They include replacing Latin terms with English. The report recommends that the names of remedies sought under judicial review should no longer be mandamus, prohibition or certiorari, but mandatory, restraining and quashing orders. It said that although it was recognised that there were limits on the extent to which legal terminology could be made accessible to lay people, it should be as understandable as possible.’ In April 1998 an English judge repeated the message. If it happens, we could revive the Dickensian Ozingilizce for habeas corpus: ‘have his carcass’. J According to Erer (1973:136), TDK decided at one time (not specified) to update the remaining months, February-September, into Ktstr, Ayaz, Yagmur, Kiraz, Kavun, Karpuz, Mtstr, Ayva, meaning respectively Barren, Frost, Rain, Cherry, Musk-melon, Water-melon, Maize, Quince. These too would have lent themselves to joking; Erer points out that for ‘In April the rains begin’ one would have to say ‘Yagmurda yagmurlar ba$lar’. True, and what about ‘There were no water-melons in July’? And indeed ‘There was no rain in April’—‘Yagmurda yagmur yagmadi’? 156 What Happened to the Language Society practice’. What made him unpopular with the extremists was his competence as a specialist in the language. In the May 1950 elections, the Republican People’s Party, with 39.9 per cent of the vote, was defeated by the Democrat Party of Adnan Menderes, with 53.3 per cent. TDK’s by-laws (tuziik) laid down that the Minister of Education was its President ex officio. The new Minister ordered the removal of this provision, and in the following February the Society held an Extraordinary Assembly and duly amended its tuziik. The Budget Commission recommended a reduction in the Society’s annual Ministry of Education grant from 1X50,000 (then equal to £2,000) to TLio.ooo. During the Assembly debate on the Commission’s report in February 1951, one Deputy, having affirmed that the Society had ‘lost its scientific personality and had become the tool of political aims’ and that ‘all it did was ruin the language’, proposed that its grant be discontinued altogether, a motion which the Assembly voted to accept (Levend 1972:486). This did not mean the end of the Society’s activities, partly because of the receipts from its publica¬ tions4 but more because under Atatiirk’s will it shared the residual income from his estate, after some personal bequests, with the less controversial Historical Society, Turk Tarih Kurumu.5 The fact that the Minister had severed his connec¬ tion with it, however, meant that it could no longer channel its output directly into the schools. One of Menderes’s ministers, Ethem Menderes (no relation), believed in Ozturkge, but there was nothing he could do to stem the tide. On 24 December 1952 the Assembly approved a law restoring ‘the Law of Fundamental Organiza¬ tion no. 491... together with such of its amendments as were in force up to the date of acceptance of Law no. 4695’. The voting was 341 for and 32 against, with nine abstentions. The Ozturkge names of ministries and other bodies were also replaced by their previous names, complete with Persian izafets: Bakanlik ‘Ministry’ once more became Vekdlet, Saglik ve Sosyal Yardtm ‘Health and Social Aid’ became Sihhat ve Igtimai Muavenet, Bayindtrltk ‘Public Works’ became Nafia, Savunma ‘Defence’ became Miidafaa, Genel Kurmay Ba$kam ‘Chief of the General Staff’ became Erkan-i Harbiye-i Umumiye Reisi, and Sava ‘Public Prosecutor’ was again Miiddeii Umumi. This was the worst blow so far suffered by the Language Society. Most newspapers went with the prevailing wind and moderated their use of neologisms, without abandoning them entirely. Yet the majority of the generation that had grown up since the beginning of the language reform did not share the Democrat Party’s attitude. 4 Particularly in demand was TDK’s Turkge Sozltik, which had become an essential work of reference not just for devotees of Ozturkge but for anyone wanting to understand the newspapers and the radio. 5 The two Societies’ share rose from TI.40,000 in 1938 to TLn8,ooo in 1941, TI.125,000 in 1952, TI.269,000 in 1955, Tl.505,000 in i960, TL90i,ooo in 1961, TLi,8i5,ooo in 1964, and TLi,923,ooo in 1966 (Kurultay 1966:117). In 1946,46% of TDK’s income came from the government and 30% from Ataturk’s legacy (Heyd 1954: 51). What Happened to the Language Society 157 It was at this time that Falih Rifki Atay wrote that the State Radio had been ordered to stop calling members of the Assembly Milletvekili and to revert to Meb’us, ‘giving due weight to the 'ayn between the b and the u.6 TDK was now on the defensive. Heyd (1954: 50) wrote: During the last few years the Society has refrained from suggesting any further neologisms. This moderate attitude is reflected in a small dictionary of foreign (mostly Arabic and Persian) words with their Turkish equivalents, published by the Society in 1953. Its title, Sade Ttirkfe Ktlavuzu, seems to indicate that in the present phase ‘simple’ (sade), and not ‘pure’ (oz), Turkish is the Society’s slogan. On 27 May i960 the Democrats were overthrown by a group of officers, the leading thirty-eight of whom constituted themselves as the National Unity Committee, and the tide turned. The language reform having from the first been attacked by those opposed to Atatiirk’s other reforms, the officers saw the Democrat Party’s attitude to language, exemplified in its restoration of the 1924 Law of Fundamental Organization, as being all of a piece with its policy of undoing Atatiirk’s work of making Turkey into a secular republic. Shortly after the military takeover, the Society’s subsidy was restored. In January 1961 a government circular was sent to all ministries, forbidding the use of any foreign word for which a Turkish equivalent existed. The new Constitution of July 1961 was in ‘the new Turkish’, though not completely, as is evident from the following sample, the text of Article 34 (the Persian veya and words of Arabic origin are shown in italic): Kamu gorev ve hizmetinde bulunanlara kar§i, bu gorev ve hizmetm yerine getirilmesiyle ilgili olarak yapilan isnadardan doiayi apian hakaret davalarmda, samk, isnadm dogrulugunu ispat hakkma sahiptir. Bunun dipndaki haRerde ispat istemenin kabulii, ancak isnat olunan fiilin dogru olup olmadigirun anlaplmasinda kamu yarart bulunmasma veya p'Myefpnin ispata razi olmasina baghdir. In cases of libel arising from allegations made against those engaged in public duties and services in connection with the discharge of these duties and services, the defendant has the right to prove the truth of the allegations. In situations falling outside the above, the accep¬ tance of the request to adduce proof depends on its being in the public interest for it to be determined whether or not the alleged action is true, or on the plaintiff’s consent to the adducing of proof On 10 September 1962 General Cemal Gtirsel, the chairman of the National Unity Committee, who was elected President of the Republic in the following month, sent the Dil Kurumu a personal letter which, apart from one kadar, one resmi, and a few ves, really was in the new Turkish: 6 This was in an article in Dunya (11 Jan. 1953; repr. in Turk Dili, 2 (1941), 333-5), entitled ‘§aka Yolu’ (By Way of a Joke), so it should not be taken as gospel, but even if his ‘ “b” ile “u” arastndaki “ayn”in hakkini vereceksin’ was part of the joke, the State Radio no doubt did receive some such order, since Meb’us was the term used in the 1924 Constitution, restored in 1952, while the 1945 Constitution used the relatively OztUrkfe form Milletvekili. Meb’us is Arabic (mab'ut), as are millet and vekil. 158 What Happened to the Language Society inancim $u ki, Dil Kurumu yillardan beri sessizce ve inan^la ^ah^makta ve buyuk i§ler de ba^armaktadir. Bu ugrarmada yava$lik ve elde edilen sonu<;larda yetersizlik varsa, kesin olarak inamyorum ki, bunun sorumlulugu Dil Kurumu’nda degil, bizlerde ve aydmlardadir. Aydinlar, yazarlar, kurumlar ve kurultaya7 kadar resmi kurullar, gu^lerinin tiirmiyle degil biraziyle olsun Dil Kurumu’nun ^ali^malarma yardimci olmak zorundadirlar. Bu killer ve kurullar, dilimizin ozle^tirilmesinde sorumlulugun yalniz Dil Kurumu’nda oldugunu saniyorlarsa yamhyorlar. (Levend 1972: 488) It is my belief that the Language Society has for years now been working quietly and with faith and achieving great things. If there has been any remission in this effort and any inad¬ equacy in the results, I am convinced that the responsibility for this rests not with the Society but with us and the intellectuals. Intellectuals, writers, societies and official bodies all the way up to the Grand National Assembly are under an obligation to assist the Lan¬ guage Society’s labours, if not with all their might then at least with a little of it. These individuals and bodies are wrong if they think that the responsibility for purifying our language belongs to the Language Society alone. Statistical analyses have occasionally been undertaken to see how much of the current vocabulary of the press consisted of ‘native’ words—i.e. words known, presumed or declared to be of Turkish origin—and how much was ‘foreign’—i.e. Arabic or Persian. Unfortunately, no two of them agree. The most reliable is Kamile Imer’s (1973) scholarly study, which goes down only to 1965. Table 12.1 is taken from her summary of word counts of the news sections in five newspapers: Ulus, Ak$am, Cumhuriyet, Milliyet, and Htirriyet. ‘Ottoman’ at the head of the last column refers to words compounded of Arabic or Persian roots and Turkish suffixes, such as hatirlamak ‘to remember’, and endi$eli ‘anxious’. It will be seen Table 12.1. Origins of vocabulary of five newspapers, 1931-1965 (%) Year Turkish Arabic Persian Other Ottoman 1931 35-0 51.0 2.0 6.0 6.0 1933 44-o 45.0 2.0 4.0 5.0 1936 48.0 39.0 3.0 5.0 5.0 1941 1946 48.0 40.0 3-o 4.0 5.0 57-0 28.0 3-o 7.0 5.0 51-0 51.0 35.0 3-o 6.0 5.0 1956 35-5 2.0 7-5 4.0 1961 56.0 30.5 3.0 6.0 1965 60.5 26.0 1.0 8.5 4-5 4.0 1951 7 - The meaning of kurultay here is unclear. It cannot be the Dil Kurultayi (the Language Congress), which is not a committee or official body. The translation is based on the assumption that it is a slip for Kamutay, the replacement at one time proposed for 'Buyuk Millet Meclisi’. If the assumption is correct, the fault probably lay with a careless proof-reader and a typist too young to remember Kamutay. What Happened to the Language Society 159 that the proportion of Turkish words declined soon after the Democrats’ coming to power and was not restored until their downfall. ismet Inonii had always been an enthusiast for language reform; it will be remembered that he was the author of gelenek for ‘tradition’. He was personally involved in drafting the 1945 Anayasa. As Prime Minister in a succession of coali¬ tion governments in 1962-5, he gave TDK every support; for example, writers of school textbooks were instructed by the Ministry of Education to use ‘ari bir Turk^e’ (a pure Turkish). But general elections were due in October 1965. In the first few years after the coup, the solid block of four million voters who had always turned out for Menderes had kept their heads down, like the Democrat supporters among the newspaper-proprietors and journalists. With the return to civilian rule, however, they began to feel their oats. There was a clear prospect of victory for the Justice Party, whose vice-chairman had declared it to be the continuation of the proscribed Democrat Party. TDK had for some time been alarmed by a stream of press attacks on its ‘constant interference with the natural course of the lan¬ guage’. On 29 May 1965, ‘her tiirlii yanh$ anlamayi onlemek i$in’ (to prevent any misunderstanding), it produced an uncompromising manifesto, of which these are some extracts; Ataturk’iin hiikiimet organlan di$inda ozel bir dernek olarak kurdugu ve ozel bir dernek olarak ya§amasim vasiyetiyle sagladigi Turk Dil Kurumu’nun amaci, dilimizin ozle$tirilmesi ve geli$tirihnesidir ... Dilin hizla annmasi ve geli§mesi i<;in ona kendi yapisina uygun olarak‘miidahale’ edilebilir ve edilmelidir. ‘Dile miidahale etmemeli; onu zaman iifinde kendi kendine geli§meye birakmah.’ Ilkesi dogru degildir. Dil dogal ve toplumsal butiin olaylar gibi ‘miidahale’ ile bi^im ahr... Yabanci sozciikleri atmakla Ttirk^eyi yoksulla$tiracagimiz kamsi da yanh$tir. Uygun kar§ihgi bulunmayan hi<; bir yabanci sozciik dilden ^lkarilmami^tir; ijikarilamaz da. Kurum disinda ve yurtta$lar arasmda hizla geli§en bir ozle§tirme akimi vardir. Bir<;ok kimseler ortaya yeni yeni sozciikler atmaktadirlar. Bunlann kimisi ba$arilidir, tutunmaktadir. Kimisi de ba§arisizdir. Dil Kurumu’nu yermek isteyenler, ba§arisiz olanlan ona mal etmektedir. Dil Kurumu ‘uydurmaci’ degildir. Dili zenginle$tirmek i<;in $u bilimsel yollardan yararlamr: Halk agzindan derlemeler, eski metinlerden taramalar, tiiretmeler. Tiiretmeler dil¬ imizin kok ve eklerinden, dil kurallanna ve dil duygusuna uygun olarakyapilir ... (Turk Dili, 14 (1965), 661-3) The Turkish Language Society was founded by Atatiirk as a private society outside the organs of government, and in his will he ensured its survival as a private society. Its goal is the purification and development of our language ... For its speedy purification and development, the language can and should be ‘interfered with’, in conformity with its own structure. The principle that there must be no interference with the language, but that it must be left to develop by itself with time, is mistaken. Language, like all natural and social events, is shaped by ‘interference’... The belief that by discarding foreign words we will impoverish Turkish is also mistaken. No foreign word without an appropriate equivalent has been or can be discarded. 160 What Happened to the Language Society There is a rapidly developing current of purification among citizens outside the Society. A number of people are putting out ever new words. Some of these are successful and catch on; some are unsuccessful. People wishing to disparage the Language Society lay the unsuccessful ones at its door ... The Language Society does not make words up. It employs the following scientific ways of enriching the language; gleanings from popular speech, combing through old texts, and derivations. Derivations are made from the roots and suffixes of our language, in conformity with the rules of language and feeling for language ... The manifesto had no perceptible success in mollifying the Society’s adversaries. For one thing, they did not have to be particularly well endowed with a feeling for language to know that TDK’s ‘derivations’ were not always from native roots and suffixes. The Society sometimes found it necessary in the 1960s to disclaim certain ludi¬ crous expressions put into circulation by its opponents to parody some of its coinages. Among the best known are gdk konuksal avrat ‘sky guestish dame’ for ugak hostesi ‘air hostess’; dz ittirimli goturgeg ‘self-propulsional carry-thing’ for otomobik, ayakiter gotiirgeg ‘foot-pusher carry-thing’ for bisiklet, tutiinsel dumangag ‘tobaccoish smoke-thing’ for sigara ‘cigarette’; igi gegmig dinsel ki$i‘passed-out religious person’ for Imam baytldt ‘the Imam swooned’ (the name of a highly esteemed aubergine dish); and ulusal dutturii, very approximately ‘clannish ditty’, for milli maq ‘national anthem’. The reason why unsophisticated people thought these were genuine TDK products is that they found them no different in kind from some of the Society’s own creations; how can one tell that a grotesque parody is a parody when the original is itself grotesque?8 In the years 1966-9 attacks on the Society intensified and attempts were made, unsuccessfully, to sequester its assets by legal means. In 1967 a sympa¬ thetic senator introduced a law compelling all public and private bodies and commercial firms to make their titles, stationery, notices, and trade marks conform to ‘the language of the Constitution’. Ingeniously bogged down in a series of committees, it got nowhere. Not that it would have had much effect, because there are an awful lot of words in common use that are not in the text of the Constitution. On 7 March 1970 a group of conservatives led by Nihad Sami Banarli founded the Kubbealti Cemiyeti (Under-the-Dome Society). The Kubbealti is the building in the Topkapi Palace where, in the Ottoman period, the Council of State used to meet, under the presidency of the Grand Vizier. Later the Society promoted itself to Academy: at the beginning of 1972 the first number of its quarterly journal appeared, under the title Kubbealtii Akademisi Mecmuasi. Its other publications include a respectable series on Turkish calligraphers that 8 The author is reminded of an Ottoman history seminar at an American university, where a par¬ ticipant remarked that the discussion ought to be about Ottoperson herstory. After the seminar, the others present agreed that they had thought she was joking, but none of them could be sure. What Happened to the Language Society 161 continues in the 1990s under the imprint of the Kubbealti Akademisi Kiiltiir ve San’at9 Vakfi (Culture and Art Foundation). There have been other organizations committed to reversing the reform, among them Muallimler Cemiyeti (Society of Teachers), and Turk Dilini Koruma ve Geli$tirme Cemiyeti (Society for the Protection and Development of the Turkish Language). In 1967 TDK published Dil Devrimi uzerine, a reprint of some newspaper articles on the language reform, at least three of which poured scorn on the latter body for, inter alia, calling itself not a dernek but a cemiyet, its president not bagkan but reis, its secretary-general (Nihad Sami Banarli) not genel yazman but umumi katip, its accountant not sayman but muhasip, its members not iiye but aza. That particular criticism was a bit unfair; what else could be expected from a society whose raison d’etre was disapproval of the lan¬ guage reform? Somewhat fairer was the criticism that, if they felt that keenly about the old language, the title they should have chosen was Turk Lisamm Muhafaza ve Inki$af Cemiyeti.10 Neither of these societies seems to have been very vocal since 1983, no doubt because the post-1983 TDK has done nothing much to offend anybody, except, by its very existence, the deposed top people of the pre-1983 TDK. By the mid-1970s, the proportion of ‘Turkish’ words, real and invented, in the news columns of the press was regularly as high as 70 per cent, and in some places, notably the leading articles in Cumhuriyet, it rose to 90 per cent and more. At that point, many readers would either reach for a dictionary or turn to the sports pages, where the technical terms (e.g. haf ‘halfback’, bek ‘fullback’, forvet ‘forward’), though scarcely Oztiirkge, would be familiar to them. It was common knowledge that Nadir Nadi Abahoglu, the editor of Cumhuriyet, wrote his editorials in the Turkish he had grown up with, then had them translated into Oztiirkge—compare Agop Dila^ar’s story of his visit to Necmettin Sadak in Chapter 4. Biilent Ecevit, Prime Minister in 1973-4, 1978-9, and again in 1998, was an ardent Oztiirkgeci, some of his utterances being fairly impenetrable, more so perhaps in his speeches than in his writings.11 He attracted huge crowds wherever he went and, although not every member of those crowds could have understood all he said, his charisma led to a popularization of Oztiirkge. When the Justice Party returned to office in 1979, however, the new ministers issued streams of circulars banning neologisms from official correspondence. What was instructive about these circulars was not so much the words they banned as the words they used, 9 The antiquated spelling san’at for sanat is worth noting; the use of an apostrophe to mark an original Arabic ’ayn or hamza has long been dropped. Few now are aware that sanat is of Arab origin (saria'), and it passes for Turkish, like temel‘basis’, ‘basic’, which lives on unchallenged despite its Greek origin (themelion). 10 As it stands, this can only mean ‘Society for Protecting the Turkish Language and for Develop¬ ment’; Ettirme should have been inserted after lnki$af to make it transitive. " Mustafa Balbay, however, writing in Cumhuriyet (27 Sept. 1990), quotes Professor Sjaban Karata$: ‘Biilent Bey, yeni kelimeleri kullanmayi sever... Ama dikkat edin biraz sinirlenince dili degi^iyor, Arap^a kelimeler kullanmaya ba$hyor’ (Bulent Bey loves using the new words, but notice that when he becomes a little irritated his language changes and he starts using Arabic words). 162 What Happened to the Language Society ignoring the fact that, for example, the sozctik ‘word’ they employed in the pre¬ ambles to their blacklists was no less a product of linguistic engineering than the e^gudum ‘coordination’ and olasihk ‘possibility’ which they proscribed. In September 1980 the military again seized power, the politicians having failed to stop rightist and leftist students murdering each other, latterly at an average rate of twenty-two a day. Two years later a new Constitution was promulgated, with some Ozturkfe, but not enough to offend any but the most diehard. Much of it was the Ozturkfe of 1961: the language of the many passages and whole art¬ icles taken over from the 1961 Constitution, among them Article 34 quoted above (Article 39 in the new), was left unaltered. Nor was the language of the additional material as extreme as it might have been—for example, the second clause of Article 12 contains only three inventions, toplum, odev, and sorumluluk, all of them generally accepted (the words in italic are of non-Turkish origin): ‘Temel hak ve hurriyeAer, ki§inin topluma, ailesine ve diger ki$ilere kar$i odev ve sorumluluklarini da ihtiva eder’ (The fundamental rights and freedoms also include the duties and responsibilities of the individual towards society, his family, and other persons). One’s impression is that the drafters were trying to steer a more or less middle course between the old and the new, with some bias towards the old. For TDK, this was the writing on the wall. The Society, as Atatiirk’s heir and a private body, not an organ of the state but what we would call a quango, had assumed that its existence was guaranteed in perpetuity, that it could never be abolished. Nor was it; when the conservatives thought the time was ripe it was simply taken over. A law passed on 11 August 1983 reconstituted it as part of a new Atatvirk Kiiltur, Dil ve Tarih Yiiksek Kurumu (Atatiirk Cultural, Linguistic, and Historical Institute), linked to the Prime Min¬ ister’s office, and gave it an almost entirely new Council of Management. The debates on the draft legislation in the Council of State revealed the intensity of the hatred the Society had aroused.12 A number of legal objections to the proposal were voiced, none of which seemed to be adequately dealt with, but that is not our present concern. Adnan Orel, the spokesman of the National Education Com¬ mission, denounced ‘Yillardir dilimize kar$i i^lendigine elemle §ahit oldugum ihanet’ (The treason that, to my sorrow, I have for years seen committed against our language). He continued: Bu Tasarimn kanunla$masiyla Turk dili Aziz Ataturk’umuzun hayata gozlerini yumdugu gttnden beri ifine dii$uruldugu felaketten kurtanlacak, maruz birakildigi bir bakima yangm gibi, sel gibi, zelzele gibi tabu afetlere benzer; fakat onlar gibi tabii degil, hayfa ki, gayn tabii bir facianin kurbani olmaktan halas edilecektir. Artik milli varligimizm en hayati, en kiymetil temel unsurlanndan, ana direklerden biri olan dilimiz, kuruldugu maksat ve gayeden tamamen aynlan bir kurumun tasallutundan kurtanhp devletin sahabetine kavu$turulacak ve i$in ehli olan ger<;ek ilim otoritelerinin ;uurlu vicdanlanna, dirayetli ellerine emanet olunacaktir... 12 Dantjma Meclisi Tutanak Dergisi, 19 (June-July 1983), passim. Adnan Orel’s speech quoted below came on 28 July. What Happened to the Language Society 163 [TDK]... camm Turk^eyi fakirle$tirmi$, kisirla$tirmi$, zayiflatmi?, sigla$tirmi§, ?irkinle$tirmi$, hiilasa kolunu kanadim kinp (Tabirimi af buyurun) yolunmu$ tavuga i;evirmi$tir. O guzelim dilin ahengi, zerafeti, yabanci dillerle kelimeler mefhumlar, mana niianslan bakimindan olan muadelet ve paralelligi yok olmu§, hisleri, heyecanlari, fikirleri anlatabilmekteki zenginlik ve etkinligi kaybolmu^; akraba dillerle olan miinasebeti, diger Turk leh^eleriyle irtibati yok edilmi§, Dilimizin asirlar boyunca normal ve tabii gelifmesinin ona kazandirdtgi bize mal olmu; kelimeler, terimler, ifadeyi meram unsurlari atilip, onlarin yerine Dilimizin ahenk kaidesine, gramerine, yapisina ve hi^bir vasfina uymayan, acayip, firkin, uydurma kelimeler, terim ve tabirleri uretilip doldurarak, zavalli Dil maskaraya ^evrilmi$tir. When this Draft becomes law, the Turkish language will be delivered from the calamity into which it has been plunged since our dear Ataturk closed his eyes to life. What it has suffered resembles in a way such natural disasters as fire, flood, and earthquake, but unlike them is not natural; the language will be saved from being the victim of—alas!—an unnat¬ ural disaster. Our language, one of the most vital, most precious constituents and mainstays of our existence as a nation and a state, is about to be freed from the tyranny of an organization that has totally departed from the aim and purpose for which it was established; it will be brought into state ownership and entrusted to the judicious consciences and capable hands of truly scholarly authorities who know their jobs ... [TDK] has impoverished our beloved language, has made it sterile, feeble, shallow and ugly; in short, it has broken its legs and wings and turned it into—pardon the expression— a plucked chicken.13 The harmony and grace of that lovely language has been eliminated, as has its ability to match other languages in words, concepts, and shades of meaning; gone are its richness and effectiveness in expressing feelings, emotions and ideas; annihilated its connection with kindred languages and its relationship with other Turkish dialects. The words, technical terms, and elements for expressing oneself, which were won for it by its normal and natural development over the centuries and have become our own, have been cast away and their places filled by grotesque, ugly, and fake words, terms, and expressions that have been fabricated in no conformity with the rule of harmony of our language, its grammar, its structure, or anything else about it. The unhappy language has become an object of ridicule. It would be hard to fault him, except in the matter of technical terms. Yet one only has to examine the words employed in his speech, which for the most part were more old-fashioned than those of other speakers in the debate (e.g. akltselim not sagduyu ‘common sense’, vicdan not bulunf ‘conscience’, nesil not ku$ak ‘genera¬ tion’), to know that it is not going to be possible to put the clock back. Among his Oztiirkfe words were toplum ‘society’, kesim ‘sector’, gdzetim ‘supervision’, denetim ‘control’, terim, ydnlendirmek ‘to guide’, etkilik ‘effectiveness’, uretmek ‘to produce’, and odiil ‘prize’.14 Another speaker described TDK as ‘a Society which calls an air hostess “a sky guestish dame” ’. This phrase—‘gok konuksal avrat’—was a reference to the old 13 It is impolite to mention non-human creatures, cats excepted, without a word of apology. I have heard villagers apologize similarly when speaking of atheists: ‘Affedersiniz, dinsizler ...’. 14 Odiil ‘prize’, though brought into the standard language by the reform, is not an invention; it is widely used in Anatolia. 164 What Happened to the Language Society spoof mentioned above, and his remark justly brought objections from some of his colleagues: ‘That’s a lie!’ and ‘Someone made that up! It’s a lie!’ The speaker, unruffled, went on to give some authentic examples of TDK’s output: ‘I have in my hand one of the Society’s publications, entitled “Finding equivalents for words of Western origin”.15 It calls banket (“verge”] yol omzu (“road shoulder”] ... Buldozer it calls yol diizler (“road leveller”], and greyder (“grader”] yer diizler (“earth leveller”].’ Other members did not seem to find these specimens of TDK’s crimes as heinous as he did, so he gave some more: genorgiitfu ‘gen[eral]-organizationist’ for biirokrat, gefinge (from geginmek ‘to get along, make a living’) for btitfe ‘budget’, duziingii for ideoloji.'6 His peroration was not at all bad. The Nasrettin Hoca story to which it alludes tells how a passer-by sees the Hoca spooning some¬ thing into a lake. He asks him what he’s up to and the Hoca replies, ‘I’m putting ferment in so that the whole lake turns into yoghurt.’ ‘Silly man!’ says the other, ‘It won’t work.’ ‘But just suppose it does!’ Millet hayatiyla, devlet hayatiyla dalga ge^mektir bu, gayri ciddi hareketlerdir. Efendim, biz tiretiriz, salanz, toplum tutarsa onu biz tamam deriz, koyariz. Tamam, tutunmu$tur bu kelime, bu ‘tilcik’ tutunmuftur ve Turk dilinin mail olmu§tur. E... peki, siz se^ip sepp boyle ortaya atacaksimz, bin tane kelime tureteceksiniz, ipnden bir tanesi tutacak. O zaman Nasrettin Hoca’mn gole maya ptlmasi gibi bir mesele oluyor. ‘Ya tutarsa ...’ Tutmuyor. This is monkeying with our life as a nation, as a state; this is frivolous behaviour. ‘My dear sir, we produce them, we throw them around, and if the public takes to them we say, “Fine,” and there we leave it. Very good, this word, this speechlet, has caught on and become part of the Turkish language.’ Well, all right, you’ll keep picking them out and launching them like this, you’ll call a thousand words into being and one of them will catch on. Then comes a problem like Nasrettin Hoca’s dropping ferment into the lake. ‘But just suppose it works!’ It doesn’t. In 1985 a group of disgruntled devotees of the former TDK established Dil Dernegi, a new Language Society to carry on the work of the old. One does not hear much of it; although lacking the financial resources of the old TDK, it con¬ tinues to function but is not churning out Oztiirkfe. It has produced some useful and scholarly works, notably on applied linguistics (e.g. Dil Dernegi 1991). On 24-8 September 1990 came Birinci Turk Dili Kurultayi (The First TurkishLanguage Congress), arranged by the Ministry of Culture. Right in the middle of it, on the 26th, came the annual Dil Bayrami (the Language Festival), and the taste¬ less choice of title, as if the real Birinci Turk Dili Kurultayi (of 1932) had never been, was the target of much criticism. It was doubtless for that reason that its next meeting was called not ‘tkinci’ (Second) but Siirekli (Continuing) Turk Dili Kurultayi (4-8 May 1992), the proceedings of which were published under that name by the Ministry of Culture. It was not a conspicuous success. Many of the speeches were parochial, being taken up with the numerous defects of TDK’s 15 16 Bati Kaynakli Sozciiklere Karfthk Bulma Denemesi, ii (Ankara: TDK, 1978). Duziingii is a provincial word for ayna ‘mirror’. Here it might be the result of a clerical error for du$Unii, once proposed as a replacement for ideoloji. What Happened to the Language Society 165 spelling guide, tmla Kilavuzu, to the evident disappointment of the Central Asian delegates, who had hoped for a serious discussion of the possibility of achieving a common written language. In 1970 the old TDK had begun suggesting yabanci kelimelere kar§iliklar’— equivalents for foreign words (no longer Arabic and Persian but English and French) that had entered or were in process of entering the language. It did little to stem the tide; the only examples that linger in the memory are uzgortim for ‘television’ and uzgoref for ‘television receiver’, but they had no more success than the uzaduyum for ‘telepathy’ suggested in Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942). The new TDK began a similar campaign in 1994 in Turk Dili, 507:218-21;17 (why it felt a need for this has been demonstrated in Chapter 10). The Society had set up a komisyon that would meet once a month to discuss possible equivalents for a number of such words in a list previously circulated, and to agree on one or more equivalents for each. The language of the announcement was conservative; some would call it reactionary: siyasiler ‘politicians’, kelime ‘word’, sirayet eden ‘infecting’, tedbir ‘measure’, taraf ‘side’, and even the sentence ‘Giin ge^miyor ki batimn yeni bir kelimesi... arziendam etmesin’ (A day does not pass without a new Western word’s... putting in an appearance’.18 There was, however, a sprin¬ kling of Ozttirkge (though not a single -sel): arag ‘medium’, kamu kurum ve kuruluglari ‘public associations and institutions’, -eyonelik‘directed towards’. The first list of foreign words for which substitutes were offered included fov ‘show’ and several of its compounds. For §ov itself, gosteri was proposed. Turkey being as yet little touched by political correctness, for govmen ‘showman’ the suggestion was gosteri adami, and, for vanmen fov‘one-man show’, tek adam gosterisi. For talk §ov ‘chat-show’, soz gosterisi or gene yari^ttrma ‘chin-wag’, literally ‘jaw-racing’, and for talk §ovcu, gene yari$tinci. It will be seen that talk $ov has been taken over directly from English with no attempt at Turkicizing it (i.e. not talk §ovu), just as the French kilometre cane was long ago taken over as kilometre kare. For §ovrum ‘show-room’, the recommendation was sergi evi ‘display house’. Regretfully one must add that $ ov still reigns supreme and more often that not is spelled show, ‘talk-show’ is commoner than ‘talk §ov’. For sentir ‘centre’, which ‘despite the existence in our language of merkez [A], is tacked on to the names of various societies and institutions’, a return to merkez was proposed, so ticaret merkezi for trade centre and iletigim merkezi (ileti$im ‘communications’) for media centre, in preference to medya sentiri. Neither appears in Ornekleriyle Ttirkge Sozltik (1995-6), though it does give santra, a football term, as in santra gizgisi ‘centre line’. Here we have an indication of how rapidly French is being overtaken as the source of new words: sentir is not shown in Ttirkge Sozltik (1988), though santr is. 17 The cover is dated March 1994, the first page February 1994. 18 The Ottoman arziendam ‘putting in an appearance’, which is not to be found in the TDK’s own Tiirkfe Sozltik (1988), is made up of 'ard [A] ‘presentation’, linked to endam (andam [P]) ‘body’) by the Persian izafet. 166 What Happened to the Language Society The replacements proposed for other items in the list displayed the same preference for Turkish words even of Arabic origin; thus for instant coffee or neskafe the suggestion was hazir [A] (‘ready’) kahve and, for fest fud ‘fast food’ haziryemek, while for konsensus ‘consensus’ a choice was offered between uzlagma and mutabakat [A]. The suggested replacement for fundamentalist was koktenci (‘from-the-root-ist’) and for fundamentalizm, koktencilik. This accords with the view of Western scholars, that in the Islamic context ‘radical’ is a more appropri¬ ate term than ‘fundamentalist’. In fact, the word generally used is koktendinci ‘radical religionist’. In 1995 the proposals so far made were published in book form,19 with an interesting introduction in which the aims of the Society are summarized: ‘1) Turk Dilini ara$tirmak, 2) Turk Dilini yabanci etkilerden korumak ve geliftirmek’ ((1) To research the Turkish language, (2) to protect the Turkish language from foreign influences and to develop it). Words that have entered the language over the centuries, from whatever source, are considered to be Turkish. These include such words as elektrik, atom, demokrasi. Even words formed irregu¬ larly are acceptable if they are thoroughly entrenched in the language of the people—for example, kural ‘rule’, onern ‘importance’, bagimsizhk ‘independence’, biling ‘consciousness’. Each month’s Turk Dili brings its quota of borrowings, with recommendations for Turkish alternatives. In no. 555 (Mar. 1998) came gurme, sit-com, and stand-up, as in ‘stand-up komedyenler’. The Society’s proposal for the first was tatbilir, although those who see themselves as members of the international community of gourmets may not take kindly to the appellation of taste-knower. Nor is it likely that many people will abandon sit-com in favour of its literal translation durum guldurusu, but the suggested abbreviation durgtil may have more of a chance. The proposal for ‘stand-up komedyen’ was sozgatar ‘tacking words together’, which does not look very promising, though a pleasant example is given of its use: ‘Soz^atarlar Turkiye’de konu sikmtisi ^ekmiyorlar’ (Stand-up comedians suffer from no dearth of topics in Turkey). The Society is clearly determined to fight the use of English words for which Turkish equivalents exist or can be devised; boltim should be used rather than seksiyon, bilgi goleni (‘knowledge-feast’) rather than sempozyum.20 Sadly, there does not seem to be a widespread appreciation of the Society’s genuine efforts to undo the worst of the reform while striving to keep new foreign imports at bay; many people seem to be quite unaware that the TDK is not what it used to be. Even now, though years have passed since the fall of the old TDK, there are still hearts in which the fierce emotions it roused have not died. A book published in 19 Yabanci Kelimelere Karpliklar (1995: 631). Notice the sign of the times: ‘Kelimelere’ not ‘Sozciiklere’. 20 tjolen, of uncertain origin, was proposed in Tarama Dergisi (1934) for ziyafet ‘feast’, and in Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri (1942) for ‘potlatch’. The initial $ makes an OT origin unlikely. What Happened to the Language Society 167 1993 affords an example (Misxroglu 1993); here is one of its eleven introductory ‘Uyari’ (warnings): ‘Aziz Gen$! Bugiin memleketimizin bir numarali meselesi, enflasyon veya giineydogu Anadoludaki anarfi degildir! Kibris’in kaybedilmek uzere olmasi da degildir! Biitiin bunlann hepsinden daha ehemmiyetli olan, lisammizdaki korkunt; tahribattir!’ (Dear Youth! Today, our nations’s number one problem is not inflation or the anarchy in south-eastern Anatolia! Nor is it the fact that Cyprus is on the point of being lost! What is more important than all of these is the terrible devastation of our language!). As usually happens, this sworn enemy of Ozturkfe uses some himself: dinsel, not dini or even diyni,21 for ‘reli¬ gious’ all over the book and, in the above quotations, uyari not ikaz for ‘warning’, and giineydogu not cenub-u $arki for ‘south-eastern’. His theme is that the lan¬ guage reform is atheism and that the reformers are enemies of the Koran, Islam, and God. People who say onsezi rather than hiss-i kablelvuku for ‘premonition’ are damned. Those who use such bastard words (‘piq: kelimeler’) are either racist Turkists (‘trk^i-Turk^u’), or Kemalists or Communists (‘Komonist’). No fairminded reader who wades through a few pages of this stuff can deny that there had to be a language reform, though not necessarily on the lines of the one that actually happened. Well, we may put that example down to simple-minded fanaticism, but the same excuse will not do for this one. It is an extract from a letter to the author, written from Istanbul in September 1994 by an old friend, bilingual in Turkish and English. ‘Zabanvari Facialar Kurumu’ (The Linguistic Tragedies Society) is his quasi-Ottoman term for the Dil Kurumu. For his ‘Ulusaldutturii Turkish’, see page 160. Yesterday we celebrated Dil Bayrami, or some nonsense like that. (I say‘celebrated’—I don’t think anyone actually knew.) The radio, however, said something interesting. It quoted somebody on the committee of Zabanvari Facialar Kurumu (or whatever they’re called) as saying ‘Turks have throughout history always had a written language understood by all. This should happen again.’ I hope this means someone has donated a brain to those boys. If they have any sense, they’ll abandon the excesses of Ulusalduttiiru Turkish and start talking like me. The significant thing about that letter is that it was written eleven years after the old TDK had ceased to exist and some twenty years after it had abandoned the excesses. But the man who wrote it has clearly not forgotten, much less forgiven, what it did to the language, and he holds the new TDK (if he is aware of the change) responsible for the sins of the old. In retrospect one can see that it might have helped if the authorities had waited a year or so after the takeover and then quietly given the reborn Society a new name. 21 Pietists wishing to preserve the correct pronunciation of Arabic terms use iy to indicate a long 1, so iymart for imati /Iman/ ‘faith’, though they do not usually indicate the length of the a, as they could by doubling it. Often they use iy to indicate a long i where none exists, spelling e.g. mtihitn ‘impor¬ tant’ as mtihiym. 168 What Happened to the Language Society Hasan Eren, Secretary-General of the new TDK, told the author some years ago, ‘Turk Dil Kurumu’nun esas gayesi, dilde birligin saglanmasidir’ (TDK’s basic aim is to ensure unity in the language). Given that writers tend to be individualists, one may prophesy that it will be a long time before Turkey’s flourishing literary community allows that to happen. But if this prophecy comes true, on present showing the new TDK will not be to blame. 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General Index Abahoglu, Nadir Nadi 161 Abdul Bey 30 Abdulhak Hamid 24 Abdiilkadir, see inan Abdullah Ramiz Pasha 16 Academie Fran^aise 133 Adana 121 Adivar, Halide Edip 4,31,66 Aegean University (Ege Universitesi) 85,131 Agah Efendi 12 Ahmed Cevdet Pasha t6,28 Ahmet Cevat, see Emre Ahmet Midhat 15-16,19,134 Akil Muhtar 62-3, 72 Aksan, Dogan 62,116,119,121 Aksoy, Omer Asim 69,72,140-1,146,148 Alayhlar Dernegi 109 Alexander the Great 100 Alexandretta 73 Ali, Filiz 131 Ali Suavi 14-15 alphabet: Albanian 30 Arabo-Persian 27-34,38-9 Enver Pasha’s 29, 34 Latin 27-39,128 Alphabet Commission 33,37 Anadilden Derlemeler 49 Anayasa 106,154 Anday, Melih Cevdet 82 Andie, Fuat M. 24-5,143 Anit-Kabir 43 Arabic 6-7,10-11, 22,25,30,32,33,39,46,47-8, 62,79,96 n., 122,124,127,133,140,166,167 Aristotle 60 Arsal, Sadri Maksudi 42 A?ik Pa?a 10-11 Ata<;, Nurullah 78-89, 96, 98,116,117,119,120, 123,131 Atalay, Besim 85,117-18 Ataturk 29, 30-1,32,33-4, thereafter passim until 74,109,115-16,118-19,124,139 characteristics 43-4, 56, 69-70, 73 library 43 name ix, 55 publications 58, 65-6, 71-2 speech-habits 31,74 table 42,49,69 Ataturk KUltur Dil ve Tarih Yiiksek Kurumu 162 Atay, Falih Rifki 41,42-3,53-4, 69-70, 75-8,146, 157 Atay, Oguz 146 Ayda, Adile 119 Aydmli Visali 12 Ayka$, Fazil Ahmet 33 'ayn 29 Azerbaijan 122 Azeri 122 n. Babiali 143 Bald 7 Banarli, Nihad Sami 64,160 Banguoglu, Tahsin 9,10,116,155-6 Barenton, Hilaire de 58, 62 Bashkurt 95 Basic English 147 Bajgil, Ali Fuad 48,114 Balkan, Ozcan 133 n. Bayar, Celal 69 baysal utkulu nutuk 56 Bellerophon 5 Belleten 61 n. Bilsel, Cemil 114 Birinci Turk Dili Kurultayi 47,164 Bombaci, Alessio 62 Brendemoen, Bernt 51 Bucharest 73 Bukhara 19,22-3 Burgess, Gelett 1 Biiyuk Millet Medisi, see Grand National Assembly call to prayer 46 caiques 18,110 n„ 111,112,116 Cambaluc 1 camels 146-7 Carrol, Lewis 1 CelM Sahir, see Erozan Cemiyet-i Ilmiye-i Osmaniye 28 Cemiyet-i Tibbiye-i Osmaniye 125 Central Asian Turks 70-1, 87,164-5 Cep Kilavuzu 54, 55, 58, 64, ill, 121,125 Ceride-i Havadis 12 Cerrahhane 124 Chaghatay 11 Charlemagne 44 Charles XII of Sweden 120 n. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 14 Churchill, William 12 178 General Index circumflex accent 7, 36, 55 Clauson, Sir Gerard 44 n., 46 n„ 56, 83, 85, 86, 100,107, ill, n6 Clement of Alexandria 60 n. communists 70 computer terms 128-31 Congrees International d’Anthropologie 73 Congress, see Kurultay Congress March 51 Constitution: (1876) 16, 40 (1924) 154,157 n. (1945) 106,154-5,157 n., 159 (1952) 156.157". (1961) 157 (1982) 162 Corinne, Madame 31 Cumhuriyet 161 Cyprus 167 Qakmak, Fevzi 41 (Joker, Dogan 124 (Jolpan, Yilmaz 89 Daglarca, Fazil Husnu 82 Dan Michel 2 Dankoff & Kelly 85,111 Democrat Party 156-7,159 Deny, Jean 62, 96-7 Dil Bayrami 52, 68,164 Dil Dernegi 164 Dil Devrimi 2, 27 Dil Devrimi uzerine 161 Dil Encumeni 24, 33, 45 Dil Komisyonu 62 Dil Kurutayi, see Kurultay Dil Tarih-Cografya Fakuitesi 42, 89 Dilafar, Agop 50 Dilemre, Saim Ali 47 Dilmen, ibrahim Necmi 52, 57, 60, 73,102, 153 DLT 82 n. Doerfer, Gerhard 100,105 n„ 107,119 n„ 122 Dogan, D. Mehmed 96,116 Dolmabahife 34, 54 dubbing Turkish 138 Ebuzziya Tevfik 13 Ecevit, Bulent 161 Edebiyat-i Cedide 18-19, 22 Edirneli Nazmi 12 Ediskun, Haydar 102 n. Egypt 84 Eliot, Sir Charles 28 Emre, Ahmet Cevat 36-7, 57, 60-1,102 Emsile-i Tiirki 16 England 14 English 124,127,134-9,140 Enver Pasha 29,38 Ercilasun, Ahmet Bican 64 Eren, Hasan 168 Erer, Tekin 70 Erkan-i Harbiye-i Umumiye 41 Erkilet, H. E. 8 n., 41 Erozan, Celal Sahir 24, 46 Ertop, Konur 64-5 Esperanto 97 n., 147 Ethiopia 73 Etruscan 4, 59 exchange of populations 41 Eyuboglu, ismet Zeki 95-6,115,118-19,149 n. Falih Rifki, see Atay fashions in words 134 n. Fazil Ahmet, see Aykat; Fecr-i Ati 24 Felsefe ve Gramer Terimleri 112 Feth-Ali Ahundzade 28 Fetva Emini 30 Fevzi, see (Jakmak Finnish 48 football terms 161,165 Forensic Medicine, Imperial School 124 France 14,73 Franglais 133 French 102,124-5,131. 134-5 Friday sermon 42 Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia 2 Fuad Efendi 16 Garipname 10-11 Gazi elifbasi 35 Gen^ Kalemler 22 gender, grammatical 6 geometry 65-6 Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches 78 n. Gibb, Elias John Wilkinson 7,12,13 Giese, Friedrich 62 Gokalp, Ziya 9,19, 22, 25-6,101 n., 102 Govsa, Ibrahim Alaaddin 31 Grand National Assembly 32,35 n., 40-1, 68-9, 105-6,115 Greek 25,31,39, 46,127,128,149 n., 161 n. Giilistan 13-14 Gultekin, Mehmet Bedri 66-7,142-3 Gunef-Dil Teorisi, see Sun-Language Theory Guntekin, Refat Nuri 4 Gursel, Cemal 157-8 Hacivat 8 Hafiz Sadettin 46 Hagopian, M. A. 16 Halide Edib, see Adivar Halit Ziya, see Ufakligil General Index Hamit Zubeyr, see Ko$ay hamza 25 harf devrimi 27 Hasan Refit, see Tankut Hatay 73 Hatiboglu, Vecihe 42 n., 64,108 n. Heyd, Uriel 51,72,157 Hitler, Adolf 73 Huseyin Cahit, see Yalqn hyphen 35-6 Iber, Iberian peninsula 43 Islam 5,30,32,134,138 Ifitman, Ishak Refet 49 Italian 43,135,136 Izmir 122 Izmir Economic Congress 32 Izmir International Fair 94 ibrahim Alaaddin, see Govsa Ibrahim Necmi, see Dilmen ibrahim $inasi 12,13 ilm-i Sarf-i Tiirki 16 imer, Kamile 158-9 imld Kilavuzu 36,164 Inan, Abdulkadir 54, 60-1 Inonu, ismet 29,38, 74,159 inonu Stadium 101 ishak Refet, see Ifitman ismet, see inonu istiklal Caddesi 151 iz, Fahir 23,141-2 izafet, see Persian izafet Jalal al-Dfn RumI 11 Jewish refugees 124 Joyce, James 1 Justice Party 8,159 kaba Turkey 12 Kamu, Kemalettin 79 Kamus-i Tiirki 28-9 Kapo?elli, Karlo d’Alpino 51 Karabekir, Kazim 31,33 Kara<;ay, Timur 124 Karagoz 8 Karaim 50 Karaosmanoglu, Yakup Kadri 46, 62, 88,143 Karfiyaka 122 Kashghars 47 n. Kavaid-i Tiirkiye, Kavaid-i Osmaniye 16 Kazakh 71 n., 95 Kazan 23, 95 Kazanli Ayaz 23-4 Kemalpajazade Sait, see Lastik Sait Kerestedjian, Bedros 135 n. Kerkuk (Kerkuk) 71 Kih<;zade Hakki 30 Kisakurek, Necip Fazil 114 Kirghiz 19, 61, 87, 95,121 Konya 10, 78, 83 Koran 2, 6,10-11, 30, 32 Korkmaz, Zeynep 31,102 n., 108 n. Kofay, Hamit Zubeyr 49 Koprulu(zade), Mehmet Fuat 5,100 Koseraif, Fuat 19 Kubbealti Cemiyeti 160-1 Kudret, Cevdet 134-5 Kuneralp, Zeki 151-2 Kurultay: (1st, 1932) 48-9 (2nd, 1934) 47-8 (3rd, 1936) 48,58 (4th, 1942) 73.153-4 (6th,1949) 88 (7th,1954) TO Kurultay Mar$i 51-2 Kvergic, Hermann F. 56, 57, 62, 63, 67 Language Commission 62 Language Congress, see Kurultay Language Festival, see Dil Bayrami Language Society, see Turk Dil Kurumu Lastik Sait 24, 25 n. Latifi 7 Latin 2, 7, 25, 31, 46,127 Leali 7 legal terms 128-9 letters: i 36-7 h 33 1 36-7 q 33 levels of speech 144 Levend, Agah Sirri 146-7 Lisani Turk^uluk 26 Marco Polo 5 Matematik Terimleri Sozliigu 124 Mayakon, ismail Muftak 58 medical terms 124-8 Mehmet Akif 21 Mehmet Ata 78 Mehmet Emin, see Yurdakul Menderes, Adnan 156,159 Menderes, Ethem 156 Metotlu/Metotsuz Cahil 87 n. Misiroglu, Kadir 167 Mill! Kutuphane 102 n. Mir 'All Sir Neva’J 11 Mongolian 55-6,102,122 months: Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uyghur 71 n. new names 155 179 i8o General Index Muallimler Cemiyeti 161 Muhakamat al-Lugateyn 11 music and musical terms u, 85,131-2 Mussolini, Benito 73 Mustafa Kemal, see Ataturk Muller, George A. 45 Miinif Pasha, Antepli 28 Nabl 12 Nadir Nadi, see Abalioglu Naim Hazim, see Onat Namik Kemal 13-14, 24 Napoleon 73 Nasrettin Hoca 164 National Unity Committee (Mills Birlik Komitesi) 157 Nazim Hikmet [Ran] 70 Neft^i, Nermin 71 Negroponte, Nicholas 37 Nemeth, Julius (Gyula) 31,62 Nergisi 13 New Literature movement 18-19,22 numerals 32 Nurullah, see Atac; Nutuk 2-3 Ogden, Charles Kay 147 n. Okay, Orhan 147-8 Old Turkic ix Onat, Naim Hazim 47-8,122 Oransay, Giiltekin 131 Orbay, Kaznr. 41 Orel, Adnan 162 Osmanzade Hamdi 41 Ottoman Scientific Society 28 Oyta^, Hilmi 51 Omer Asim, see Aksoy Omer Seyfettin 22 Ozal, Turgut 136 Ozalp, Kftzirn 33 Ozdem, Ragip 37 Ozdemir, Emin 120 Ozden, Akil Muhtar 62, 72 Ozer, Yusuf Ziya 48, 59 Ozgii, Melahat 70 Ozkan, Fatma 148-9,150 Ozon, M. Nihat 76 Oztiirkfe 50, 56 n., thereafter passim parodies 160,163-4 palatalization 24,33,36 Persian 5-8, 22, 25,33,36,79,127,133,134, 140 Persian izafet 7,15,19, 25,156 Peter the Great of Russia 120 n. Pharaoh 48 pietistic spelling 167 n. Portuguese 33 prefixes 94 Pringle, John Douglas 39 Pulur, Hasan 139 purifiers 46,140-1 Piiskulluoglu, Ali 145 Redhouse dictionaries 16,76,100,103 Republican People’s Party 156 Ross, Sir Denison 62 Rujen Ejref, see Onaydm Sabahattin Ali 4 Sadak, Necmettin 50-1 Sa'dT 13 Sadri Maksudi, see Arsal Safa, Peyami 9,135 Saim Ali, see Dilemre Sakaoglu, Saim 138 Salih Efendi 125 Samih Rifat 45 Sarton, George 89 Savarona 73 Saxonisms 2 Saygun, Ahmed Adnan 131 Sayili, Aydm 89 Seljuks 5,7 Serbo-Croat 95 Servet-i Funun 17-18,19 shadow theatre 8 Shah Ismail 11 simplifiers 19 Sinekli Bakkal 66 Sogdian 5, 84, 94 Soysal, Miimtaz 136 n., 137,145 soz derleme seferberligi 49 Sozer, Vural 131 Spanish civil war 73 Sublime Porte 143 n. submarines 97 substitution 50-1,161 Sultans: Abdiilhamid 11 17 Mahmud II 124-5 Mehmed II 7 Selim I 11 Selim II 84 Suleyman I 8 Sumerian 59, 62 Sun-Language Theory 57-74 Surnames Law ix, 101 Suleyman Nazif 23 Suleyman Pasha 14-15,16 Surekli Turk Dili Kurultayi 164-5 General Index Sweden: Crown Prince and Princess 56 King Charles XII 120 n. Syria 84 $emsettin Sami Fraschery 14,16-17, 30 Semsiiddin Mehmed Karamanoglu 10 $eyhiilislam 30 $inasi 15 Talim ve Terbiye 41 Tankut, Hasan Refit 40,60,73 Tanzimat 12,14, 31 Tarama Dergisi 21, 44, 50, 52 tasfiyeciler 19, 46 Tatar 19, 50,95 Tatavlah Mahremi 12 taxi-drivers 8,122,150 technical terms 65-6,155,163 Tekin, Talat 82-9 Terceman-t Ahvdl 12 Thor 45 n. Tibbiye-i Adliye-i $ahane 124-5 Tibhane 124 Times, The 38-9 Timurtaf, Faruk Kadri 98,115,116-17, >42 Topkapi Palace 160 Trotsky, Leon 70 Tunali Hilmi 40 Turcoman 49 Turkicizers 19 Turkish Press 12 Turk Dernegi 19 Turk Dil Kurultayi, see Kurultay Turk Dil Kurumu: (new) 133,161,162-8 (old) 45, then passim Turk Dili Araftirma Kurumu 45 Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti 45, 67 Turk Dilini Koruma ve Geliftirme Cemiyeti 161 Turk Tarih Kurumu 45,156 Tiirk^e Kanunu 40 Turkfe SOzltik 156 Tiirkfe §iirleri 18 Turkl-i basit 12 Tiirkilizce 134 Union and Progress 21 Ural-Altaic languages 48 Uran, Necdet 43 Ujakhgil, Halit Ziya 18,19 Uyghur 60 Uzbek 19,87 national motto 71 Onaydm, Rujen Efref 30-1,33, 45-6 Vaux, Carra de 59 Velidedeoglu, Hifei Veldet 128-9 vocabulary analysis 158-9,161 Wahby, Taufiq 29 n. Wall Street Journal 60 word-collection mobilization 49 Yakup Kadri, see Karaosmanoglu Yal?m, Huseyin Cahit 30,31,32 Ya^ayan Turkfemiz 119 n. Yegiil, Abdi Tevfik 133 Yeni Tasvir-i Efkdr 23 Yeni Yaztm Ktlavuzu 36 ‘Young Turks’ 21 Yunus Emre 39 Yurdakul, Mehmet Emin 18-19,20 Yusuf Ziya, see Ozer Yiicel, Tahsin 4,67,69 Zamenhof, L. L. 97 n. Zay?czkowski, Ananiasz 62 Ziya Pasha 13,14 Ztircher, Erik Jan 60 181 ( Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes (Ottoman words mentioned in the text and not discussed are excluded from this Index, as are most of the many non-Turkish medical terms on pages 125-7.) abaci, abaki 47 acente 134 a^i 50,65 apk 91 aftli;im yapmak 138 adisyon 137 affedersiniz 149,163 n. agabey 37 agarmak 113 aile 135 n. ajans 134 akademi 44,106 akbaba 120 and n. akciger yangisi 126 akilh, akli 101 aksakal 21 aktore 87 alafranga 135 n. alan 65 alaturka 135 and n. alayli 109 albay 94 alim satim 98 alif 27, 29 alma; 112,154 alo 109 n. altgeqt 95 altgin 91 altyapi 110 ama; 145 Amazon 43 ambiilans 137 an 50 Anayasa 154 am no anlam 98 anlatim 98 anlatmak 147 Aphrodite 48 aptesane 134 ara$ 112 aralik 155 arasi 94 arpacik 126 arsi- 94 arsiulusal 94 arti 65 arziendam 165 and n. as- 94 asbajkan 94 ashlar 44 asi, asig 85 asik 43 asilanmak 85 asir 90-1 asker 5, 43 aski 97 askurul 94 asri 51 assiglanmak 85 assubay 94 ast 94 astegmen 94 astuziik 94 a;evi 134 Atilay 97 atmasyon 137 n. atom 63,166 avrat 48 ayak 82 ayakiter gotiirgei; 160 ayakyolu 134 ayaz 155 n. ayenbite 2 'ayn 25,161 n. aynyeten 109 n. ayva 155 n. Azeri 122 n. bag 113 bagdar 131 bagimsiz(lik) 113,152,166 baginlajma, baginsiz 113 bagijla 148-9 baglama 132 baglam; 88,89 bakanlik 156 bakman 101 balik 5 barmen 101 barmeyd tot basim 98 basur 126 ba;ari(h) 110 and n. Batiray 97 bay 94,113-14,121 bay u geda 113 bayan 113-14,121 baymdirlik 156 bayi 130 baysal utkusu 56 bayt 87 baytar 134 bedii(yat) 25 bedizci 80 bek 161 belgege^er 134 belirlenimcilik, belirlenmezcilik 92 belkili 119 belleten 61-2 bemol 131 beslenme 135 bestekar 131 bete 86 betik 83, 84 betke 86 bey 94,113,114,121 beyit 87 bi- 47 bildirge, bildiri, bildirim 145 bildirmek 147 bile 87 bile-duyu; 87 bilgi joleni 166 and n. bilgisayar no, 129 bili, bilik, bilim 88 bilimtay 106 bilim; 166 bilu 88 binit 98 birdlore 2,107 biregu, birey 97 biti, bitig 84 bitimek 86 bitki 97 bizin 39 n. bizni 100 and n. blurb 1 bodacious 1-2 bodun 88,114 184 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes bodyguard 136 boyun 88 boyut 65,114 bolgevi 144 bolii 65 boliim 166 bromide 1 budun 88,114 budunbilim 88 budunbuyrukc;u 88 budunbuyrumcu 87-8 bulama^ 100 bulun^ ui-12,163 burun 48 bu?gut 51 bu’ut 114 buyruk 88 buyrum 88 buyurmak 88 buzzword 148 n. biirokrat 164 butun 84 n. biiyii 125,128 Cambaiuc 5 canki 51 cankurtaran 109 n., 137 carcur 8 and n. ceng 19 centilmen 101 -ci 154 n. cizgi? 50 cografya 110 -9 112 Sagdaj 51 <;agii$im 110 <?algi 132 fali^makolik 138 <;ama$ir 9 fari^e 95 <;arpi 65 ^arjamba 9 <;aykolik 138 a 36,95 ^ene yarajtir- 165 <fer$eve 9 ?erig 5 ^eviri 110 (fevirilemek 149-50 i;evre 83-4 $evrelemek 150 <;evren 84 <;evrilemek 150 ^evriyazi 131 (jikif 129 n. fikolata 9 <fikti 129 n, (fizgisel mod 130 ^ogun, (ogunluk 123 (ozmatik 138 dagitim 98 dam^ilik, dani$man 77 damjtay 105-6 -da$ 86 and n. dayanga 3 de 35 degil 74 degin 114-15 degijim 131 degijke 150 demirba? 120 and n. demirkirat 8 demokrasi 166 denetim 163 deney 97 denli, denlu 115 -de? 86 n. devinme 85 devlet^e 129 devrim 2 diagnos 127 diffiiz 127 dik 131 dikey 65 dikim 98 dikit 98 dil devrimi 2, 27 dilek^e 95 dilemek 84 n. dilmai; 99-100 Dilmen 101 din 84 dini 167 dinlenti 76 dinsel 167 dip 84 divan 111 diyez 131 dize 85 dizge 97 doga, dogal 11; dogum 98 dogujtan 127 doktor 134 dokunca 88 dolayli 147 donamm 129 dolyatagi 126 doneme^ 100 dorut 80,86 doriitmek, dorutmen 86 dublaj Turkc^esi 138 dumbfounded 1 durgiil 165 durum 146 durum gulduriisu 165 duygu 68 duygudaflik 87 dufey 65 dujunce 147-8 dujiinu 164 n. duzey 65 duzeyit 88 duzungu 164 and n. duzyazi 88 -ebil- 45 edebiyat 88 edilcev 95-6 efendi 113,114 egemen, egemenlik 115-16 egzos gazi emisyonu 138 ege 115 egitim, egitmek 55 egitimsel, egitsel 103 ekim 155 ekin(sel) 112 eksi 65 eksik 47 -el 102 ela 55 elektrik 60,166 elektronik beyin 110 elejtiri 103 -enek 95 enffastriiktur 110 enigma 44 and n. enstruman 132 enteresan 117 ep 60,86 eradikasyon 99 er-a$ pozitif 137 erdem 44,123 ertegi 50 ertut 50 -esi 119 ej 116 ejek 25 n. ejgudum 116 e$it 99 e$$ek 25 n. etki 97-8 etkilik 163 -ev/v 95-6 ev odevi 143 evvazifesi 143 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes evren, evren pulu 116 evrensel 4,116 ewel miilazim 26 ex- 47 -ey/y 96-7 eye 115 eyim 77 eyitmek 88 ezgici 80 faks 134 familya 135 n. felaket 108 fest fud 166 fetva 30 n. fifti fifti 135 filozof(i) 60 Firavun 48 fizibilite raporu 138 fiziksel 103, >05 fizyoterapist 140 FM 138 folklor 107 folklore 2,107 foreword 2,107 formen 101 forvet 161 fiiar 134 galat-i me$hur 142 -ge 97, i7i ge^inge 164 ge<;it 98 gelenek(sel) 95 gen 94, in, 116 gen- 94 -gen 66 and n. genel 94,107,116,146 Genel Kurmay Bajkam 156 genelde 116 genelge 97 genellikle 107 genelozek 68 genorguti;u 164 gensoru 94 geometri 110 geri;ek 82 gere<; 112 gerek 116 gerekije 65 gerekircilik 92 gerekseme 116 gereksinim 116 gereksinme 116-17 gerektirim 92 -gi/gi 19 -gi/ki 97 giaour 33 -gil 11 n. girmek 130 and n. gizli oturum 154 gocunmak 92-3 god, Gott 60 gok konuksal avrat 160 gok$e, gdk<;e-yazin 87 gonuldef 86 n. gorenek 95 gorev 96 gorsel 103 gosteri 165 gozde 9 gozetim 163 gdzetleme 41 gues(s)timate 1 gurme 166 giiciin 123 gudum 116 gumiiji 101 n. gun 96 giiney 97 gunlemei; 100 gur 12 hac ; haf 161 hakkinda 143 halk 26 hamk&rlik 71 hamza 25,161 n. handle etmek 127 hanim 26,113 harekat 3 harf devrimi 27 hars 112 hasta 125 n. hazir kahve 165 hazir yemek 165 hediye 50 hegemonya 115 hekim 134 hela 134 heyet 106 hijyenik 140 hik&ye 50,85 history aimak 127 hoca 9 hoi 136 hormon 127 ho^ek 50 hudut 94 hukum 53-4 hurriyet 152 lrlagan, lrlamak 131 isi, issi 14s istilah 70, 94 -i 110 -i 19,30, 86,101,105 Iber, ibri 43 i<;erik 142 ifi ge<;mi$ dinsel kifi 160 i<;it 98 iifsalgi 127 i^tenflik) 76 and n., 89 idantifie etmek 127 ideal 25 idemiik 21 and n. ideoloji 164 n. igidmek 55 ihtimal 119 -ik 85,102 ikame(ci) 50 ikilem 123 -il/1 102 and n., 103 il&f aimak 18 iletijim 4,165 ilgi 44.117 ilgili 143 ilgin<; 117,141 ilim 88 ilin$ 117 ilifki 148 ili^kin 143 illet 45 ilmek 117 -im/m 98,113 ima etmek 147 imam bayildi 160 imge 112,121 imkan 119 imparatori<;e 95 -in (/or -ini) 11 n. incitmebeni 126 indili ijiktih grafik 76 insanbi?imicilik 154 and n. inwit 2 ip 60,86 istemek 84 n. istiklal 152 istillahi 10 ifitsel 103 i^kolik 138 iflence 124 ijlev 95 -it/t 96, 98-9,114 itdirsegi 126 iye 115 iyimse- 77 185 186 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes iyman 167 n. izdu^umu 65 izin 3 Janissary 5 jeoloji 110 jeton iade holu 136 kaba Turkey 12 kadar 114-15 kalem 50 and n. kalit 98 kalite kontrolu 138 kalitim 98,150 Kamal, kamal 55 kamif 50 and n. kamu 105 kamusal yotdan 129 kamutay 69,105-6 kan kanseri 126 kanirtmaf 100 kanlibasur 126 kansizlik 126 kara humma 126 karasu 126 kardej 86 n. kari 135 n. karpuz 155 n. karfin 80 n. karjit 99 kasim 155 katip 134 kavram 111 kavri 50 kavun 155 n. kayitsiz 116 kazi 110 kazikli humma 126 -ke 86 keleci 81 kelleci 81 keltiirmek 44 kend, kent 5, 94 kendileftirmek 142 n. kesik 76 kesit 65 keyf alma 148 kez 82 kic 71 kiral 44 kirali<;e 95 kirgiy, Kirgiz 61 kirk 147 n. kirsal yajanti 105 kisir 155 n. kifla 117 and n. kizil 102 n. ki 35 kilometre kare 135 n„ 65 kimyasal/kimyevi tedavi 140 kiraz 155 n. kitaplik 92,102 n. kitaplik bilimi 92 kitaplikplik 92 klonlamak 140 kocunmak 92-3 kol 96 kolay 96-7 -kolik 138 komplikasyon 128 kompiiter 110 komug 87 kona^ 124 konjenital 127 konu 110 and n. konum 146 konut 98 koordinasyon 116 kopuzsulluk 85 kopyalamak 140 koram 112,154 koruma 136 koruman 100 kojmak 96 kojul 96,116 koful-tajil 118 kot 136 kotdiji pazar 136 kotlamak 136 n. kozay 96 kog 83 kogiik 85 koktenci 166 ko?e 9 kojegen 65 kotiimse- 77 kudsi 102 kuduz 126 kumsal 86,103 kur 111 kural 53, 82,111,166 kuram 111 kunltay 21,105 kurjuni 101 n. kurul 111,145 kurultay 105,111,145,158 n. kurum 111 kurumca 108 kusura bakmaym 149 kujak 163 ku$ku 83,148-9 kut 60,102 kutlulamak 68 kutsal 44,102 kutunbitik 68 kuz, kuzay, kuzey 96-7 kug 85,131 kugsel 131 kiiltur, kiiltiirel 44,102,112 kiilturen 109 n. ku?ad etmek 144 ku$um 82,83 kutiiphane 92,102 n. kutuphanecilik 92 -1 102 and n. -la/lag/lak 117 -lem 123 letters: g 36-7 h 33.36 1 36.37 q 33 -li 101 likid, liquid 63 lokanta 134 lokum 9 lugat 142 lugat<;e 95 -m 98 mafluk 108-9 -mail 87 mana 98 mansur 110 -maj 112 -matik 138 maydanoz 9 meb’us 157 and n. meclis 106 -meij/ma^ 96,99-100 meyhulumdur 152 medeni, medeniyet 122,150-1 medrese 9 mefkure(viyat) 25 mektep 70 mektepli 109 memalik-i mahrusa 7 men 57 -men/man 100-1,115 merdiven 9 merhaba 138 merinos 43 mesela ornegin 120 metot 87 n., 123 Metotlu/Metotsuz Cahil 87 n. mevzi 3 mevzu 110 n. meze 42 mirin kirinci 76 misir 155 n. Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes mi 35 micky/mike, taking the 134 n. midenuvaz 9 mika u6 millet 69,88, 94 milletvekili 157 n. milli/milli 36 Milli Kutuphane 102 n. miyop 12 n. mobilya(li) 135 modern 51 modifikasyon 150 moble 135 muhtemel 119 musiki 134 mujamba 9 mutahit 141 muvaffak 110 n. muzaffer no n. miihim 150 miihiym 167 n. mulazim 26,101 n. munasebet 148 and n. muskiiler 127 miistakillik 71 miistefekkiriz 144 miiteahhit 141 miitehassis, miitehassis too muzik 134 namaz ; namus 149 nazik 108 -n? 117 neden 4,90 nefes 52 nefesli saz 132 nesne 77 netek 83, 84 nezaket 108 Niagara 43 nite 84 normal 143 normalen 109 n. -nti 123 nucular 85 nutuki;u 77 niiroiojik 127 mitrisyon, nutrijin 135 ocak 155 od 5 ogul 118-19,119 n. okeylemek 138 okkali, okkay 51 okul 44,117-19 okula 118 okulag 117 okutman 100 olanak 119 olasi(hk) 119 olay 97 olurculuk 76 olurluk 138 onur 148,149 and n. operasyon 135 operator 100 operetleftirmek 96 opereyjm 135 or- 94 oran 120 oranti 65,120 organ 99 organizasyon 99 orgeneral 94 ortam 98 orui; 5 orun 68 Osmanhca 8 osteopath 110 ojinografi 137 otantik 144 Ottoman 8, thereafter passim Ottoperson 160 n. oturum 98 oycu 76 oyda? 77 ozan 83,84 o<;men 101 odev 95 odiil 163 and n. ogretmen 100 ogseyin 82 okmen 101 dl^iim 138 oli;ut 127 oliim 98 on, dn- 94-5 oncii 41 onder 123 onem 166 onemiyyet 144 dnemli 150 ongormek 94 onkapi 95 onoda 95 onsezi 94-5,167 orgen 99 orgut 98-9 ornegin 88,120 ornek 120 ortuk 91 otkim? 50 dyku 50, 85 oykucu 80 oykun(iil)mek 85 oz 56,120 oz ittirimli goturgei; 160 Oz Turki;e 56 oze 144 ozek 111,144 ozel 144 ozen 144 ozenti 144 ozerk 144 ozet 144 ozge 144 ozgii 144 dzgiil 144 dzgun 144 dzgur(luk) 49 n., 120,144, 152 Oztiirk^e 50,56, thereafter passim ozurdilerim 149 pa<;a 95 panayir 134 paramatik 138 pa$a 113 pelesenk 148 n. perde 126 perkit(le)mek 8; persenk 148 n. pejinat, pejinen 109 n. peygamber 5 peyfint <;artir 136 n. Pharaoh 48 pis 52.53 poligon 63 politikasizlajtirilmali 77 psikoloji 52, 53 psikoz 52, 53 psychopath 110 rahat lokum 9 raki sofrasi 42 rapor 138 rekortmen 101 resmen, resmi olarak 129 restoran 134 rota 43 ruhiyat 25 safra ta^lan 128 sag 60 sagduyu 163 sagtore 87 sahip 152 187 188 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes Saldiray 97 san 154 sanat 161 n. sani mulazim 26 sann 154 santr, santra 165 saptamak 44,121 sargi 97 sarkit 98 sarmac; 99 sav 60 savafman 101 savci 145 savunma 156 saygideger 3 sayin 3,121 sayiftay 106 saylav 95 sayman 161 saz 132 sebep 60, 86, 90 se<;enek 95 se^im 98,142 seamen loo, 142 segmen 101 n. sekreter 134 seksiyon 166 sel 103 n. -sel/sal 86, 90,101-5,116,146 selam 138-9 selika 90,149 sembol 121 sempati, sempatizan 87 sempozyum 166 sentir 165 sesel, seselik 102 sezik 83 n. show 165 sinav 95 sinir 94 sitma 126 sizgiif 50 sim 121 simge 112,121 sin 6,82 -sin- 116 sit-com 166 siyasal 102 and n. siyasiler 165 sizin 83 skorer 136 sofra 42 softa 9 somut 98 sonu<; 110 sonurgu 112 soru 110 sorum(luluk) 110-11 sorun 110-11 sorunsal 103 Sovnarkom 94 soyut 98 somurge 97 somurme 44 soydefi 86 soylem 145-6 soylemek 86,147 soylenif, soyleyif 145 soylev 95 soz 8i, 86 soz gelifi 120 sozciik 82 soz^atar 166 sozluk 142 spekulasyon, spekiileyfin 135 sporcu 101 sportmen 101 stand-up komedyen 166 subay 122 sunmak 148 su 5,102 siiel 102 super, super- 136 siir<;ek 50 sure 149 fair 84 farjor 8 and n. fart kofmak 96 fartsiz 116 fehir 5,94 fek 83 feker hastaligi 126 feni, fe’ni, fe’niyet 25 fey 77-8 fimendifer 9 fov, fovmen, fovrum 165 folen 166 and n. fukum 83 fiiphe 83 fuyuncu 87 -t 98-9 -ta- 121 tabi 152 tabiat, tabii 115 taboo 45 tac 44 tahtelbahir 109 talk fov(cu) 165 tamu 83,84 tan 87 tana kalmak 87 tam 127,128 tamgma 44 and n. tanlamak 87 n. tanmak 87 tanmah 86-7 tanri 46 n„ 154 tanri^a 95 tansik, tansiklamak 85 tanfu 50 tanwln 109 n. tapa 80 and n. tapu 45,138 tapumatik 138 tarama 128 tarih 88 tarihije 95 tarihli 101 tarihsel 103 tarzanca 137 tafit 98 tatbilir 166 -tay 105-6 tayyare 107,109 and n. tecim and derivatives 141 tedai 110 teget 65,101 n. tegmen 101 and n. tekel 110 t616copie 134 telli saz 132 temel 161 n. tenlig 115 tepki 97 terim 94,122 tesir 97 tespit 121 tefhis 127 tevil etmek 149-50 Thor 45 n. tin 84 -ti 76,120 tilcik 81,82,87 tin 84 tin<;lik 71 tinsel 84 tolunay 51 toplum 98,163 tove 108 toy 105 n. tore 82,87 trafik 133 tuf 130 tutanak 95 tutmacf 100 tutulga 95 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes tuvalet 134 tuzlubalgam 126 tuccar 141 tiikeli 83, 84 tiikelmek 86 tiim 56 n„ 82, 84 n. -tiim 94 timid 4 tiimen 94 tiimgeneral 94 tumor 126 tun 53 tiinel 53 tiip 83,84 uzgore^, uzgorum 165 uzman 100,101 ucuk 87 uifgen 66, ill iijek 87 iilkii 25 uren 83 uretim 98 uretmek 163 iirun 82, 83 ustgtin 91 ustii kapali 147 uy, uyciik 87 yapilamazcihk 76 yapim 76 yapit 88 yar- 94 yaramci 77 yarbajkan 94 yarbay 94 yardirektor 94 yargi 114 yargi? 145 yargitay 105 yarim 98 yarkurul 94 yarhgaj 50 yarman 100 tiiretme 108 tiirev 65 Ttirktjelejmij Turki^edir iiye 161 uzguniim 148,149 26 Turki ix -v 95-6 vanmen $ov 165 yajam, yafinti 123 ya?ayif 123 Turkilizce 133 and n. tiitiinsel dumanga^ 160 varsagi, varsagi 101 n. varsaymak 44 yajim-hayatim 123 TV, TV Guide 138 vatman 100 vaww 139 u^ak, u^ku, utfkur 107 ufmak 83, 84 vayanasim 139 vaziyet 146 u^man 101 u(um 77 ve 35 verici 128 vermek 148 ufanti 76 ugma$ 100 -ul 96 ulugsunmak 96 veteriner 134 vicdan 111 vurgunculuk 76 ulus 55-6, 94 vurma saz 132 ulusal 102 ulusal duttiirii 160,167 Ulusal Kitaplik 102 n. uluf 55-6 wattman 100 waw 27, 29 -um 97 n. umumi, umumiyetle 107 umut 82 unutmak 62 ur 126 uran 112 -urgu U2 us, uslu 87 usul 86, 87 utan<; 111 utku 56 uyak 82-3 uydurma, uydurukija 108 n. uygar, uygarlik 122,150-1 uygulamak 155 uysal 86,103 n. uza and derivatives 88 uzaduyum 165 uzay 65 W.C. 134 Welsh rarebit 9 wicked 84 n. -y 96-7 ya’ 27,29 yagir 92-3 yagmur 155 n. yagu? 50 yakit 98 yakinen 109 n. yaltrik 60 yalvat; 21 yanal 65 yanir 92-3 yamrli, yamrsiz 92 yanit 83, 85 yamtlamak 85 yanit, yanstz 92 yapay 97 yapilabilirlik 138 yasa 102 yasaksizlik 77 yatay 65 yatirim 146 yavuz 83,84 and n. yaygtn 127 yayla(k) 117 yazak 50, 82 yazanak 95 yazgac; 50 yazi 71,110 yazi kalfalari 76 yazici 129 yazili fikti 129 n. yazilim 129 yazim 88, 89,110 yazm 88,110 yazinsal 103 yazit 110 yazman 100,161 yeg, yeg^avlik 102 yeg(in)lemek 85 yener 110 n. Yeni<;eri 5 yer diizler 164 yerbilimi 110 Yildiray 97 yimizik 82 yir 89 yirtmat; 100 yitirmek 82 yoksul, yoksuz 85 yol diizler 164 yol omzu 164 yon 131 yonde? 65 yonelik 165 yoney 97 189 190 Index of Words, Phrases, and Suffixes yoneyler ijlencesi 1x4 yonlendirmek 163 yontem 87 n., 113,123 yore(sellik) 85, 86 yumul yumul n8,119 yumujak ge 36-7 yuvuj 50 yuklenici 141 yuz numara 135 n. yuzey 65,97 yuzyil 90-1 zekamatik 138 zerey 50 zim 50 ziyaret 5 zor and derivatives 123

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The Turkish language reform: a catastrophic success

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