Languages of Turkey

[voron]

In this thread, I'll share facts about the languages of Turkey (where I'm currently residing), primarily the 3 biggest ones (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic).

Socio-linguistic situation

Turkish

The most spoken language in Turkey is, of course, Turkish. Around 90% (72 mln) of the population speaks it as their mother tongue.

Example of spoken Turkish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB4e8Iv-DfM

This is an episode of the youtube program Sokak Röportajları (Street Interviews).

(Something that may interest Vijay: the first respondent is a Roma woman. She refers to her people as "Roman").

Kurdish

Around 10% (8 mln) of the population of Turkey speaks Kurmanji Kurdish.

The city where Kurdish is the most spoken is Istanbul. There are about 1.5 mln Kurds in Istanbul. It's possible to hear Kurdish in any district of Istanbul, but in some districts, such as Bağcılar, Şirinevler, Yenibosna, Kurds live side by side and you can hear Kurdish all the time there.

The second city where Kurdish is the most spoken is Diyarbakır in the east of Turkey. Out of approximately 1 mln of its population, 75% is Kurdish speaking.

An interesting fact: Syrian Kurds and Turkish Kurds understand each other very well when they speak Kurdish, so Syrian Kurdish migrants may prefer to settle down in Kurdish speaking areas of Turkey (including Istanbul), where they can integrate easier.

Example of spoken Kurdish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEg2de5slSE

This is an episode of the travel show Rêwî (Traveller) produced by the state channel TRT Kurdî. This particular episode takes place in Hazro, a district of Diyarbakır province.

Arabic

There are two kinds of Arabic spoken in Turkey.

• The first kind is Arabic spoken by recent migrants from Syria. There are more than 3 mln Syrians in Turkey. 0.5 mln of Syrians live in Istanbul. Just like with Kurdish, in some districts Syrians live side by side, so it's very common to hear Arabic and see signs in Arabic there.
  
  
• The second kind is spoken by indigenous Arab communities in the south provinces of Turkey, with the total number of about 1 mln people. The dialects spoken there are Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects.

Example of spoken Syrian Arabic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wydNuLxFtZY

This is the first episode of the Syrian series بقعة ضوء (Spot Light).

Mutual intelligibility between Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic

Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic belong to 3 different language families (Turkic, Indo-European and Semitic respectively) so, despite sharing a common layer of Arabic loans, there is absolutely no mutual intelligibility between them. They are no more similar than English, Hungarian and Basque.

(This note is obvious for language enthusiasts; still, I often get asked by people if these 3 languages are similar, so I decided to mention it here).

[vijayjohn]

(I finally get to use this smiley )

Something that may interest Vijay: the first respondent is a Roma woman. She refers to her people as "Roman"

Wow, that was great to see! Thanks!

The etymology of "Rom" has long been disputed, but one of the theories is that it is, in fact, related to the (Byzantine) Romans in some way. My understanding is that the first Roma in Turkey settled in an area that had been recently captured by the Seljuks (who they fought for) from the Byzantines.

The city where Kurdish is the most spoken is Istanbul.

When you first mentioned this, this surprised me. I would have definitely expected something more like Diyarbakır. (If you happen to know) is Istanbul also the city where Arabic is most widely spoken in Turkey? Is there any particular reason you know of as to why there are so many Kurds in Istanbul rather than in the east, or is it just because it's such a big city?

بقعة ضوء (Spot Light)

Don't get me wrong, I definitely took a look at all three videos!

[eskandar]

Cool to have the video examples as well. I've listened to plenty of Kurdish music but very little spoken Kurdish, so that was interesting to hear.

[voron]

(If you happen to know) is Istanbul also the city where Arabic is most widely spoken in Turkey?

I couldn't find the statistics but I think yes. Besides Syrian migrants, there are large Arabic diasporas and expat communities in Istanbul.

Hatay and Şanlıurfa provinces should be close second and third, though. Here is a map dated 2018 showing the number of Syrians in Turkey per province:


The map is taken from here:
http://multeciler.org.tr/turkiyedeki-suriyeli-sayisi/

Hatay and Şanlıurfa have more than 400.000 refugees. Exacty the same provinces also have a large number of 'indigenous' Arabs (not all of them are fluent in Arabic, though); so the number of Arabic speakers probably exceeds 600.000 in both provinces.

Is there any particular reason you know of as to why there are so many Kurds in Istanbul rather than in the east, or is it just because it's such a big city?

Besides its being a big city with attractive opportunities to earn better money than in the poorer East, many Kurds were displaced from their homes and forced to leave as a result of armed conflicts between the Turkish government and opposition Kurdish groups for the last 30+ years. They migrated to big cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Bursa.

[vijayjohn]

Interesting, thanks again!

Cool to have the video examples as well. I've listened to plenty of Kurdish music but very little spoken Kurdish, so that was interesting to hear.

Doesn't it sound so much like Persian sometimes? I felt like I could even understand bits and pieces of it.

[eskandar]

Doesn't it sound so much like Persian sometimes? I felt like I could even understand bits and pieces of it.

Absolutely! I could pick out a lot of words. There's something very familiar about many aspects of Kurdish for me, from vocabulary to grammar down to the cadence of speech.

[Surgeon]

It's me. Dr. House AKA Hent and I'm back. I deactivated my last account, so it's not against the rules to create a new one. (I guess)

While AWOL I learned a bisl yiddish.

On topic. I wanted to order my kebap in Turkish, but I choked as I heard the woman speaking Kurdish on the phone. I had no idea there were any Kurds here in Usti.

[vijayjohn]

Late, but welcome back!

[voron]

One more language of Turkey

Zazaki
Other names: Zaza, Kirmanjki, Dimli.

It's spoken in Eastern Turkey by about 2 mln people. For the map of the area where it is spoken, see wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_languages

Example of spoken Zazaki:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iujGSXNYHKM

It's an episode from the documentary Tanya Adirî (Warmth of Fire), created by the Turkish state channel TRT Kurdî (the same channel that created the program which I showed as an example of Kurmanji).

Zazaki is not mutually intelligible with Kurmanji. They have many common features in grammar, but the differences in vocabulary and phonology reduce the intelligibility to almost zero.

[voron]

The verb 'to be' in the present tense

Turkish
In Turkish, 'to be' is expressed as an affix appended to the predicate. It changes according to person and number. The affix is unstressed.

Ben doktorum. - I am a doctor.

'Ben' means 'I'. Turkish is pro-drop so you can omit it and simply say: Doktorum.
'Um' is the affix with the meaning 'to be' for the 1P.SG.

Sen doktorsun. / Doktorsun. - You are a doctor.

Example from a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlZI8xzhGm4&t=49s
Canımsın. - You are my darling (literally, 'you are my soul').

Note 1: The affix here is 'sın' which is different in a vowel from the example 'doktorsun'. Why? Because of vowel harmony (I won't go into details for the moment).
Note 2: In the English version of this song, the line is 'You're welcome'. No, 'canımsın' is not an idiomatic way of saying 'you're welcome'. It is just a random translation that fits the rythm.

Kurmanji
Just like in Turkish, 'to be' is expressed as an unstressed affix which is appended to the predicate, and it changes according to person and number. Unlike in Turkish, it's spelt separately from the predicate (it's merely an orthographic convention).

Ez doktor im. - I am a doctor.
Tu doktor î. - You are a doctor.

Kurmanji is not pro-drop so you cannot omit the personal pronoun.

Example from a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWwqeBLhdBI
At the start of the song this line is repeated several times:
Em kurd in. - We are Kurds.

Very unfortunately, in the song's title, there is a common spelling mistake: they spell kurdin together, while it should be spelt separately.

Arabic
Arabic is the simplest of all. There is no verb 'to be' in the present tense, so you simply say 'I doctor', in both MSA and all the dialects I know about.

.انا دكتور /ana duktu:r/ - I am a doctor.
.انت دكتور /anta duktu:r/ - You are a doctor.

Note 1: Arabic is sexist and distinguishes between male and female pronoun for 'you', and male and female word for 'doctor'. This example uses the male version.
Note 2: The transcription is for MSA. In a dialect, the vowels would be different.

Obviously you cannot omit the personal pronoun here (otherwise you'd be left with a single word 'doctor').

Example from a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fwf45pIAtM&t=28s
.انت معلّم [entə maʕal:im] - You are the boss.

The dialect is actually Moroccan, but the use of 'to be' remains the same.

Exercise
Give other examples of lines from Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic songs which contain sentences of the type 'I am ...', 'You are ...'.

Bonus Exercise
Same as Exercise, but with any other languages spoken in Turkey.

[vijayjohn]

I'm even less familiar with Zazaki than I am with any variety of Kurdish. I'm not sure the one Zazaki song I nominated for the FSC once has any sentences like that, either.

But for Turkish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQd9v4rqA9w
Boşa kostaklanma kostak değilsin karam - I'm not sure what exactly this means. I think it may be "Boşa kostaklanma! Kostak değilsin, karam!" so something like "Don't make yourself elegant in vain! You're not elegant, my brunette!"

Or if that's not good enough (because it's you're not + adj instead of you are + noun), then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg6zUUr0LeU
Biz Mecnun'uz, biz Leyla'yız - We are Mecnun, we are Leyla (i.e. we are in love like Romeo and Juliet)

For Kurdish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8wRGU6nPVY
Ez kevok im - I am a dove

For Arabic (this is actually Arabic as spoken in Saudi Arabia by Indian immigrants. Yes, I found a way to make even Arabic look obscure ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQGZ0UVJStg
كفيل كلام إنت حمار
The master says, "You're a donkey!"

[voron]

Vijay, your examples are hilarious!

I especially liked the Indian guy. It's my new fav song.

ana esmi Kumar Ati - My name is Kumar Ati
kullu nafr walla Sadiq -- All the people are friends, I swear
kullu nafr yu7ubb ana -- All the people like me
illa kafil, kafil ana -- Except for my master

The language is so badly broken here.
ُEDIT: I've listened to it like 5 times and I seem to understand most of it. I shall try and transcribe it in my Arabic thread.

Or if that's not good enough (because it's you're not + adj instead of you are + noun)

I didn't ask for specifically nouns so adjectives are good too, but the "not" part -- I was going to tell about it in the next episode.

[Surgeon]

What about Armenian in Van?

[vijayjohn]

Yes, Armenian is a language spoken in Turkey, too.

So is Romani. So here's a song in Romani (this is actually Romanian Romani - I think specifically Kalderash - because who knows what variety exactly they speak in Turkey - maybe Sepečides?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TjGQbUz36Q

Miri Romni si šukar (My wife is as beautiful)
Sar e lulugi ta 'e bar. (As the flower and the fence(?)).
Miri Romni si brunèto (My wife is a brunette)
'Aj si maj bari talènto. (And she's the greatest talent).

I once posted and tried to transcribe and translate this whole song here.

[vijayjohn]

So did this thread die?

[voron]

So did this thread die?

No, it's on summer vacation.

[n8an]

Dialects of Aramaic are still spoken too even if only tiny numbers today

[Antea]

I am watching some videos in a Turkish TV channel in which people speak in Arabic. I am not sure, though, if a lot of people can understand Arabic in Turkey

https://youtu.be/s7PYooEdZ7g

[OldBoring]

Quello è turco per me.

Finally a thread where I can use this joke.

[n8an]

I am watching some videos in a Turkish TV channel in which people speak in Arabic. I am not sure, though, if a lot of people can understand Arabic in Turkey

https://youtu.be/s7PYooEdZ7g

Though they are speaking in Standard Arabic (mostly, although the female presenter slips into dialect), the presenters both have Lebanese or Syrian accents. I think the female presenter sounds Syrian. The guest also sounds Lebanese (or maybe Syrian, but more likely Lebanese).

Edit: Listening again, I think she’s Lebanese and he’s more likely Syrian.

It’s confusing me for some reason it’s almost like they’re from north Lebanon and south Syria or something.