Turkish language

“ When the Turks found themselves masters of a great European Empire, they had neither the financial nor the diplomatic skill requisite for conducting it. The Turkish method of keeping accounts was cumbrous, the Turkish language is extremely difficult to write, and the Turks resembled the British in their absolute ignorance of foreign tongues, while treaties and diplomatic correspondence continued to be composed in Greek. But empires are not won by linguists but by men of character, who are easily able to find subtle intellects to do their office work for them. ”

“ Arabic is dominant on the plains; Syriac and Kurdish in the mountains; Armenian on the plateaus to the northward; and Greek in western Asia Minor. Turkish, except in Anatolia, is only the official language; but we suppose it deserves recognition along with the other five. Naturally each of these main stems branches off into dialects by the score; and if these are to be reckoned separately the Turkish Empire is still as polyglot as that of Nebuchadnezzar himself.
No one of course speaks all the languages; but no one can get on at all comfortably without speaking a minimum of two. ”

“ In the Balkans and in Asia Minor, where there were so many races and so many tongues, the Turks were acting reasonably and sensibly in imposing their own language as a medium for the transaction of government business, but in vilayets which were wholly Arabic speaking, the foisting of the Turkish language upon the people could be likened to a bastard child endeavouring to rule the branch of his family from which he had received his best and purest blood. Before a year had passed, the educated, intellectual Arabs were wholly out of sympathy with the new régime. ”

“ Yet who is to help Turkey forward if not the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Empire? The Turks, the least gifted of the races living in Turkey, are themselves only a minority of the population, and are still far behind the Arabs in culture. Where is there any Turkish trade, Turkish handicraft, Turkish industry, Turkish art, Turkish science? They have even borrowed their law and religion from the conquered Arabs, and their language, so far as it has been given literary form. ”

“ Tradition fortified by inertia makes them what they are, and also their Turkish language, which serves them for business of state and for a literature, though not without an infusion of Persian and Arabic idioms said to amount to 95 per cent. ”

“ They endeavoured to impose the Turkish language on the many subject races who spoke only their own language. They forbade the teaching in schools of the Albanian language in Albania, and of Arabic, the sacred language of Islam, in Arabia. They introduced compulsory service for the army, and forced the Christians of the Balkan provinces to serve in its ranks, with the result that thousands of young Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbians, inhabitants of Macedonia, fled the country and sought refuge in the neighbouring States. ”

“ The Turkish language is entirely unconnected with either Aryan or Semitic and belongs to a stock of its own. We know from history that the Turks are recent immigrants in Europe and that they came not very long ago, as the historian reckons, from central Asia. But if the Turkish migrations and invasions had taken place 2,000 years earlier than was the case, we should in all likelihood have had no historical record of the fact, and the historian would erroneously classify the Turks as related to the neighboring Aryan nations—unless he called upon philology to aid him. ”

“ In speaking of the Turks it is necessary to carry two distinct types in mind. The pure Tatar vagrant, true to his native indolence, which unfits him for sedentary occupation, is in the minority. The mass of the Turkish population consists of a mixed element in which the racial strain of given localities persists along with characteristics imparted by fusion with Turki conquerors. This mingling is indicated further by the spirit which moves this people in the performance of their daily tasks. Its members are recruited among the plodding, gentle-mannered and kind-hearted peasants of the land. ”

“ Turkish nationality is equally meaningless. The descendants of Asiatic nomads became masters of western Asia without ever conferring the boon of government or of nationality upon the land and its peoples. In Gibbon’s mordant words “the camp and not the soil is the country of the genuine Tatar.” And Turkey is still a vast field in which the Turk has pitched his tent and merely waits, knowing that the day is not far off when he will have to break camp and seek new pasturages for his herds and flocks. ”

“ But equally important, as explaining their military successes, is the fact, noticed alike by ancient Chinese historians and modern European officers, that the ordinary Turkish soldier has in military matters an unusual resourcefulness and power of initiative which, without impairing discipline, renders him independent of his officers.
Language.—The Turkish or Tatar-Turkish languages belong to the Ural-Altaic family. Both nominal and verbal forms are built up solely by the addition of suffixes, and the law of vowel harmony is strictly observed. ”

“ France has exercised a dominant intellectual influence in the Levant for at least seven centuries. Turks bestow the appellation “Frank” on Europeans without discrimination of nationality. Western ideas which have trickled down to Turkish soil are French in character. French schools in Turkey are more numerous than any other. The civilizing power of French culture showed its strength by the readiness with which it asserted itself in the midst of uncongenial Turkish thought. France’s hold on Turkey is thus of a high moral order. ”

“ Of old, the world’s highest civilizations, its purest religions, arose within their confines. In modern days decadence on the heels of a steady recessional marks their lot. The explanation usually advanced is that Mohammedanism has impeded Turkish progress. But this religion was no obstacle to cultural growth in the countries surrounding Turkey. In Egypt, as in Arabia, Persia and northern India, the thought of the natives grew to splendid maturity. The intellectual life of these Mohammedan countries is altogether beyond the grasp of the Turkish mind. ”

“ And between renegades, janissaries, and mothers of all nations, the blood of many a Turk must be physically any thing rather than Turkish. The inherent nature of the case, and the witness of recorded history, join together to prove that language is no certain test of race, and that the scientific philologers are doing good service to accuracy of expression and accuracy of thought by emphatically calling attention to the fact that language is no such test. ”

“ They speak a southern dialect of the Grusinian language closely allied to Mingrelian but mingled with Greek and Turkish words. In some localities Turkish entirely replaces their vernacular. The limits of their language in Turkey coincide with the western boundary of the sanjak of Lazistan. They extend thence eastward, in a belt fringing the southern base of the Caucasus, all the way between the Black and Caspian seas. [223]
Fig. 59—“Turkish” crowd in an Anatolian city (Trebizond) . A gathering in these Turkish cities contains representatives of almost every race in the world.
[285] ”

“ The character of the Austro-Hungarians also shows many points of affinity with that of the Turks. The German language is another stumbling-block in the way of extending German ideas beyond certain limits, [29] and it encounters a powerful competitor in the French language. French has been recognized in Turkey as the foremost tongue of the “Franks” for nearly three hundred years. There are close upon six hundred schools in Turkey in which French forms part of the regular curriculum. French is spoken more or less by nearly every Turkish official above a certain rank; German by scarcely any. ”

“ My wife explained this:
“The trouble is,” she said, “that most foreigners who live in Constantinople band together and will not mix with the people of the country. They do not take the trouble to learn the language, they do not bother to make friends with the people. They live in small, self-sufficient groups. I am sure that if they only knew how much they miss by doing this, they would revise their mode of living, and they would find out that instead of its being a trouble or a bother to learn Turkish and to make friends with the Turks it is, on the contrary, a real pleasure. ”

“ Every action and every motion of the Turkmans is marked by dignity and grace. Their language is clear and sonorous, but less soft than that of the capital; expressing, as may be conceived, no abstract ideas, for which the Turkish is indebted to the Arabic alone ”

“ Turkey is the only country in the world where one may travel for months without using the language of the country, with such great tenacity do the conquered races cling to their own. Indeed, in order to live comfortably in Constantinople, one must know Greek, not Turkish. ”

“ Each nationality, except such as belong to the artisan class, keeps more or less to itself in the Turkish capital and has its separate cliques. The English merchant class long resident in Turkey make an exception in associating and occasionally intermingling with the better Greek families. This exclusiveness is partly a result of the insurmountable barrier of language, so that Europeans may live in Constantinople for years without coming into contact with a Turk above the status of an arabadji. ”

“ Remember, the Ottoman Turks are not Semitic, [18] as is the bulk of the Moslem world. Tradition derives them from Turk, son of Japhet, and they are a Turco-Mongol blend which most people agree to call Tartar. Their language is closely allied to Mongolian, though written in Arabic, or rather Persian, character, and its Arabic words are pronounced unintelligibly to an Arab. A true Turk learns Arabic with difficulty, and a far higher percentage of Britons in India speak Hindustani than Turks do Arabic in Turkish Arabia. ”

“ No nation or tribe was ever so completely isolated as not to admit the importation of a certain number of foreign words. In some instances these imported words have changed the whole native aspect of the language, and have even acquired a majority over the native element. Turkish is a Turanian dialect; its grammar is purely Tataric or Turanian. The Turks, however, possessed [pg 083] but a small literature and narrow civilization before they were converted to Mohammedanism. Now, the language of Mohammed was Arabic, a branch of the Semitic family, closely allied to Hebrew and Syriac. ”

“ It is no exaggeration to say that this human tax has been levied on almost every family of the Caucasus, western Asia and the countries of the Balkan peninsula. Today the net result of this variegated intermixture is that the Tatar origin of the average Turk, so called, is entirely concealed by the mingling with Mediterranean, Armenoid-Alpine and even Nordic elements. Except in a few isolated instances the Turki type of central Asia is rarely met within Turkish boundaries. Clearly no valid claim to racial distinctiveness can be set up by the Turks.
In religion the Turk is no innovator. ”

“ The most important and the most gratifying sign of the times is the eagerness of the young women of Turkey for education. The use of the veil is a matter of the greatest insignificance in comparison with the new spirit that is415 apparent everywhere among the families of the higher and middle classes. Many Turkish women have acquired the French language. A few speak English and German, which they have learned from their governesses, but they are very few who have a knowledge of books. ”

“ This, too, made the Turks jealous that giaours were better acquainted with their business and books than themselves. In an old style Turkish school the Arabic grammar was a life work, while in the Armenian schools the necessary principles of that language are simply a few months' work. Many poor and honest Armenian young men gain name and position through education, while hosts of Turkish boys are loafing in the streets and stepping over wild street dogs and building a character worse than dogs. ”

“ The necessary measures shall be taken to assure to every Ottoman subject a uniform system of education. There shall be no interference with the religious education of the different communities." The Christian communities, especially the Greek, objected strenuously to this, fearing that governmental control would be found to mean the imposition of the Turkish language in all schools, as an instrument of nationalization. ”

“ No person exercising the functions of governess, nursery governess, or head nurse, exists in harems. There is no reserve of language observed before young girls, who are allowed to listen to conversations in which spades are very decidedly called spades. The absence of refined subjects naturally leads the tone of these conversations, at times, to so low a level as to render its sense quite unintelligible to the European listener, though it is perfectly understanded of the Turkish maiden.
Turks sometimes have hodjas as tutors for their sons ”

“ The number of the Turkish inhabitants of European Turkey is indeed small. It is generally stated at 2,000,000; but Shafarik estimates the number of genuine Turks at not more than 700,000, who rule over fifteen millions of people. The different Turkic dialects of which the Osmanli is one, occupy one of the largest linguistic areas, extending from the Lena and the Polar Sea, down to the Adriatic.
The most ancient name by which the Turkic tribes of Central Asia were known to the Chinese was Hiung-nu. These Hiung-nu founded an empire (206 b. c.) comprising a large portion of Asia, west of China. ”