ANKARA: Once entering Turkey, Arabic-speaking visitors would be greeted with words that sound very familiar. "Merhaba, hosgeldiniz means ""hello, welcome.” With every interaction with the locals, the words seem familiar yet are pronounced differently. This sparks the question: are these words Arabic or not? With each passing day in this country, the familiar words such as "Mescit” for mosque and "Kahve” for coffee, as well as the Muslim greeting As-salamu alaykum, are pronounced slightly differently. With more interaction with Turkish people, the visitor would discover many words shared between the two languages.
The protocol procedure of the country, when receiving an official or leader, is to greet the soldiers by saying "Merhaba Asker (Salute Soldier), the same greeting Mustafa Kemal, the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, used when addressing Turkish soldiers. This might awaken a curiosity to look up common words between these two languages, as there are linguistic and historical ties as well as cultural influences between them.
Turkish has been influenced over the centuries by various languages, such as Persian, Kurdish, English, and French, yet its Arabic influence stands out the most, including the Arabic vocabulary that is continuously used in daily life and official speeches. According to the 2005 Turkish Dictionary, there are 6,467 Turkish words of Arabic origin, as Turkish was written in Arabic script before the Republic underwent a huge language reform in 1928 by Ataturk to erase foreign influence, particularly Arabic and Persian, and changed into a Latin-based Turkish alphabet.
Despite these reforms, Arabic vocabulary has persisted in the language to this day, pronounced in a distinctly Turkish manner, just like any other borrowed words from various languages worldwide, reflecting the identity of the region where the language is spoken. The dictionary also showed that Turkish was influenced by several languages, with Turkish vocabulary totaling around 89,000, followed by Arabic with 6,467, French with 4,974, and Persian with 1,374, which proved the widespread intermix of Turkish people across different cultures and languages over the centuries.
According to a journal by a German academic publishing house, Harrassowitz Verlag, around 950 AD, when Turkic tribes converted to Islam, the Turkish language underwent a significant transformation, adopting many cultural elements and vocabulary due to interactions with people in Anatolia. It added that during the Ottoman era, lasting about 600 years, Turkish continued to be heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian ("Ottoman Turkish”) with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and the succeeding language reform to reshape Turkish by replacing Arabic, Persian, and other foreign words.
In recent decades, Turkish vocabulary and expression have continued to evolve, incorporating numerous Arabic, Persian, French, and English words much like other countries with rich civilizations, histories, and international migration across the world. Turkey’s history has undoubtedly been shaped by numerous civilizations since ancient times, before the advent of Islam, Islamic conquest, the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties, and the Ottoman Empire. — KUNA