Origins of Turkish vocabulary from 1931 - 1965
Friday, September 19, 2008
I just noticed that the German Wikipedia has more information on this than in English. It has the following table showing the origin of Turkish words over the years:
Year | Turkish words | Arabic words | Persian words | Other words | Ottoman words |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1931 | 35,0 % | 51,0 % | 2,0 % | 6,0 % | 6,0 % |
1933 | 44,0 % | 45,0 % | 2,0 % | 4,0 % | 5,0 % |
1936 | 48,0 % | 39,0 % | 3,0 % | 5,0 % | 5,0 % |
1941 | 48,0 % | 40,0 % | 3,0 % | 4,0 % | 5,0 % |
1946 | 57,0 % | 28,0 % | 3,0 % | 7,0 % | 5,0 % |
1951 | 51,0 % | 35,0 % | 3,0 % | 6,0 % | 5,0 % |
1956 | 51,0 % | 35,5 % | 2,0 % | 7,5 % | 4,0 % |
1961 | 56,0 % | 30,5 % | 3,0 % | 6,0 % | 4,5 % |
1965 | 60,5 % | 26,0 % | 1,0 % | 8,5 % | 4,0 % |
I then turned them into this graph:
That's only until 1965, but luckily we also have the current number for 2005 to compare. Now a total of 14% of Turkish words are of foreign origin, so from 1965 over 40 years the ratio of Turkish words in Turkish has gone from 60.5% to 86%. Arabic is around 6%, Persian at a bit over 1%, Ottoman not sure, and the rest makes 7%.
4 comments:
Hmmm... interesting. Considering that, should "purity" be encouraged? What do you think?
I think it's a good thing in Turkish because when learning the language loanwords are more irregular to use. The word saat (hour) for example would seem to have the plural in -lar because the vowel before it is an a, but because it's from Arabic (or Persian, or Arabic through Persian, don't remember) it's a long a which corresponds to a Turkish e so the plural is -ler. I've heard people say that the Persian loanwords sound nicer but as a person not from the region I think the pure Turkish words are cooler and suit the language more.
Hmmm... interesting. Considering that, should "purity" be encouraged? What do you think?
I think it's a good thing in Turkish because when learning the language loanwords are more irregular to use. The word saat (hour) for example would seem to have the plural in -lar because the vowel before it is an a, but because it's from Arabic (or Persian, or Arabic through Persian, don't remember) it's a long a which corresponds to a Turkish e so the plural is -ler. I've heard people say that the Persian loanwords sound nicer but as a person not from the region I think the pure Turkish words are cooler and suit the language more.
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