Origins of Turkish vocabulary from 1931 - 1965
Friday, September 19, 2008
Origin of Turkish vocabulary in 2005.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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