Turkish alphabet reform: easier or harder?

 

Corey Miller, January 2002

 

1. Introduction

 

The claim has often been made that the Persian-Arabic script used in Ottoman times was ill-suited to the Turkish language, with the implication that the modified Latin script introduced in 1928 made Turkish easier to read.  According to Németh (1962:22):

 

“As the Arabic script was not modified at all in its application to the Turkish language, the Ottoman script is extremely imperfect from a practical point of view....One can, therefore, read an Ottoman text correctly only after one has an understanding of its general meaning.”

 

I will show here that Ottoman script preserves certain morphological generalizations that are obscured by Modern Turkish script.  The Latin script may be easier to pronounce because it is largely phonemic, while the Ottoman script may be easier to understand because it is morphophonemic in character.

 

2. Vowel Harmony and Consonant Assimilation (Ottoman examples from Németh 1917)

 

Examples given in Ottoman, Modern Turkish, and English:

 

 

سليمان چالشقان در

Süleyman çalışkan dır.

‘Suleyman is diligent.’

سليمان  بر کوچک چوجقدر.

Süleyman bir küçük çocuk tur.

‘Suleyman is a small boy.’

سليمان  کوچک در.

Süleyman küçük tür.

‘Suleyman is small.’

سليمان  اي در.

Süleyman iyi dir.

‘Suleyman is good.’

 

As the examples above show, in Ottoman, در  remains constant, while in Modern Turkish, both vowel harmony and consonant assimilation obscure that it is the same morpheme on the orthographic level.  The Ottoman script can therefore be regarded as morphophonemic in nature, similar to the Hangul script used in Korean.

 

3. Palatalization

 

Modern Turkish k was represented by two Ottoman letters: ق   and ک .   According to Lewis (2000:3), /k/ and /g/ are palatalized before front vowels e, i, ö and ü.  Note that the palatalized variants correspond to ک in Ottoman (Ottoman examples from Redhouse), which also corresponds to Modern Turkish g:

 

Examples given in Ottoman, Modern Turkish, IPA and English:

 

کرچک

gerçek

[gʲerʧekʲ]

‘true’

 

کسک

kesik

[kʲesikʲ]

‘cut’

 

کوشک

köşk

[kʲøʃkʲ]

‘pavilion (cf. kiosk)’

 

In some Persian and Arabic borrowings, k and g are also palatalized in conjunction with the vowels a and u (Lewis 2000:3).  In Modern Turkish orthography, this palatalization can be indicated by a circumflex over the a or u, but this convention appears to be a minority practice.  However, in Ottoman orthography, the palatalized variants use ک while the non-palatalized variants use ق.  Thus, the Ottoman script may have provided a more robust indicator of palatalization than Modern Turkish:

 

(Examples given in Ottoman, Modern Turkish, IPA and English)

 

کاور

gâvur

[gʲavur]

‘infidel’

 

مهکوم

mahkûm

[makʲum]

‘condemned’

 

کار

kâr

[kʲar]

‘profit’

 

قار

kar

[kar]

‘snow’

 

قاتل

katil

[kaːtil]

‘killer’

 

4. Yumuşak ge

 

Lewis (2000:4) calls the use of ğ (yumuşak or ‘soft’ g) in Modern Turkish a “concession” to Ottoman orthography.   One use of  ğ in Modern Turkish corresponds to the use of غ in Ottoman, as in the word مغفور mağfur ‘forgiven’.  In standard Modern Turkish, the ğ lengthens the preceding vowel.  Since this practice was also true in Istambul at least in late Ottoman times (Németh 1962:25), Modern Turkish and Ottoman orthography handle this phenomenon equivalently.

 

In Modern Turkish, ğ is used as a reflex of k, when suffixation renders k intervocalic: ördek ‘duck’, ördeğim.  The Ottoman ک stays constant: اوردک, اوردکم, once again illustrating the morphophonemic aspect of Ottoman script.

 

5. Investigation into use of circumflex for palatalized consonants before a, u

 

The Google search engine can be used to study orthographic practice in different languages.  In order to study Modern Turkish, one can restrict the search to Turkish pages, by clicking on preferences.  Then, one can compare the attestation of variant orthographies (search performed January 26, 2002):

 

gavur: 2490

gâvur: 352

mahkum: 28900

mahkûm: 7880

 

The circumflex convention for palatalized g, k before a, u appears to be in the minority.

 

Bibliography

 

Lewis, Geoffrey.  Turkish Grammar.  Second Edition.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

 

Németh, J., Türkisches Übungsbuch für Anfänger.  Berlin and Leipzig: G. J. Göschen’sche Verlagshandlung, 1917.

 

Németh, J., Turkish Grammar, English adaptation of the German original (1916) by T. Halasi-Kun.  The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1962.

 

Redhouse, James W.  A Turkish and English Lexicon.  Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1996 (originally published 1890).