Turkish Voice Over Agency

Everything you never wanted to know about the Turkish language

The Turkish Language
The Turkish language is influence by Arabic and there are about 75 million Turkish speakers in the world. You’ll hear it in Turkey, Germany and Cyprus.

The Turkish Alphabet
There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet. They have 8 vowels and 21 consonants. The Turkish alphabet doesn’t include the letters W, Q and X.

Wet, wet, wet…
Don’t be surprised if you visit someone’s home in Turkey and they pour water behind you as you leave the house. It is a superstition that means although you have departed you will make a fast and safe return.

Nice and oily
During June and July in the Edirne region of Turkey you can see the Kirkpinar Oil Wrestling Tournament. The wrestlers, called Pehlivans, compete with each other while wearing leather shorts with their bodies covered in olive oil. Oil wrestling is thought to date back from 2650 BC and in Kirkpinar they hold the Guinness Book of Record for the longest-running athletic competition.

Shop till you drop
If you enjoy a trip round a shopping mall then in Turkey you can shop in one of the world’s largest and oldest. The Kapali Carsi which is also known as Istanbul’ Grand Bazaar was opened in 1455. Today it is a popular tourist destination and a good place to pick up Turkish furniture, lighting, and rugs.

Salting
Some new born babies in Turkey are covered with salt after they are born. The salting takes place on various days throughout the babies first month. Salt is used because it is said to prevent rashes and help the baby’s skin stay soft. It is also said to ward off the evil eye.

Noah’s Ark
Noah’s ark was said to have come to rest on top of a mountain peak after the rains. That mountain peak is commonly thought to be Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is a dormant volcano in the east of Turkey. Greater Ararat is Turkey’s highest peak at 5,137 metres or 16,854 feet.

Visiting two continents
If you visit Istanbul, you are on two continents. That’s because 95% of the land lies in Asia, but 5% is in Europe. Therefore Istanbul is the only city in the world that’s built on two continents.

The Capital City
Because Istanbul is a large city and is one of the world’s top tourist spots many people mistakenly think Istanbul is Turkey’s capital. It isn’t. The capital of Turkey is Ankara which is located in central Turkey. It is Turkey’s second largest city after Istanbul. However, saying that, Istanbul was the capital of Turkey during the Ottoman empire, so that’s where the confusion might lie.

Tulips from Amsterdam
Although Amsterdam is better-known for its Tulip production, it was the Turk’s who introduced Tulips to Europe in the 17th century. The Tulip is Turkey’s national flower and during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III between 1718 and 1730 the period is known as the Tulip Era because of the peace the Turkish people enjoyed over that time.

A short history on the Turkish language

Turkish belongs to the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic family of languages, along with Gagauz and Azeri. Some linguists believe that the Turkic languages belong to a larger family of Ural-Altaic languages, including Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean and Japonic.

The Turkic languages are distributed over a huge geographical area that spreads from eastern Europe to central and north Asia. They include Azerbaijani, Kasakh and Uzbek. Turkish is sometimes called Istanbul Turkish or Anatolian Turkish, to distinguish it as the language spoken in Turkey.

The development of the Turkish language can be grouped into three periods:

• Old Turkish – 7th to 13th century – the first known written records of Turkish date back around 1,300 years.
• Mid Turkish – 13th to 20th century – during this period Turkish (as we know it today) was influenced by the official language of the Ottoman Empire – Ottoman Turkish, a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic.
• New Turkish – 20th century onwards – in 1928, as part of Atatürk’s Reforms, the Ottoman script was replaced with a Latin alphabet. At the same time, the establishment of the Turkish Language Association saw the removal of Persian and Arabic loanwords.

Which countries have Turkish as a national language?

Turkish is an official language in Turkey, Cyprus and Kosovo. It is recognised as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Romania and Iraq.

How many people speak Turkish as their first language?

It is estimated that approximately 63 million people speak Turkish as their first language, mainly in Turkey but also in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Albania, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan.

Turkish is the most widely spoken of all the Turkic languages.

Did you know…

• Turkish shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with other Oghuz languages, such as Azerbaijani, Turkmen and Gagauz. Characteristics of Turkish, such as vowel harmony and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family.
• Ottoman Turkish, the literary and official language of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922), was largely unintelligible to the ‘rough Turkish’ spoken by the working classes. But it was the everyday language that became the basis for modern Turkish.
• Turkish dialects can be divided into five main groups – South-western, Central Anatolia, Eastern, Rumelian and Kastamonu. Modern standard Turkish is based on the Istanbul dialect of Anatolian.
• English words that are of Turkish origin include bulgur, Cossack, divan, kiosk, kayak, kebab, shaman and yogurt.

The Turkish economy

Turkey’s emerging free-market economy is the 17th largest in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and the 15th largest by PPP.

Turkey is defined as a newly industrialised country, although agriculture still accounts for around 25% of employment. Key industries include agricultural products, textiles, vehicles and construction materials.

Turkey was a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and is one of the G-20 major economies.