Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 September 24
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September 24[edit]
Official renaming of months in Turkish[edit]
In 1945, the Turkish government officially changed four Turkish months: kânunusani → ocak (January), teşrinievvel → ekim (October), teşrinisani → kasım (November), kânunuevvel → aralık. I wonder:
- How quickly were the new months adopted by the Turkish population? (today no one uses the old ones in Turkey and most young people don't even know their existence)
- Turkish is spoken outside Turkey, especially by Turks in the Balkans, Meskhetian Turks, Iraqi Turkmen (although their variety may constitute a separate language), Syrian Turkmen and Lebanese Turkmen. Did these people adopt the new months even though they lived outside Turkey and were not subject to the Turkish gov mandatory change? For instance, I know Bulgarian Turks who don't use the standard Turkish names of the days of the week but instead birinci gün, ikinci gün, etc. as in Old Turkish.
- What about other Turkic languages? It looks like most of them (Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek at least) use the Russian names. But what about Crimean Tatar, Chuvash, Qashqai, Karakalpak, Yakut, Tuvan, and others? Is South Azerbaijani using different names than North Azerbaijani? Didn't old Turkic have names for month? Gagauz seems to use "Kasım" as well. Uyghur has a Russian system and a Sino-Turkic one.
a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
- Re 1, did you mean to write that today no one uses the old month names? From my experience, the Turkish spoken by Syrian Turkmen is indistinguishable from that in Turkey. The names in Tatarca can be seen in Wiktionary: wikt:Category:tt:Months. For many other languages, just replace "tt" by the two-letter language code. --Lambiam 05:32, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
- Sorry, the old ones indeed. Thanks, I'll check. I wonder if/how all speakers suddenly, almost overnight, changed using words as common as month names to adopt the new ones, including those speakers not living in Turkey! Were these words already in informal use, at least in some dialects/variants (seems to be the case of kasım in Gagauz)? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
- FWIW I asked another Bulgarian Turk friend: she speaks perfect standard Turkish with us, although with a Bulgarian Turk accent. However, when she speaks with her Bulgarian Turk friends, she speaks their local dialect which is fairly different (see tr:Türkiye_Türkçesi_ağızları#Örnek_metinler and Bulgarian_Turks#Distribution_of_Turkish_dialects_in_Bulgaria). She didn't go to school and only learned Istanbul Turkish through TV (the incredible soft power of Turkish television drama!). She uses standard Turkish names for days of the week and months, including the post-1945 ones and she had never heard teşrinievvel and other pre-1945 ones. I asked an Azerbaijani friend as well: same, never heard the pre-1945 ones. So it's possible that the new names just quickly spread throughout the Turkish speaking world (and even crossing the Iron Curtain!) due to the prestige of Istanbul Turkish and the softpower of Turkish media? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 10:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at the List of Turkic languages and the Wiktionary categories for month, many aren't listed (e.g., Kyrgyz [ky], Qashqai [qxq], Karakalpak [kaa]...), but among those on Wiktionary:
- Uzbek, North Azerbaijani, Uyghur, Tuvan: only use Russian months
- Crimean Tatar: Russian months but also "saban ayı" for March
- Kazakh language [kk]: use their "own" months: wikt:Template:list:Gregorian calendar months/kk, a mix of Persian, Arabic, and proto-Turkic words, including Nowruz for March and a cognate with temmuz [July in Turkish] for... August!
- Bashkir language [ba]: both Russian and "own" names: wikt:Template:list:Gregorian calendar months/ba
- Chuvash language [cv]: "own" names: wikt:Category:cv:Months
- Kumyk language [kum]: both Russian and "own" names: wikt:Template:list:Gregorian calendar months/kum
- Yakut language [sah]: "own" names: wikt:Category:sah:Months
- However, when these Turkic languages use their Turkic names for months, they don't seem to use the same at all. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:02, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at the List of Turkic languages and the Wiktionary categories for month, many aren't listed (e.g., Kyrgyz [ky], Qashqai [qxq], Karakalpak [kaa]...), but among those on Wiktionary:
- FWIW I asked another Bulgarian Turk friend: she speaks perfect standard Turkish with us, although with a Bulgarian Turk accent. However, when she speaks with her Bulgarian Turk friends, she speaks their local dialect which is fairly different (see tr:Türkiye_Türkçesi_ağızları#Örnek_metinler and Bulgarian_Turks#Distribution_of_Turkish_dialects_in_Bulgaria). She didn't go to school and only learned Istanbul Turkish through TV (the incredible soft power of Turkish television drama!). She uses standard Turkish names for days of the week and months, including the post-1945 ones and she had never heard teşrinievvel and other pre-1945 ones. I asked an Azerbaijani friend as well: same, never heard the pre-1945 ones. So it's possible that the new names just quickly spread throughout the Turkish speaking world (and even crossing the Iron Curtain!) due to the prestige of Istanbul Turkish and the softpower of Turkish media? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 10:15, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
- Sorry, the old ones indeed. Thanks, I'll check. I wonder if/how all speakers suddenly, almost overnight, changed using words as common as month names to adopt the new ones, including those speakers not living in Turkey! Were these words already in informal use, at least in some dialects/variants (seems to be the case of kasım in Gagauz)? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:52, 25 September 2023 (UTC)