One of my viewers said that there are many Turks who have a different view of Ataturk. He said they resent him for changing the script from Arabic to Latin. They feel wronged because they cannot read Turkish literature in the original text.
I had to ask myself, if the Turks resent Ataturk because they can no longer read Turkish literature in the original Arabic script, it would then follow that there must have been Turkish people before that who resented the Ottomans. After all, there surely must have been some great Turkish writers who wrote with the Greek alphabet?
Turkey has a long history with many inhabitants, a few religions, and many languages both spoken and written. People who live there also tend to produce some literature in their native tongue. So, how do we know which language or script is more valuable? If people are angry at Ataturk, then there must have been a lot of people throughout history who were angry at some Turkish ruler for imposing their language or alphabet.
This brings us to an important question - are there some who feel certain scripts are simply more valuable than others? Is it determined by the number of speakers? Linguists, especially those who learn and value rare languages, would agree that just because a lot of books were written with the Arabic script one hundred years ago does not make it more valuable that works written by Turks in other Turkic languages. This is not my call to make. However, I would like my readers to look at the chart below.
This chart shows all the languages spoken in Turkey by native, immigrants, and ancient people. You will see the language family, number of Turkish speakers and comments about these languages.
For more information about dead Turkish languages, watch the videos posted at the end of this blog. The first video is in French, the second linked video is in Italian.
46,300,000 (1987) | Numbers are certainly higher now | ||
3,950,000 (1980) | also known as Kurmanji | ||
1,000,000 (1998/1999) | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western) | one of the Zaza languages | |
1,000,000 (2005) | North Caucasian languages (aka Caucasic) | It has 47 or 48 consonant phonemes of which 22 or 23 are fricatives, depending upon whether one counts [h] as phonemic, but this is contrasted with just two phonemic vowels. | |
530,000 | Turkic (Oghuz) | South Azeri (also known as South Azerbaijani) is a variety of the Azerbaijani language spoken in northwestern Iran and neighboring regions of Iraq and Turkey. | |
400,000 (1992) | North Mesopotamian Arabic (also known as Maslawi meaning from Mosul) | ||
327,000 (1993) | Turkic (Oghuz) | ||
300,000 (2001) | Indo-European (Slavic) | ||
278,000 (2000) | North Caucasian languages | ||
140,000 | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western) | one of the Zaza languages | |
40,000 (1980) | Indo-European (Armenian languages) | ||
40,000 (1980) | |||
30,000 (1980) | South Caucasian languages | ||
28,500 (2000) | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan) | Domari was once thought to be the "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent, but more recent research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. | |
25,000 | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan) | ||
20,000 (1980) | Indo-European (Slavic) | ||
15,000 (1980) | Indo-European (Albanian) | ||
10,000 (1995) | North Caucasian languages | ||
8,000 (1976) | Indo-European (Romance) | spoken by the descendants of Jewish refugees from Spain | |
4,540 (1965) | Indo-European (Greek) | spoken on the shores of the Black Sea, most speakers were moved to Greece in the 1920s | |
4,000 (1993) | Indo-European (Greek) | most speakers were moved to Greece in the 1920s | |
4,000 (1980) | North Caucasian languages | ||
3,000 (1994) | Semitic languages (Aramaic) | ||
2,000 | Turkic (Oghuz) | actual number is unknown | |
1,980 (1982) | Turkic (Uyghuric) | ||
1,140 (1982) | Turkic (Western) | (aka Kirghiz) | |
less than 1,000 (1999) | Semitic languages (Aramaic) | ||
920 (1982) | Turkic (Oghuz) | ||
600 (1982) | Turkic (Western) | ||
500 (1981) | Turkic (Eastern) | ||
few villages | Turkic (Western) | ||
handful | Turkic (Western) | ||
?? | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Eastern) | ||
? | Numbers are unknown though likely to number in the thousands | ||
extinct | Aramaic | liturgical language | |
extinct | North Caucasian | became extinct in the 1990s | |
handful | Turkic (Western) | ||
?? | Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Eastern) |
