Paper no. 1737	16. 03. 2006
TURKIC LANGUAGES AND LEXICAL SIMILARITIES OF TURKISH AND URDU - An Etymological Approach Guest Column by Syed Muzammiluddin      "Trk�" or "Turkish" is one of the most fascinating languages of the world. Apart from being National language of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a host of languages forming Turkic linguistic family such as Azeri of Azerbaijan, Turkmen of Turkmenistan, Uzbek of Uzbekistan, Tajik of Tajikistan, Kyrgyz of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakh of Kazakhstan and Uighur of the Xingjian Uighur Autonomous Region of China share syntax and lexical composition similar to Turkish. Thus, according to an old saying, you can travel with a caravan through all the routes from Istanbul to the Great Wall of China while speaking just one language Turkish. Even a distant language such as Urdu which is widely spoken in the South Asian Subcontinent has been tremendously influenced by Turkish. In our present article we attempt to briefly sum up the history of the Turkish language, classify the Turkic languages and examine the Turkish influence on a distant language such as Urdu. We will also try to highlight the need to explore the hitherto untouched areas of the two languages and the need to establish and fortify socio-cultural exchanges between these linguistic groups across the world. Origin of the Turks and Turkish The origin of Turks is referred to in the Chinese chronicles as nomads in the present day Russian Siberia. The eighth century A.D.Turkish inscriptions found in areas bordering Mongolia and Siberia refer to "Oghuz" and "Turks" appear as two distinct warring communities in which the "Turks" had an upper hand. With the change of time, an atmosphere of perfect truce and amicability was generated. Thus, the famous Turkish Scholar of medieval ages, Mahmoud Kashgari, referred to the Oghuz as a Turkish clan. With the advance of time, the Turkish people moved from one place to another, hence while the world might be viewing Turks as just the people of Turkey, the fact is that the recently independent Central Asian republics, sizeable population of China, Russia, Siberia, Iran and Arabia have become home to people speaking Turkic languages. TURKISH AND TURKIC LANGUAGES. The Turkic languages may be grouped according to linguistic, historical and geographical basis into the following branches:  1.The Southwestern Branch: This includes Turkish, Azeri (Azerbaijani), Turkmen, and Khurasani Turkic. 2. The northwestern Branch: This includes Kazak, Kyrgyz, Tatar and West Siberian dialects. 3. The southeastern Branch: This includes Uzbek and Uighur. The two languages are so similar that if someone knows how to speak one language, (s)/he can also speak the other as well. 4. The northeastern or Siberian Branch: This group includes Dolgan, Khakas, Shor, Tuvan, and Tofa. 5. Chuvash: This is a strikingly incongruous language of the Turkic group spoken in the Volga region. 6. Khalaj: This is a strikingly incongruous language of the Turkic group spoken in parts of Iran. The Arabic script was common to all Turkic languages till as late as 1920 when the Latin script was adopted by the languages of the erstwhile republics of the Soviet Union. After 1940, the Latin script was completely replaced with an adapted form of Cyrillic script in the Soviet Union. Turkey officially adopted a modified structure of the Latin script in 1928. At present the Arabic alphabet is used only by Turkic peoples living in China, Iran, and Arabia. PERCEPTIBLE LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF TURKIC LANGUAGES A significant feature of the Turkic languages is their vowel harmony. Turkish vowels are of two kinds the soft vowels (E/İ/�� which are produced at the front of the mouth, and the hard vowels (A/I/O/U) produced from the back of the mouth. Words of pure Turkic origin can consist of only hard or soft vowels and all suffixes must be according to the vowel of the preceding syllable the word. Thus according to this rule, the Turkish word �nta (bag) has the plural �ntalar (bags) and ev (house) has the plural evler (houses). Turkic languages are highly agglutinative in nature. This can be noticed from simple words such as "bankaya" in Turkish which means "towards the bank" and "airudurumda" which means "at the airport" in Uighur. A much more complex example is "yap-abil-ecek-diy-se-niz" which means meaning "if you were going to be able to do" in Turkish. It has five suffixes added to the root verb "yap". LEXICAL COMPARISON OF TURKIC LANGUAGES For ease of understanding of the similarities of Turkic languages, a table of comparison of Turkish and Uighur numbers is given below (please note that this table uses Turkish script and letters for comparison): Table comparing the Numerical pronunciation of Turkish and Uighur (Table compiled by SYED MUZAMMILUDDIN) Any number of tables pertaining to various categories such as general vocabulary, interrogative words, time, months, days, places, colours, relations, food and beverages, vegetables, fruits and animals can be drawn to show how related these two languages are in lexical terms. These resemblances are also reflected in the grammatical composition as well. Thus, it can easily observed that Turkish and Uighur are not only languages of same group but also share lexical and grammatical similarities as well.  Likewise strikingly harmonious comparisons between other Turkic languages can be made. URDU AND TURKISH What has Urdu got to do with Turkish? Is it a Turkic language? This is probably a question that is bound to strike your mind. The answer is emphatic: Urdu cannot be classified as a Turkic language. BUT The story does NOT END here PLEASE READ ON.. Urdu gets its name from the Turkish word "Ordu" which means army (look for the various combinations in which the word is still used in Turkish such as Ordug� and Orduevi). Further, according to researchers, the first Urdu poet was Masood Saad Salman who lived in Lahore in the twelfth century A.D.    He is believed to have composed three poetic anthologies in Turkish, Persian and Hindvi (as was name given to Urdu in that era). Unfortunately, this works could not be traced and we can only rely on the brief references to Saad Salman in Amir Khusro's famous book "Ghurratul Kamal". It can thus be concluded that the origin of Urdu language can be easily traced to Turkish. Urdu and Hindi are the two dominant languages of India and Pakistan. They share common grammar and syntax. But Urdu is more influenced by Arabic, Persian and Turkish than Hindi. In fact, when it comes to lexical linkages, Urdu and Turkish commonly share two types of words: a)         Words directly borrowed from Turkish;  b)        And words of Arabic and Persian common to both Urdu and Turkish. A)    Words directly borrowed from Turkish frequently used in Urdu: The following table gives a brief list of words of pure Turkish origin used in Urdu (please note that this table uses Turkish script and letters for comparison): (Table compiled by SYED MUZAMMILUDDIN) B)   Words of Arabic and Persian common to both Urdu and Turkish: The following table gives a list of words common to Turkish and Urdu borrowed from Arabic / Persian (please note that this table uses Turkish script and letters for comparison): (Table compiled by SYED MUZAMMILUDDIN) Thus, it can be safely concluded that while Urdu is NOT A TURKIC LANGUAGE, it still shares a number of words of pure Turkish origin as well as words of Arabic and Persian origin common to both Urdu and Turkish. NEED FOR GREATER SOCIO-CULTURAL TIES BETWEEN THE PEOPLE OF INDIA AND THE PEOPLES OF CENTRAL ASIA AND TURKEY. The age-old ties of India with Turkey and Central Asia are so manifestly deep-rooted that they can be hardly refuted. Every house in India prepares dishes such as "Kurma, Kalia and Kima" which have been borrowed from Central Asia. Turkish names and surnames such as Bakhtiyar, Baig, Mirza and Mir (Turkish: Bahtiyar, Bey, Mirza Mir) are immensely popular among the Muslims of India. Many commonly used words such as Quli, Baba, Bibi, Begum and Khanum (Turkish: K�e, Baba, Bibi, Begm, Hanım), are also of Turkish origin. Many Indian rulers, particularly Slave Dynasty rulers of Delhi and the Quli Qutub Shahi rulers of Deccan were of Turkish origin. Babur, the founder of Mughal dynasty (1526-1857) was a scholar of Turkish language and hailed from Farghana in modern day Uzbekistan. He wrote his memoirs in Turkish. Other rulers of Mughal dynasty were also masters of Turkish, although for strategic reasons Persian was patronized as the official language of India. Further, nearly all Indian rulers in the medieval ages accepted the supremacy of the Turkish Sultan as Khalifa till the fall of the Mughal Empire. During the Indian struggle for independence, many of the freedom fighters endorsed the reformist approach of Ata Trk Mustafa Kemal Pasha. This is implicit from Abul Kalam Azad's famous book "India Wins Freedom" in which he proudly recalls his meetings with the members of the Young Turks Movement in Turkey in 1908, and the supporters of Mustafa Kemal Pasha in Cairo, Egypt in the same year, who ‎were publishing a weekly in support of his revolutionary ideas from there. Azad, who later became the First Education Minister of Independent India, asserts that these meetings and ensuing many years of correspondence convinced him that Indian Muslims at that time had to be persuaded to fight the British colonisers unitedly with their fellow Hindu countrymen. The relations with Turkish people have remained on sound footing even after India gained her independence on August 15, 1947 because of the Secular and Democratic credentials that the two countries share. A recent example of Indo-Turkish friendship was witnessed in 2000 when the Visva-Bharati University of India conferred the prestigious Desikottama award and honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt) on the ‎visiting Prime Minister of Turkey Mr Blent Ecevit. Mr Ecevit was an admirer of Indian Poet-Philosopher & Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and had translated the Gitanjali and a number of Tagore's short stories, besides the Bhagavad-Gita and Upanishads in Turkish. The extensive visits undertaken by the Late Indian Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao (tenure: 1991-96) to the Central Asia and the frequent socio-cultural and political exchanges between India and the Central Asian Countries are also a reflection of the fortified ties between the nations. Keeping this in mind this article ends with a hope that a greater people-to-people Turkish cultural association will soon emerge without any political affiliation but with the sole motive of promoting universal friendship, research in matters and facts relating to Turcology and Turkic languages (including all languages that are/were influenced by Turkish such as Urdu) and this will include intellectuals from Turkey, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Mongolia, India and Russia.
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