Ready.



not really phonetic

The (popular?) opinion that the transcription of Turkish (heard-to-jotted) is phonetic, is false, in presence of even some of the most popular words, and ordinary use. Therefore, e.g: to program a text-to-speech program, is not free of rote-memorization.

And most such non-phoneticisms were introduced by the T.C.newspeak people. Not a legacy of the former centuries.

Presumably, to cut the cords with Arabic, the friend words from Arabic, are mapped many-to-one. Four different letters in Arabic, are all 'z' in the Latin-Turkish transcription. (e.g: The reason, really, why "ARZ" in Turkish, means Earth, is that theletter Duh is also mapped to 'z.') Two varieties of 't' and two varieties of 'h' were collapsed, too. All the same, that would only tell about your ignorance/incapability, if you pronounced some of them with the wrong sound. e.g: the 't' in tarih (history) and telefon (telephone) are not pronounced the same. If these may sound as "unavoidable" in transition from the Arabic, to the Latin alphabet, that still does not explain the dogmatic-opposition against 'q' or the spinning around the wovels.

The purgers purged the 'q' although the difference is preserved in sound -- even if hesitantly. For example, the (Arabic-origin) words kalem (pen or pencil) vs. kagit (paper), kanun (law) vs. kitab (book) really differ in how the "k" is pronounced. The former two would rather fit as qalem, and qanun.

The letter at the end of a word, was co-erced to a sharper-sound, to "turkishize" the word -- although, next, that is a gotcha, if the word is added a suffix. e.g: To co-erce the name Ahmed as if that were "Ahmet," does not change the true case that, the "t" in "Ahmet'in" vs. "Nimet'in" are pronounced differently. The former is pronounced as 'd' -- as the original, in Arabic. In fact, even with no suffix, proably few or no one, would pronounce that as a sharp 't' sound -- d'ish t, or t'ish d. The case is repeated, with b-to-p. I know of no merit in coercion to p or t -- except that it was to please the egoes of some such tribalist-sloganeers, namely, in an urge to claim their distinct language, away from Arabic, etc.

That may also change the meaning. They were told this about 150 years, when the Sultan Abdulhamid, of the Ottoman State, pointed out that, to spell his name as "...hamit" would change the meaning -- the hamid (thanked/praised), would turn to "ham-it" (that is, "uncooked/unpolished, street-dog"). No objection stopped them, though. They committed what they wanted.

Not to mention that, for example the text "agabey" is read as "abi." I do not know why they diverge. For "good diction" people have to memorize the list, then. Therefore, the idea/ideal of a fully phonetic transcription (which would let easier teaching, and machine-programming) is not really considered the ideal way to talk (by a radio/TV speaker, theatre people, etc).

There is also the matter about wovels, with or without the circumflex. Athough the pronounciation certainly would change, and the meaning may also change (e.g: kar vs. kâr), the "linguistic experts" keep spinning that. If the last official spell-guide was with circumflexes, the next may still turn to the omission of that -- and so on, year-to-year. A volatile sort of "area/expertise" is that?




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Last-Revised (text) on Feb. 27, 2006 . . . that was http://www.geocities.com/ferzenr/tcn_char.htm
mirror for zilqarneyn.com, on Mar. 13, 2009
Written by: Ahmed Ferzan/Ferzen R Midyat-Zila (or, Earth)
Copyright (c) [2002,] 2005, 2009 Ferzan Midyat. All rights reserved.