Throughout the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, passions were seething in the Ottoman Empire about improving the language. (Let me remind you that from the middle of the 19th century, the official language of the empire was the Ottoman language, consisting of 70-80, and according to some estimates, all 90 percent, from borrowings from Arabic and Persian.) The disputes in republican Turkey ended with the language reform of 1928, after which was created, in fact, a completely new Turkish language.
The writing was translated into Latin Afavite. Writing in Turkish in Arabic letters is prohibited by law on pain of imprisonment.
The vocabulary has undergone tremendous changes. The number of “native Turkish” words in the last 50-60 years has increased from the previous 10-15 percent to the current 75-80 percent. Moreover, for “native Turkish” words are often hastily concocted neologisms.
Professor of the Oxford University Jeffrey Lewis in the lecture “Turkish language reform. A Catastrophic Success”, delivered at the Jarring Institute in Sweden in 2002, says in particular:
“… The boundless energy of Kemal Ataturk, as well as his powers as President of the Republic, prompted him to start the ethnic cleansing of the language. In 1928, he changed the alphabet: he replaced the Arabic-Persian script with the Latin alphabet.
Two years later, he wrote a short introduction to a book on the history and potential of the language, in which he included these fatal words: “The Turkish people, who know how to defend their territory and their sublime independence, must free their language from the foreign yoke.” (…)
Three methods were prescribed for obtaining the necessary words, designed to make the Turkish language independent of foreign language vocabulary: to study the resources of the spoken language, collect the necessary words found in old texts, and, if necessary, create new words from existing roots and suffixes.
In October 1932, word gathering began. Each provincial governor chaired a collection committee. Over the course of the year, over 35,000 words were recorded. Meanwhile, scientists, in search of words that were out of use or were never used in Turkey, turned over the dictionaries of the Turkic languages and more than 150 ancient texts. Their "catch" for the year was 90,000 words. In 1934, the results of both events were published in a book called Tarama Dergisi. (…)
Promotional video:
Journalists wrote their articles in Ottoman and then submitted them to special commissions (ikameci). Ikameci opened their copy of Tarama Dergisi and replaced Ottoman words with equivalents chosen from this book. At the same time, in the office of another newspaper, another commission was selecting other equivalents, which turned out to be the same words from the Ottoman language.
At that moment, Atatürk decided that the reform had reached a dead end, and that it would be wiser to keep in the language all foreign words for which no Turkish synonyms were found, providing them with Turkish etymology. (For example, the old word “civilization” is “medeniyet” It is of Arab origin. But the case was presented as if the Arabs had borrowed it from the Turks).
However, many of the reformers, instead of inventing etymology for the doomed Arabic and Persian words, honestly tried to find pure Turkish counterparts for them, and made several blunders. For example, there was no Turkish equivalent to the Arabic "Maarif" - "education." The reformers replaced it with the word "Egitim" which supposedly comes from the ancient verb eğitimek - to educate. But the verb eğitimek never existed. This was a misinterpretation of the verb igidimek - to feed (people or animals). But that didn’t stop “Egitim” from becoming the modern Turkish word for education. (…)
Many neologisms were correctly constructed from Turkish roots and suffixes. For example “altyapı” - “potential”, replacing the French enfrastrüktür. But too many neologisms, however, were not constructed correctly. (…)
Among them are neologisms compiled personally by Ataturk for geometry. (Until 1937, Turkish schoolchildren were still studying geometry in Ottoman technical terms. The changes began in the winter of 1936/7 when Atatürk wrote a small book on the elements of geometry, publishing it anonymously). To replace the Arabic names of the figures: triangle, pentagon, etc., he came up with new words: adding to the corresponding figure the recently invented suffix - "gene". So the "triangle" became "üçgen". But the “father of the Turks” did not take into account that for many generations of peasants in Anatolia the word “üçgen” could only mean “three fallow fields”. (…)
New technical terms have been developed for other branches of science, although not all of them are used in practice today. For example, doctors prefer terms from English or French. (…)
Let me summarize, name four reasons why the reforms were disastrous. First: the reformers did not close the gap between the intelligentsia and non-intellectuals - they did everything to create a new gap. Secondly: the language became impoverished, there was no Turkish replacement for all the Arabic and Persian words that were forgotten. These losses affect every Turk, who, when speaking or writing, looks for words to express his feelings, but does not find them, because words are dead, like the Etruscan language. Thirdly, many of the replacements made are far from purely Turkish. Fourth, most Turks under the age of 50 are cut off from the literary work of the 1920s and 1930s, one of the greatest periods of their literature. The "modern Turkish translation" that you see in bookstores cannot replace the real original sources."