I believe that learning a language's history can definitely help you learn the language. Language is not only about memorizing vocabulary and grammar, but exploring culture, its people and tradition. In the first place, there must be something intriguing about the country or culture that made us want to learn the language. We need to know the history of language because it is the key to the understanding of the way things are and why they are that way. History is a major component of learning a language, and it is, to my mind, one of the most enjoyable aspects of acquiring a new language. If you choose to learn about a language's history, it will not only make your learning process more interesting, but you will get to appreciate little things about your target language that will definitely keep you motivated to work harder.
Here is a quick history of Turkish language:
Turkish language belongs to Ural-Altaic family of languages. The Ural-Altaic languages are distinguished from the Indo-European by:
- the absence of gender
- adjectives precede nouns
- verbs come at the end of a sentence
During the Ottoman Empire (1453-1920), there were 3 languages used at that time:
- Arabic- language of religion
- Persian- language of art and literature
- Ottoman Turkish- language for the business administration
These three languages belong to 3 different language families: Semitic, Indo-European, and Ural-Altaic. These languages are very different in terms of grammar, pronunciation and spelling, and they caused many difficulties in spelling and writing among people who spoke it. For these reasons, during the 19th century there was a reform of the language. The aim was to create a language that would be easier to read and write and would contain more Turkish words.
Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had a goal to create a language that was more Turkish, and less Arabic and Persian. His goal was to produce a more modern language that would be easier to learn and pronounce. This process was accomplished by switching from Arabic alphabet to Latin alphabet as well as purification of the vocabulary.
In May 1928, numbers that were up to that time written in Arabic were replaced with Latin alphabet. Transition from one alphabet to another one lasted only a few months. On January 1, 1929, it actually became unlawful to use the Arabic alphabet to write Turkish.
Today, Turkish possesses rich vocabulary and is spoken by more than 70 million people throughout the world. Turkish speakers reside primarily in Turkey, Germany, Cyprus, Bulgaria and other parts of Eastern Europe.
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