The Turkish language originated anywhere from 5500 to as far back as 8500 years ago. It was a part of the Ural-Altaic group of languages and is Altaic. The Ural-Altaic languages differ from the Indo-European tongues in several important ways. Firstly, verbs are spoken at the end of a sentence, and adjectives precede nouns. There is vowel harmony (vowels of suffixes harmonize with the vowels of verb stems and nouns), and also no gender distinction. Finally, there is agglutination, which means that words are formed from morphemes and their meaning changes very little when combined with other words.
Turkish is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world, due to Turkish speaking peoples travelling far and wide and bringing their language with them wherever they went. Turkish is also related to many other languages, including Korean, Mongolian, Hungarian and Finnish.
There are a few different dialects and they fall into two main groups, the Eastern and Western dialects. Danubian is the only Western dialect and the Eastern dialects include Edirne, Eskisehir, Rumelian, Urfa, Karamanli, Dinler, Razgrad and Gaziantep. The Turkish that is spoken in today's times comes from the Istanbul dialect of Anatolian.
The history of the Turkish language is commonly broken up into three separate periods, which consists of old Turkish or old Anatolian Turkish, mid-Turkish or Ottoman Turkish, and the new Turkish, otherwise known as 20th century Turkish. Until 10C AD, Turkish was not effected by an other language and was in its purest state. They used the Uigher and Gokturk alphabets. Once the Turks came to Anatolia and adopted Islam, the language was changed as other influences were added, mainly Arabic due to it being the language of the Koran.
Ottoman Turkish was a result of the Ottoman period which lasted from the 15th until the 19th century. During that time, many Arabic as well as Persian words began to infiltrate the language and change it in a lot of ways, including some changes in the grammar. The Ottoman Turkish was thought of as a more fancy and proper language used by intellectuals whereas the regular spoken Turkish was thought to be more trashy and was looked down upon.
A new language movement eventually began after the proclamation of the Republic that started in 1923. In 1928 the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic one that had been used, which aided the removal of foreign words. In 1932 the Turkish Language Research Society was born. Its goal was to purify the language, and their efforts went a long way toward purging the language of the Persian and Arabic words and phrases that had pervaded it during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
It is important to note that although the Turkish language is spoken far and wide, it technically should only be referred to as Turkish when spoken in Turkey. Otherwise, it should be known as a Turkic language when spoken in other countries.
Contact Axis Translations for assistance with Turkish translation, transcription and interpreters.
