I received my Uzbek book today after so much wait. It was because I was a total idiot in paying with insufficient funds on my card. So the delivery got delayed by two weeks! Well, the good thing is I have it now.
Since the first crush on Turkish I have been dabbling with Turkish/Turkic languages for three years now. Many times I have decided to start learning Turkish seriously, but the plan always failed, succombing to other business I called 'more important' as an excuse. If I really had started Turkish three years ago I would be very good by now.
Oh no regrets. I'll do it now. With a PhD in Turcology in mind I need to lay the foundation right from this moment. I'll start from Eastern Turkish, represented by Uzbek and Uyghur, because I have a passion for Central Asia and I'm planning a trip there in the near future. Uyghur will probably be the focus of my PhD and I need to learn it well now. However, due to the unavailability of more advanced Uyghur grammars, I can only depend on Uzbek and even Chagatay materials, which can be found in abundance. I'm ordering some easy-to-follow Uzbek textbooks from CelCAR because the Bodrogligeti's book I have now a. doesn't have recording b. is too intensive. While waiting for the book from CelCAR, I'll finish 'A Basic Course in Uyghur', the book I got from China, and then I'll keep it up with the CelCAR book, and finally the more advanced, more comprehensive Bodrogligeti book. When my Arabic and Persian are good, I'll progress to Chagatay, but that's not planned for the near future.
Western Turkish, represented by Turkey's Turkish, is not really planned for the near future either. I'll work on the 'foundation languages' first, i.e. Arabic, Persian and Eastern Turkish which is more Turkish than Western Turkish. I'll probably start Western Turkish in my fourth year of university or after, and if I'm lucky I'll probably go to a language class in Turkey.
What is planned for the near, or immediate future, in addition to Eastern Turkish, is Arabic. I'm having a break from Persian because I think I've reached a level when I need good Arabic to make greater progress in Persian. I read in the preface of a famous Persian-English dictionary that 'Persian is so imbued with Arabic that any Persian scholar will ultimately end up being an Arabic scholar' or something along the lines, can't remember the exact words. I find Arabic words in Persian excruciatingly hard to retain in memory unless they make sense to you when you analyse them, breaking them down into their original, meaningful triliteral roots in Arabic. Otherwise you'll just have to remember them as they are, which I'm not at all good at doing. I have a good vocabulary in English and Romance languages thanks to the limited Latin I know. Latinate words actually make sense where they don't seem to. I guess it's the same thing with Arabic and Persian.
Uzbek and Uyghur contain enough Persian words for me not to forget the Persian I have already learnt. If I'm to progress to Chagatay, Persian words and structures are more prevalent. These languages will most certainly imprint the Persian words more firmly than ever in my mind. The cool thing is, in these Turkic languages, Persian words are conjured up with a more fascinating, less boring structure (Oh God I adore agglutinative languages!! The structure just makes more sense and is so much more logical!). As I said, I've been dabbling with the structure for too long, ever since the bit of Japanese I learnt at nine. I'm lucky that agglutination isn't alien to me at all. Since a couple of years' Japanese and Korean during puberty somehow made it natural for me. Now I need to pick it up again, and be serious about it. Finally serious about the beautiful Turkic languages!
I need to be serious about Arabic as well. I'll learn it to the finest details. The language itself is a science! Especially a science of words and word formation, العلم الكلمات. I'm still not too old to learn it well. And I will learn it well, including a perfect pronunciation! I'll have my first Arabic lesson next Monday, and I'm really looking forward to it.
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Eastern Turkish which is more Turkish than Western Turkish
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by that?
As for Arabic and Persian, you're right that learning Arabic is indispensable for reaching an advanced level in Persian, but how much Arabic is necessary depends on your goals for Persian. If you're primarily interested in the modern language, you don't need to bother yourself learning Arabic grammar. Just spend some time learning Arabic morphology and memorizing roots and patterns, so that you can understand Arabic words in Persian - the other aspects of Arabic won't do you any good. (The same goes for most other languages influenced by Arabic).
However, if you're interested in reading classical texts, further study of Arabic will serve you. Many Persian texts from the first several centuries (AH) include not just borrowed words from Arabic, but entire sentences or paragraphs in pure Arabic in the middle of otherwise Persian texts. Good reading knowledge of Arabic is crucial for these. I believe the same is true of Chaghatay, and Uzbek and Uyghur certainly have a high level of Perso-Arabic as well.
Good luck!
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteBy the statement on Eastern Turkish I mean that Uzbek and Uyghur, or even Kazakh and Kyrgyz etc have preserved more native grammatical or lexical elements.
And yes, I am aiming at reading classical Persian texts as well :)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely Turkey's Turkish is more "corrupted" (i don't like using that word, but anyways) than i.e. Azeri, especially after Atatürk's reform.
ReplyDeleteA native speaker of Azeri is more likely to understand Ottoman Turkish than a Turk, because Azeri preserves more Persian/Arabic vocabulary and some ancient structures (i.e: I heard Azeri speakers using izafe, while Turks of Turkey don't use it anymore), and also sounds that are not to be found in standard Turkish like x or ğ, being more coherent with the Arabic script.
My professır of Ottoman Turkish could speak in a way that nobody in the class would understand because he was using ancient words, while Kaveh could understand it just fine, because most of the words are still used in Azeri. Aybike also found Ottoman Turkish easy vocabulary wise.
Therefore, if your aim is to become an expert in Turkic languages, Uzbek or Azeri will be more useful than Turkey's Turkish if you plan to go deeper into poetry and Turkish literature.