My language: turkish TURKISH is my language and it will be the main topic for this essay particularly because I am Turkish myself and I am very much interested to look into the culture and background of my language. For this essay I will get background mainly from the work of linguist Karl Menges who wrote The Turkic Languages and People: An Introduction to Turkic Studies. The Turkish language found its roots from the Ural-Altaic languages that originated from as far west from Scandinavia, Hungary and Balkans in the west and Artic Ocean to the central part of Asia to the east.
The Ural-Altaic languages have their own particular structure in terms of syntax, morphology and phonology. However, the Turkic language is found to be more developed under the Altaic category of language and at this point I would like to dwell on deeper to the history and characteristics of the Turkish that was derived from Altaic languages. The Altaic language is subcategorized into three branches: Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus. The Turkic language is used in a large area, ranging from Anatolia to the Volga basin and Central Asia. History states that Orkhon inscription of the Turkic language were found in 8th century AD found near the rivers of now named Selenga in Mongolia. This language has evolved towards generation; it had been used also by the religions and different knit groups.
As time has passed, the Turkic language has been split into two branches—West Turkic and East Turkic. West Turkic differed in terms of structure phonetically and in contact with other languages and was then called Chuvash. On the other hand, East Turkic continued to be the same of its structure and has also in time evolved and developed into other sub-branches. Now, the East Turkic language is subcategorized as follows: Oghuz—mainly represented by Turkish; Kipchak; Sayan Turkic; Turkey and Yakut.
Turkic has vowel harmony and uses cases and possessive suffixes. Altaic languages are more known to having an rounding harmony superimposed with over a backness harmony. For example, Türkiye’dir means “ it is Turkey”.; As I see it, the language evolved not because of the practice of the government or policy makers, but due to the use of the very big number of population using the language giving it different form and subcategories that may be called dialects in a sense that they all rooted from the original East Turkic language. This essay gives background to my language which I believe may be interesting also for some.; To answer the last question, I believe that I chose to look into the study of the Turkic language mainly because of the prejudice at it is my personal, my own language, but I should also say that there is the need for me to study it not just for the love of my language but in order the understand the language and know further its roots and histories, coming from the times of early civilizations and how it has come to be developed and used as a language up to this day.; Reference: Menges, Karl H.
, The Turkic Languages and People: An Introduction to Turkic Studies. Germany, Harrassowitz, 1995.