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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Turkish
Istanbul,
the center of the Ottoman
Empire,
previously Byzantine Constan-
tinople,
remains
one of Eurasia’s
most
magnificent cities.
Language information:
The majority of Turkish speakers lives
in Turkey and Cyprus. In Turkey, approximately 80% of the inhabitants use it
as a their native language, virtually all other citizens being able to use
Turkish
as a second language. Outside Turkey and Cyprus, there are numerous traditional
enclaves of Turkish speakers, most importantly in Bulgaria, Greece, the FYR
of Macedonia, and Romania. More recently established
Turkish communities are found all over Western and Central Europe, some in
the Americas and in Australia, the largest one (2.5 million)
being that of “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) and their descendants (of which less than a half million are naturalized citizens)
in Germany, where specific dialects of Turkish have been developing.
Turkish is one of many Turkic languages. It is currently the best-known one among
them, not only because of the relatively large number of speakers
but
also
because
in recent history Turkey was the only independent
Turkic-speaking
nation (and has a history of colonization under the Ottoman emperors), until
the
end
of
the
Cold
War
and the regained independence of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
and
Kyrgyzstan,
as well as
somewhat
increased
autonomy
of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Tyva (Tuvinia), Khakasia, the Altai Republic
and
Sakha (Yakutia)
within the
Russian
Federation.
Before
the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, Turkish was written
with an adaptation of the Arabic script, and great literary works were composed
in it. However, literacy was then mostly reserved for elite circles. A Latin-based
writing
system
was introduced and with it literacy vastly increased with
the
foundation
of
today’s
Turkish
Republic
under
the
leadership
of the
Greek-Macedonian-born Turkish statesman Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) who later took on the
name Kemal Atatürk.
Like all Turkic
languages, Turkish is an agglutinating type of language, a type in which new
words are derived and grammatical function is indicated by means of suffixes
(i.e., syllables added to the end of a word). This type of system is able to
render
in
a single
(augmented)
word
what
in
other
types
of languages requires several words. This is a general feature of the Altaic
family (to which the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages belong, possibly
also Korean and Japanese)
and
also to the Uralic family (to which for instance Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian
belong). Furthermore, like almost all Turkic and Uralic languages, Turkish has
the feature of vowel harmony, whereby the vowel of a suffix must harmonize
with
the vowel of the preceding syllable in terms of back or front.
Turkish—sometimes
referred to as “Ottoman Turkish”, “Osmanli” (Osmanlı) or “Anatolian Turkish”—is
most
closely related to Azeri (Azerbaijani), also rather closely to Crimean Tatar,
Turkmen, Gagauz, and Khorazan Turkish (of Uzbekistan). Like that of all Turkic
languages,
its
origin
is
in Central Asia, the earliest known Turkic inscriptions having been discovered
in the Orkhon region of what is now Mongolia as well as in the Yennesei area
of
Siberia.
However,
like
almost
all
Turkic
languages
of
communities with Islamic traditions, Turkish is lexically very strongly influenced
by Iranic (Persian) language varieties, particularly by Dari, Farsi and Tajik,
because
Persian
literature,
especially Persian poetry, has been particularly highly regarded among
Turkic speakers for centuries, and proficiency in both
Persian and Arabic used to be required of well-educated Turks in the past. This
was particularly strongly reflected in the learned literature of the Ottoman
era. Unlike
most
other
Turkic
languages,
Turkish
(and
to
a
lesser
degree
its
close
relative
Azeri) has in addition been influenced by French, in more recent times also by
English and German.
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