Comparison between Turkic and related languages

[Po-drum]

This is for Turkish and Greek languages but i think you will understand most of the words in this video too. Probably most of these words exists in all Balkan languages;

That's truth. I recognize some 60-70 % of this words or I have heard them in the past without knowing what the exact meaning of them is. The biggest part of them is probably with Turkic roots but I have some doubts for part of them, since they are absolutely etymologicaly understandable with the originaly available words from so called "slavic" or "greek" vocabulary. Here are some examples.

I checked Turkish etymology web dictionary. It`s so basic and incomplete but gives some hint;

kutu>kutiya: Kutu means box in Turkish and web site says it`s Greek word.

orospu>orospiya/rospiya: It means whore. It`s Turkish form of the Persian word "ruspi".

bodrum>podrum: It means basement. It might be the Turkish derivation from Greek word "hippodrome".

bahçe>bavça: Garden. The root is Persian "bag, bagh", means field, plantation but "bahçe" is Turkish.

kaval>gaval: Pipe formed instrument, traditionally used by shepherds and medieval nomads. It`s Turkish word.

kiremit>gyeramida: It`s Greek word.

haydut>ayduk: thug, brigand. The web site says it`s early mediaval Hungarian and Turkish common word but it`s probably Hungarian "haydu, hayduk"

About 4600 common words already listed in this article, PDF;

http://oktayahmed.com/m/images/stori...k_etkileri.pdf

In macedonian language there is an inofficial word - "raspushtenica" for "orospiya". It is created by: ras + pushta + itsa.

In the second example I could say "bodrum" with the meaning of basement can't be derived from "hippodromos", because meaning of the second one isn't connected with basement:
Gr. hippódromos. f. hīppos horse + drómos race.
But.... In macedonian the corresponding word "podrum" is obtained by the words "pod"-"under" + "drum"-"street", "road", or simply "under the level of street".

[Дени]

Most of the common Macedonian-Turkish words would also be used by others in the Balkans, and not all of them are Turkish in origin.

That's right.

The vast majority of Turkish loans in Macedonian are actually Persian and Arabic borrowings in Turkish. For example, Islamic terminology in Macedonian is almost completely taken from Turkish (for obvious reasons).

There are also a much smaller number of Greek loans borrowed through Turkish. Nevertheless, they should always be considered Turkish loans despite the originator language, because they retain a formal semantic connection with the transmitter language and adapt to its phonology.

Here are my comments on some of the below:

kutu>kutiya: Kutija for box and Kukja for house. Is that Turkish?
orospu>orospiya/rospiya: Used by Greeks also. Macedonians generally say 'kurva'.
bodrum>podrum: What does this mean in Turkish?
bahçe>bavça: Serbs also use it, they say 'bashta'.
kaval>gaval: Is this word Turkish?
saka>sega: I don't think 'sega' is Turkish.
kiremit>gyeramida: This is Greek, isn't it?
haydut>ayduk: Even Croatians use this word, they have a team called 'Hajduk Split'.
hora>oro: Is this Turkish, what does it mean?

Kutu, bodrum (see here), kiremit and hora are from Greek.

(O)rospu (and variants) and bahçe are from Persian.

Kaval is authentic Turkish.

The Macedonian aјдук has an unclear etymology. For the sake of simplicity, we can say it's either Hungarian or Turkish.

EDIT: Just saw Onur's explanation.

8,000 is a big number, I have my doubts about that much similarity.

The number of words which entered Macedonian through Turkish is actually a little higher (8,000–10,000), the number of those which aren't completely obsolete or archaic—i.e. those which exist only as regionalisms—is a little lower (4,000–6,000) but, of course, the number of Turkish loanwords in common use is even smaller (>2,000).

The influence of Turkish and its position as a prestige language was such that in a book written during the Ottoman period (the name of which escapes me), a piece of dialogue was composed almost completely of Turkish words with Macedonian grammar.

[Дени]

the word cosmos is macedonian,cos (winding) most(bridge).

Космос is Greek (Macedonian [< Russian < German] < Greek).

It is a very recent "technical" loanword and there are a few (now archaic) local synonyms.

[Дени]

In macedonian language there is an inofficial word - "raspushtenica" for "orospiya". It is created by: ras + pushta + itsa.

Распуштеница is actually a slightly pejorative word for a divorced woman (разведена жена is neutral). Роспија is highly derogatory and carries the meaning of 'a woman of low class', 'whore' or 'a woman who commits adultery'. Блудница would be the synonym with a Macedonian root and carries the exact same nuances in meaning.

The morphological decomposition of распуштеница is as follows (romanized):

raz- (verbal prefix) + -pušt- (root; 'let [go]', 'leave') + -en- (adjectival suffix) -ica (derivational suffix)

=

raspušten (adjective; 'let go of', 'dismissed') + -ica

[Soldier of Macedon]

The number of words which entered Macedonian through Turkish is actually a little higher (8,000–10,000)

Are you kidding me? At what stage were 10,000 Turkish words used in Macedonian, can you refer me to a document of any kind? Any century, take your pick.

[Дени]

Are you kidding me? At what stage were 10,000 Turkish words used in Macedonian

Short answer: I should have been more careful to mention that most of those words were not actively used for an extended period of time and that their distribution was quite small.

Longer answer: Describing the phenomenon of a Macedonian based language system with extensive Turkish borrowings isn't straightforward. It fits into the category of sociolect, but we could also call it an interlanguage (which has a very restricted definition). I prefer the former, whence my "10,000 Turkish words in Macedonian".

On the topic of numbers, Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom-hrvatskosrpskom jeziku registers 8,742 words from Turkish, and orientalisms received via Turkish. So 6,000–8,000 wouldn't be a completely unreasonable estimate for Macedonian, taking into consideration those words which are now obsolete, archaic, dated, provincial/regional/dialectal, etc., etc.

Anyway, I've been wracking my brains over the past few days to remember the title of a 19th century (?) dialectal book which illustrates this phenomenon with everyday dialogue.

[Bratot]

Short answer: I should have been more careful to mention that most of those words were not actively used for an extended period of time and that their distribution was quite small.

Longer answer: Describing the phenomenon of a Macedonian based language system with extensive Turkish borrowings isn't straightforward. It fits into the category of sociolect, but we could also call it an interlanguage (which has a very restricted definition). I prefer the former, whence my "10,000 Turkish words in Macedonian".

On the topic of numbers, Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom-hrvatskosrpskom jeziku registers 8,742 words from Turkish, and orientalisms received via Turkish. So 6,000–8,000 wouldn't be a completely unreasonable estimate for Macedonian, taking into consideration those words which are now obsolete, archaic, dated, provincial/regional/dialectal, etc., etc.

Anyway, I've been wracking my brains over the past few days to remember the title of a 19th century (?) dialectal book which illustrates this phenomenon with everyday dialogue.

In the Macedonian language are counted about 3.000 words of turkish origin ( page 218, Blazhe Koneski, History of Macedonian Language, 1986), but the great amount of them are of Iranian(Persian) origin.

[Prolet]

utu, bodrum (see here), kiremit and hora are from Greek.

Deni, Bulgarians say Hora for people, is this the same word in Greek too?? I know the Greeks use it too but im not sure if its the same meaning.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Deni, at what period of time? How could 10000 words come and 7000 of them leave in such a short period? Do make an effort to find and cite this text you're talking about, because when I read 19th century Macedonian literature I find it quite easy to understand, and aside from the common loanwords not especially Turkish in any way. Just because Serbian had so much Turkish words doesn't mean Macedonian did.

[Onur]

Anyway, I've been wracking my brains over the past few days to remember the title of a 19th century (?) dialectal book which illustrates this phenomenon with everyday dialogue.

I wondered what kind of stuff is that and i did a google search for it. I think i found it in an article of a linguist Victor Friedman. Friedman mentions about 19th century Macedonian folklorist named Marko Cepenkov and gives examples from his work;






First conversation above is so funny. There is not enough explanation of it tough. Turkish guy asks Macedonian like what he is carrying. I think "var" means "Lime" in Macedonian but in Turkish "var" means "There is". So, Macedonian responds him properly by saying that he is carrying limes but Turkish guy understands the expression "Var aga var" like "There is sir, there is", hehe

Persistence and Change in Ottoman Patterns of Codeswitching in the Republic of Macedonia: Nostalgia, Duress and Language Shift in Contemporary Southeastern Europe; http://home.uchicago.edu/~vfriedm/Ar...Friedman95.pdf







It seems like Victor Friedman is a specialist on Slavic and Turkish languages. He has academical articles in Turkish language as well as Macedonian. He even analyzes special Balkanic Turkish dialects under the influence of Macedonian language in some of his articles;

Turkish Influence in Modern Macedonian: The Current Situation and Its General Background; http://mahimahi.uchicago.edu/media/f...Friedman86.pdf


Turkisms in a Comparative Balkan Context; http://mahimahi.uchicago.edu/media/f...Friedman94.pdf


The Turkish Lexical Element in the Languages of the Republic of Macedonia from the Ottoman Period to Independence; http://mahimahi.uchicago.edu/media/f...Friedman96.pdf





Victor Friedman writes a review for the book named "A Dictionary of Turkisms in Bulgarian" by Alf Grannes. In the article, he says that this dictionary contains approximately 8000 word entries for Turkish influence in Bulgarian language. Friedman also compares this one with another dictionary for Turkish influence in Serbian language written by a Serbian author named Skaljic. He says that there are almost 10.000 Turkish word entries in his work for Turkish influence in Serbian language!!!

http://mahimahi.uchicago.edu/media/faculty/vfriedm/Rev059Friedman03.pdf

http://mahimahi.uchicago.edu/media/faculty/vfriedm/Rev048Friedman98.pdf

Victor Friedman`s other works;

http://home.uchicago.edu/~vfriedm/cv.html#publications

[Onur]

"Developing cultural identity in the Balkans: convergence vs divergence" by Raymond Detrez,Pieter Plas;

http://books.google.com/books?id=TRttHdXjP14C

[Soldier of Macedon]

Onur, how close are the Turkic languages with Mongolian?

[Onur]

Onur, how close are the Turkic languages with Mongolian?

Grammatically, they are pretty similar like all the other Uralic and Altaic languages but for vocabulary, not that much.

Mongolian language has been written by Uyghur Turks for the first time in Genghis Khan era at 13th century. You know, Ghengis Khan enslaved all the Turkic people in Caucasus and he took Uyghur scholars in his court to be the historians and writers. At first, Uyghurs wrote everything in Turkish but laters they started to write in Mongolian language with lots of Turkic words and in old Turkic script. Because of that, a lot of Turkic words adopted by Mongols and thats how Mongolian language evolved. Most of the similarities between Turkic and Mongolian comes from that era.

In Turkish of Turkey, there are about ~50 Mongolian words at most but in Mongolian language, there are 1000s of Turkic words today. This is the case with Turkish of Turkey but i guess Uyghur, Kazakh and others probably have about ~100 Mongolian words but i don't think they have more than that either since when they were in close contact with Mongolians for like ~100 years in 13-14th century, Mongolian language was a primitive language without literacy, written record or any literature. It was in early stages of it`s development. Uyghur scholars in Ghengis Khan`s court reconstructed Mongolian language and Tatar soldiers in his army contributed their linguistic development. You know, most of the Mongolian army was consisted of Tatar Turk slaves.


When i listen Mongolian language, i cant understand anything besides the Turkic words they use in every 2-3 sentence but since it`s an agglutinative language with pretty much same grammar, it sounds quite similar to my ears like all the other Uralic and Altaic languages. I mean, all Uralic and Altaic languages sounds similar when you hear it.

[Soldier of Macedon]

The Mongols once had a ruler called "Altan" Khan (Golden King). He seems to have viewed and treated China similarly in some regards to how Phillip and Alexander treated Greece.

[Onur]

The Mongols once had a ruler called "Altan" Khan (Golden King). He seems to have viewed and treated China similarly in some regards to how Phillip and Alexander treated Greece.

Neither Mongols nor Turks couldn't settle with Chinese people throughout history. Gokturk Khan of 7th century wrote some kind of compilation of commendations for the Turks and he gave an advice like "Chinese tries to trick you with their woman and silk to gain your trust but never ever trust them"

Chinese even build their great wall because of the disputes with the Huns, the one and only human made structure visible from space!!!