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| Language Change |
Languages have always been
ever-changing, and will continue to change in the future. Linguists believe
that this change is an expectable reality of languages (Yule 2003:222). In this
sense, the important thing to be considered is how they change and to which
direction the languages go; corruption or improvement. Actually, according to
Lass (1980,
as cited in Chapman-Skousen, 2005) change of a language can be analyzed and told in details but this
process cannot be explained why and how it appears, and it is an important
challenge trying to understand that (p. 333). In this essay, other than
understanding how, it is planned to be focused on trying to enlighten whether
this change helps a language improve or causes the corruption of it by
borrowing words from other languages.
The Reasons to Change
First of all, languages change for
many reasons, and these should be defined. It occurs sometimes because of
social, economical and political grounds and in some cases because of
invasions, colonization and migration. It is also possible “even without these
kinds of influences, […] if enough users alter the way they speak”[1] and write it such as in
media. Thus, the inevitability of change appears just before us.
There
are other reasons as well which are quite natural in a developing world in
every aspect. People need new words to define new things, and that simply leads
to change. Technology is always finding things that are never defined before
and which are needed to be called something just like cell phones, internet and
computers.[2] Therefore, by the new
terms that are just created the change occurs in its own nature. This creation
of new words, improvement, is not the same in every language. Some create new
words, and some borrow these words from its original one, just like English and
Turkish do in many cases.
Change in English
As it is the most obvious source of
change, the cultural transmission (Yule 2003) is applicable to language change
as well. This is of course by ‘borrowing words’. This exchange is considered to
be the most important source of finding new words for a language (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams 2003). Furthermore, Yule
(2003) finds this process as a quite normal feature of languages. It could not
be implied in a clearer way that borrowing words is an improvement for not only
the English language and also for the others by linguists. It is not a perfect
explanation but a good one, of defining the borrowing process as it is a
development just because it is inevitable. This idea is from an optimistic
point of view. But no one can predict the future of a language however it is
still appropriate to say that this progress seems like an enhancement for now.
As there is nothing to do to stop this, we only can talk about it and try to
control it explaining its positive sides.
Therefore,
taking new words into a language should be considered as an enhancement just
like English linguists believe. There is no way out of not using these words if
the speakers keep using them, which shows that the speakers play a really
important role altering the language as it is mentioned before. There is also
another reason why it is a good thing for English. English is a wide language
and it does not have some strict rules like Turkish does. Accepting these new
words is easy for it and that is because the words in English do not have to
follow some certain rules to be considered as they are originally English. On
the other hand, in Turkish the words have to obey some rules such as palatal
and labial vowel harmony[3]
which defines the words whether they are originally Turkish or not. It is probably one of the reasons of the strong objections
to the borrowing words by the Turkish linguists as the ideas of them will be
given in further pages.
Change
in Turkish
There
seems to be nothing wrong about taking words from other languages and making
the language rich in vocabulary when you observe this change superficially, but
it is not the same for every one of them. The Turkish language is one of them which
is in effect of change by borrowing words. Clearly Turkish linguists consider
this process as impoverishing the language. They have presuppositions that are
not good at all about Turkish in the case of using words from foreign
languages. According to Aksan (2005), if the change in a language happens with
the help of borrowing words from other ones, this shows us how worse and
further it can go in altering the language, destroying the rules of target one
(pp. 135-6). It is not clear what he meant by saying “how worse and further it
can go”, but the thing is that his approach to the change is prejudiced already,
and it will be more obvious that Turkish linguists think alike in the further
quotes from others.
In
addition, in the years of the Ottoman Empire because of the Islamic
improvements in the country many Arabic words were used in Turkish language and
eventually they became a part of it. Poets and authors borrowed words from
Arabic for nothing more than just to satisfy their artist sides. It was very
common to use another language that one of the most important works of the Ottoman
era, Osmanlı Şeyhnamesi, was totally
written in Persian. Influenced by this move, many writers started and competed
to use foreign words and thus Turkish language was exposed to change by
borrowing words some of which have still been used since then (Muallimoğlu 1999:214).
Because of this change, today it requires a special education to be able to
understand a work of even a century ago in Turkish.
Alike
change is happening right now again. People in Turkey are aware of it and they
do not think like English linguists do. For them, this is neither a normal
progress nor an improvement. Being asked whether the borrowing of words from
English is due to inadequacy of Turkish or not, Sinanoğlu (2006) gives an example
to enlighten the situation. We all know about Ireland. It is invaded not by
force but changing its education language. In Turkey, the same strategy has
been carried out since 1953 when TED (Turkish Education Association) was turned
into a private college. As we know in Turkey ‘college’ refers to missionary
schools. Furthermore, these foundations have been supported by the media and
hidden societies founded for the purpose of changing Turkish society by
changing its language (p.113). This claim seems over exaggerated and shows the
weakness of fighting against borrowed words. It is also just an idea and a
really strong belief of an important figure in Turkey, supporting the idea that
change leads to impoverishment of the language. By this example, we can clearly
see that change should not be considered as bad as and as deep as it is stated here.
This is not the reason people in Turkey use foreign words now, but it is just
the inevitable process of the language.
It is
believed that borrowing words would destroy the rules of the language, thus
changing these rules would lead to corruption by Turkish linguists. They even
believe in conspiracy theories which are popular in Turkey and widely
considered to exist in reality by many people. This situation explains the
reasons of the strong objections by even academic researchers to the normal
process of the language. It is not supposed to be based on the beliefs but
realities and facts to define a scientific ‘progress’ of a language and
consider it as an improvement or corruption.
Therefore,
with the findings and scientific ideas from both Turkish and English linguists
it is shown that the language change is perceived differently by the
researchers. But, since the change is inevitable in languages and helps languages
enhance the vocabulary and most importantly because it is the speakers who
boost the process, it would be wrong to say that borrowing words impoverishes
the languages. It should be accepted that the borrowed words help languages to
keep up to date and live longer by providing the needs of their speakers leading
to the improvement of the languages.
References
1.
Aksan, D. (2005). Türkiye
Türkçesinin dünü, bugünü, yarını. Ankara
2.
Chapman, D., & Skousen, R. (2005). Analogical modeling and
morphological change: the case of the adjectival negative prefix in English. English Language and Linguistics, 9.2,
333-357.
3.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2003). An introduction to language. United States: Thomson Heinle Press.
4.
Language
Change. (2008). In National Science
Foundations. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from National Science Foundations: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/change.jsp
5.
Muallimoğlu, N. (1999). Türkçe
bilen aranıyor. İstanbul: Avcı Ofset Matbaacılık.
6.
Sinanoğlu, O. (2006). Büyük uyanış.
İstanbul: Alfa Basım Yayım Dağıtım.
7. Turkish language.
(2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 19, 2009, from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/610041/Turkish-language
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