The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success New Ed Edition

I read about the alphabet change that Turkish underwent in school but I first learned about the vocabulary reform many years ago from the author's online article. Having an etymological sense myself and studying Turkish alone, I've been horrified and fascinated by some of the new misbegotten creations ever since. Recently I was determined to acquire the book and read more. The author is very insightful and knowledgeable and knows his material thoroughly. His research is impeccable. He presents an excellent historical background for the reform and furnished plenty of juicy examples. A very useful additional is the translation he provides with every Turkish excerpt; providing a sense of the original thinking of the reformers in both form and vocabulary (and showing how individual words gradually became replaced) and also giving the aspiring Turkish learner an opportunity to learn sophisticated structures.Several Turkish and non Turkish friends of mine asked why the word "catastrophic" in the title. The author himself addresses this question in the book and also states that most people don't care where their words come from. However, just ask Nietzsche urged us to have a sense for the historical and understand the genealogy of morals, reading Mr Lewis's book will help reader develop an etymological sense and understand the genealogy of words, thus showing that even when it comes to wordsmithery, there is a scholarly, correct way (as exemplified by the author himself), and there is a shoddy, uninformed, way, to be avoided at all costs.

This book is for libraries and I'm not a librarian. It is a book for highly specialized linguists which I am not. So obviously I made a mishtake in buying it, but I will not blame this on Professor Lewis. What I wanted really was a middle-brow account of Kemal's language reforms, of which I knew but little: the crazy extremism of the whole thing appealed to me. Well, Lewis' book did give me a good part of the story, but then it goes on to a treatment in minutest detail of the language reform itself, with learned arguments for and against Turkish linguists and discussions of word families and even single words. All in all, a huge deal more than I ever meant to bite off, much less chew and swallow.It's OK with me but it may be a great book for highly specialized people steeped in the Turkish language.I DO NOT regret buying this book.Alex TrierSantiago, Chile

This is a wonderful book to read if you are interested in social engineering. It is informative, it is entertaining, and it is engaging. Professor Lewis is masterful in presenting his case. You don’t even have to speak Turkish to enjoy the book. I have read it twice already and I am sure I will read it many more times to appreciate what the reformers dreamed and what the people expected.

Prof. Lewis' book gives the full account of the reengeneering of today's Turkish which was essentially for political reasons. The author, atrue erudite and scholar, in about 200 pages pens the process of the death of the ottoman Turkish and the birth of modern Turkish with sometimes bizarre and tragi-comic results. The book must certainly appeal to all Turkish intellectuals irrespective of their ideological position. But it is equally appealing to linguists and orientalists. I cannot praise this book high enough and recommend it strongly.

I found this book some what lacking in describing the process used to select the new set of Latin letters; I thought the public outcry against this reform was not explored and that the reasons cited for switching over to the Latin letters were poor at best as it merely reiterated the anti-Arab propaganda of that time;The increase in literacy rates being attributed to the language reform is surely misleading and relies heavily on the false information provided by the reformists. I am not convinced that the literacy rate was really as poor as indicated. I have come across an Ottoman book/ledger compiled in the late 19th century detailing literacy rates across provinces. According to this source literacy rates were above 60%. George Lewis quotes an astonishing figure of around 5%. The reality I believe is that 5% of the population could read and write in Latin letters (not just in Ottoman or Arabic) and so anyone who could not understand these foreign letters were deemed to be illiterate!Also it is well known that the Quran, the religious book of the Turkish people, emphasises reading/learning/researching/reflecting which can all be summed up in the very first word revealed to Prophet Muhammad (s.a.v), "Iqra" which literary means "Read!", an imperative word at that. The word "Quran" literary means "to read continuously". This is one of the reasons why Muslim countries have for hundreds of centuries enjoyed a very high level of literacy rates.The language reform was not scientific it was political in nature. Based on the research I have done, the reform was introduced in an effort to cut-off the Turkish nation from the cultural and spiritual ties imbued in the Ottoman generation, otherwise there was absolutely no justifiable reason to turn an entire nation into illiterates over night. Israel, whose language is Hebrew (also a Semitic language) has a higher literacy rate than Turkey even today, so what does this say about the Turkish language reform and its so called success ??The examples quoted from certain individuals in this book in an attempt to discredit the Ottoman script is certainly not based on scientific merit but alas praised by the author nonetheless.For instance, the following sentence is quoted in an attempt to demonstrate the supposed perplexity offered by the Ottoman script: "Mehmed pasa oldu" written in the ottoman script can be understood either as "Mehmet became a Pasha" or "Pasha Mehmet has died", however this does not even register as a problem if the additional diacritical marks are used to spell out this sentence (but these marks are often not used because Ottoman is cursive and thus can be written rapidly using only consonants and long vowels, which generally does not hinder continuity or coherence. This in itself is a big advantage over other forms of writing where each vowel is spelt out) but even if these additional case markings are not used, the sentence can easily be understood from its context, otherwise as is the case in Ottoman style of writing which is indicative of their culture, polite, respectful and sometimes elaborate language is used to communicate the message.The equivalent of the cited example in English may be demonstrated using the following sentence: "John read already"; does this sentence mean, John has completed reading already or is this an invitation for John to start reading already. This can only be understood from its context, even the word "read" in this case can only be pronounced correctly (reed or red) once the context is understood.One aspect of the book which does stand out is in reference to the eloquence of the Ottoman language, especially in comparison with the modern day Turkish which is peppered with "made-up" words and bland expressions, that have been rather rudely injected into the diction of the Turkish populace through the press.Disappointingly the adaptability of the Ottoman script in accommodating varying pronunciations of Ottoman letters within different regions of Anatolia has not been mentioned in this book, for sake of brevity I won't elaborate further, however this advantage the Turks once possessed has been lost with the transition to Latin letters. In fact, Latin letters are so inept in capturing the vocalisation of the Turkish letters, that many words have been "lost in pronunciation" after the adoption of these letters; even today authors don't know how to spell certain words using the limited Latin letters available to them, and as such they resort to using not letters but characters like the apostrophe (for `ayn or hamze) and the hyphen to try and mimic the Ottoman script. They also introduce various other letters which are not found in the new Turkish alphabet like â or î etc...Despite the national movement of the time, which acted as a catalyst in promoting these reforms, the Turks of Turkiye have ironically been further separated from their counterparts in Turkic countries because of this new language barrier created after the language reform. These Turkic countries have adopted different Latin letters than the ones used in Turkiye and a minority in remote areas kept the Ottoman script altogether .It must've been a trying time for the generation which were subjected to this kind of a radical change.Overall the book does have historical value, however as I have indicated above it is lacking in some respects and moreover I don't agree with the conclusions that have been drawn, which I believe to be politically motivated.

On peut lire l'ouvrage de Lewis sans connaître un mot de turc, pour le seul plaisir de découvrir la plus étonnante entreprise de réforme du langage qui eut jamais lieu au XX°s. Les nationalistes ayant pris le pouvoir après la première guerre mondiale et décidé de réformer la Turquie, ils décidèrent d'expurger la langue de tout ce qui n'était pas d'origine turque. Ce n'était pas une mince affaire, le turc impérial, ou osmanli, étant une langue artificielle dont le vocabulaire était majoritairement arabo-persan et l'écriture, arabe (comme tout le lexique introduit par la religion musulmane). Imagine-t-on d'éliminer du français tous les mots de composition savante tirés du latin et du grec? C'est ce que tentèrent Kemal et ses hommes, plus compétents en politique qu'en grammaire et dont les trouvailles risibles sont soulignées et décrites par l'auteur avec un malin plaisir. Il reconnaît d'ailleurs la nécessité d'écrire le turc en alphabet latin, l'arabe, avec ses trois voyelles, ne convenant pas aux huit du turc, par exemple. Mais l'entreprise de Kemal est représentative des folies totalitaires des années 30, qui, à distance, peuvent faire rire. Le chapitre le plus hilarant est consacré à la "langue solaire": un faux linguiste persuada les hommes au pouvoir que la langue turque était à l'origine de toutes les autres, ce qui contribua à sauver certains mots arabes ou persans, d'ailleurs... On voit ces gens se débattre entre plusieurs diktats idéologiques contradictoires, qui ne les conduisaient quand même pas au poteau, à la différence de ce qui se passait ailleurs. Malheureusement, la langue et la littérature turques, aujourd'hui, ont pâti de ces apprentis sorciers, et l'état culturel du pays est celui d'un champ de ruines. Cela dit, G.Lewis ne perd pas espoir en l'avenir et dans les capacités créatrices du peuple.

To make interesting a linguistic account of a language the reader doesn't speak is impressive, but the way he uses the language reform as a window onto modern Turkey is doubly compelling