Talk:Turkish language

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[edit] Comments

[edit] Longest word

"Çekoslavakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdan" is NOT the "longest" word in Turkish. It is "Mükemmelliyetçileştiricileştiriveremeyeceklerimizdenmişçesine". Is it possible to translate that into English? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.97.68.59 (talk • contribs) 12:26, 24 October 2006.

Posible. I personaly wouldn't dare attempt though. Also that word doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me... Then again I am only a puny tr-3. --Cat out 04:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


I don't know is it possible to translate that or not but ı know it makes sense in Turkish. Mükemmel Mükemmelliyet-çi-leş-tir-ici-leş-tiriveremeye (like "yapıvermek")-cek-ler-imiz-den-miş-çesine (like "yapamadıklarımızdanmışçasına")... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by (?)


It translates to: "In the way as if he/she is not one of those whom we couldn't turn into a perfectionistizer easily". "-leştirici" (which would correspond to -izer in English) is used twice to create the meaning "perfectionistizerizer" (somebody who turns a person into "a person who turns people into perfectionists") But I don't think it practically makes sense. By this rationale, the longest word in Turkish would go to infinity since you could keep combining the word with the same suffix 789 times. --(Tylose 19:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] language reform turkish under persian and arabic influence

i changed the part saying that turkish lang. went under the influence of arabic and persian as ottomans adopted islam, which is not true. turks converted to islam before ottoman state or empire established. one of the reasons of the influence of persian and arabic over turkish is of course adoption of islam, but it was not the ottomans who did it. Influence of persian and arabic had begun more than 300 years before 1299 (fictional date of starting of ottoman state in western anatolia) around north and east persia. the second point is that it is not the religion itself as the main reason for this language change, turks had been living close to persians for centuries and were migraitng from central asia to persia continously, so even turkish clans, sultans or states did not choosed islam (or not forced to do so) there will be an influence of persian and arabic as the languages of two rich and powerful culture.Ulubay 00:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually since Seljuks, Ottomans were under the influence of literary part of Persian lang., however Ottoman were under the influence of the scientific and the tecnical ability of Arabic which was the official language in formal corresponding in Ottoman E. Still there is much more Persian words than Arabic in the daily life, however in formal subjects like law you only hear Arabic words :) It's true that in daily language Arabic words had influences through islam, but not as much as the inf. of Persian had. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by OktayD (talk • contribs) 01:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC).


To make it clear; I have to say that Persian or Arabic had never been the official language for state or beaurocratic communication in Ottomans, it was Turkish even it was heavily loaded with foreign vocabulary. . Ulubay 15:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Turkish not Asio-European????

I find it baffling that Turkish is not Asio-European while other Asio-European languages such as Farsi(Asio-European)sounds much less European than Turkish/Turkche'.I can tell by the words(I speak Urdu)that it's not European,but the pronounciation of words like "affiyet olsun"(good appitite) definately sound European regardless of the meaning or vocab.

Is there any connection at all between Turkish/Turkche' and the languages of Europe? I know about the Finnish and Hungarian connection,but shouldn't the article highlight that it sounds European when spoken since many people find it sounds European? And what do linguists think of it's European sounding vowals?Does anyone know? 74.98.241.189 21:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)Nadirali

Language families like Indo-European are defined by the history of the language, not what it sounds like, its similarities to its geographical neighbors (compare areal linguistics), or how its grammar works (compare language typology). Anyway, I am not sure what "European-sounding vowels" are; the vowels of English, Spanish, French, and Norwegian are all very different.... --Macrakis 17:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Turkish when spoken sounds very similar to French. On other occasions, I've heard people speaking Turkish and could have sworn it was Russian or some slavic tongue. Written Turkish does not look french or slavic at all, but spoken Turkish does. Probably because of the abundance of silent letters

[edit] Diphthongs

The article currently says "There are no diphthongs in Turkish". Is this correct, or simply a confusion between diphthong and digraph or diphthongized vowels (e.g. English bone [bown]? How about ayran, kıyma, öyle, mevt, favl? I thought that, at least in some versions of spoken Turkish, these are pronounced with glides [ajran], etc. Could someone who knows Turkish phonology better than me comment? --Macrakis 22:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Precisely because these are glides, and not vowels, such examples cannot be considered diphthongs, as a diphthong implies two vowels, whereas glides are technically non-vocalic.201.37.71.146 21:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there a clear distinction between the two? How is the 'ay' of Turkish 'ayran' different from the 'i' of English 'kite'? Or is the latter not considered a diphthong either? Perhaps you could take a look at the WP articles diphthong and semivowel (which currently reads: "Semivowels ... are non-syllabic vowels that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels") and clarify (with literature references)? --Macrakis 22:42, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Phonetically, they are certainly normal diphthongs, but phonologically, one thing that shows that the offglide have the phonological status of consonants is their behaviour under morphophonological rules. Like, when a word ends in -"ay", any suffixes you add will take the form appropriate for consonantal words, without an additional bridging consonant (for instance possessive "ay-ı", not "ay-sı"). Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] number of speakers

Ethnologue has 50 million. The 65 (or 75) figures need attribution. Also, it is questionable to include Turkmen and Azeri as "Turkish". We have the Oghuz languages article to discuss that larger group. The "Turkish" subgroup of Oghuz includes Gaugaz and Meskhetian, but not Azeri or Turkmen. dab (𒁳) 16:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello, sorry for my bad English but the source which you showed is 10 years old at least! The figure was discussed here many time! Ethnic and native speakers aren't the same things! For example, an Azerbaijani mother speaks Turkish because she lives for a long time in Turkey. So she accepts the Turkish language and teaches her children also Turkish, not Azeri language. So the childrens native language is Turkish not Azeri language. What do I want to say in addition to this? Ethnic and native language is different and your source is out of date and distrustful. If you think logically, you can find out the real figure of native speakers yourself. 172.178.20.248 16:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Even excluding Turkic languages, It must be 60 million because Republic of Turkey's popp. is about 60~63 million end it's the only ofical language. --Mko 22:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Total speakers 50 million? This is totally unacceptable, where population of Turkey is 72 million (almost all of 72 million speak Turkish, as a native or second language), and 2,5% of Germany's population speak Turkish. This should be immediately changed. Where Ethnologue says so or not. Kaygtr 16:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


Ethnologue in 2000: "46,278,000 in Turkey, 90% of the population (1987)."
Ethnologue in 2005: "46,278,000 in Turkey (1987)."
Clearly, the number hasn't been updated at all. If 46,278,000 were truly 90% of the population today, the whole population would equal to 51,420,000 whereas 2005 estimate is 72,600,000. Assuming that there is no significant change in the "%90" (which is very likely), the latest number of speakers can be calculated as 65,340,000. Unless the new ratio was set in a such way so that number of speakers remains the same, the information provided by Ethnologue is senseless. Without counting the speakers outside of Turkey, Turkish has 65 million speakers. Until someone calculates the total number of outside speakers with citing sources, I am changing the number of speakers to "ca. 65 million". (Tylose 18:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)).

The 65 million figure is unsourced, while the 50 million figure still is. According WP:V, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Also, doing your own math is considered original research. Khoikhoi 04:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
65 million figure is sourced, only in ratio, not as a number. I'm not sure if I'm doing original research. The information in Ethnologue is also obtained by math and by using the data belonging to 1987. Since the population of Turkey has changed after all those years, I think it's probably time to do the same calculation with new population rather waiting for Ethnologue to do it. I didn't actually understand why you consider Ethnologue's math, which uses data from 1987 as verifiable. (Tylose 23:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC))
The Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism doesn't seem to be the most neutral of sources, plus one must wonder if they are an authority on the numbers of speakers of Turkish. After all, how are they able to determine the number of Turkish speakers worldwide? Ethnologue seems to be more reliable to me. Khoikhoi 04:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Verifying by the reference to Ethnologue source is highly questionable, as any unbiased look at the WP site for that organisation clearly shows. These are just quotes from that site: "Christian linguistic service organisation", "information regarding more esoteric languages is quite dated", "neutrality ... as a scientific institution is sometimes disputed",

"contains its fair share of errors", "classifications do not meet ... own professed criteria for classification", "much of the information is old". User:noyder 11:41 29 February 2007)

[edit] The language in daily life

This section has a certain charm, & includes some useful material, but is it appropriate in this article? It really belongs more in a textbook or phrase book in my opinion. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

== Total speakersapprox. 50 million (unsigned comment by someone)

Any comments on my remarks on "The language in daily life"? It doesn't belong in this article unless specific phrases are tied in to specific grammatical features of the language (eg -sin, 3rd person optative). Otherwise it's just a random list of phrases.
The intro to this section states that:
"Several of them feature Arabic verbal nouns together with the Turkish verb et- ("make, do")."
In fact there are only two such examples:
  • Affedersiniz
  • Teşekkür ederim
Finally, it's hard to see what insight is given by including the word Alo. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 15:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: List the article as "Good article" candidate

I believe this article can be nominated as a Wikipedia:Good article and listed at Wikipedia:Good article candidates. In my opinion most of the criteria of GA are met:

“

[GAs] should be well written, stable, accurate, referenced, use a neutral point of view, and wherever possible, be illustrated by appropriately tagged images. Good articles may not be as thorough and detailed as our featured articles, but should not omit any major facets of the topic.

 ”

For more detailed criteria check WP:WIAGA, WP:STYLE and WikiProject Languages/Template. This process is quite useful: (a) the work done so far can be recognised by the wider Wikipedia community, which hasn't necessarily noticed the progress made, (b) in the process of preparing the article for nomination and through the remarks of the reviewers weaknesses of the article can be noticed and the article can be significantly improved, (c) it is also a big step to raise the article to Wikipedia:Featured article. Checking upon the criteria mentioned, I would like to mention some possible additions to the article:

  • There is no photo. The famous Image:Ataturk teaching the Latin alphabet to the people of Sivas is a good addition to the Language reform section. Also a good idea is photo with something written in Turkish (a photo with your own camera is just fine).
  • The lead is too short for a lenghty article as this one. See WP:LEAD.
  • Per WikiProject Languages/Template, a more general section on the history of Turkish can be added with Language reform as a subsection.
  • Though some of this aspects are covered in other articles linked to this one, the above information would not be redundant in this article as A perfect Wikipedia article "[...] is nearly self-contained; it includes essential information and terminology, and is comprehensible by itself, without requiring significant reading of other articles."

I hope that these remarks are helpful. --Michkalas 17:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Even though I share your optimism about the article, I don't think it's anywhere close to be nominated for GA status yet. The most disturbing deficiency, for me, is the lack of a history section. Another serious problem is that there are almost no inline citations. I also do not feel like the article is complete in terms of linguistics (I know this because even most fundamental informations like the Turkish noun declension system or the vowel harmony were missing until these were recently added by me, and I'm just an amateur in this field). If I'm not wrong, there is not even a single sentence in the article about conjugation, verb tenses, moods etc. For many similar things, the article is in serious need of a professional linguist's attention. I will try to do my best to implement your suggestions. Thanks for caring about this article. Atilim Gunes Baydin 18:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number is low

Turkey=57 million native speaker balkans=1 million middle east and cyprus:1 million diaspora:4 million total:63 million native speaker. these are all ethnic turks there is also 1 million caucasian 1 million arap pomaks lazs georgins 2-3 million kurd and zaza who speak Turkish as mother tongue so 4-5 million total:67-68 million native speakers azeri and turkmen can be thouhgt as Turkish so iran azeri:20 million azerbaijan azeri:8 million azeri in Russia and georgia:1 million azeri in Iraq:1.5 million Turkmen iran:2 million Turkmenistan:4.5 million Turkmen central asia:1 million ttl:38 million ethnic turkish turkey:57 million ethnic turkish plus 4 million other ethnic groups: 99 million turkish spekaers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.140.194.101 (talk) 10:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] "Spoken in" list

Hi, could Kaygtr please explain his reasoning behind changing

"Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania, and by immigrant communities in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Austria, United States, Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries of the Turkish diaspora"

into

"Turkey, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Austria, Uzbekistan
and countries of the Turkish diaspora"?

The list on the top gives the traditional Turkish speaking communities (which were part of the Ottoman Empire) in the order of decreasing population (please see the very well-referenced numbers on Turkish diaspora article), and the countries with minorities established by recent immigration (otside the Ottoman Empire) again with decreasing population of speakers. I do not understand how the countries are ordered in the second list. It's also very bad that it does not include, say The Netherlands and France, when it lists Austria (each have a larger Turkish speaking population than Austria). It lists Azerbaijan (18,000 spekears) where it doesn't include France (370,000), The Netherlands (270,000), Belgium (110,000), United States (117,000). Why are you reverting into this very artibrary and nonsense list without giving a reason? Atilim Gunes Baydin 16:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The purpose is clear, and you have answered it. Why are you reverting into this very artibrary and nonsense list without giving a reason?

There was no reason in your edit.

Also, you removed Northern Cyprus from official language list without explaining any reason.

p.s. The first one does not add Uzbekistan to the list. However, in the article of Turkish Diaspora, number of ethnic Turks in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is given as 197,000. Can you explain? And as Azerbaijan, Nakhichevan should be noted. Kaygtr 18:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm still not able to understand why you reverted the whole thing instead of adding any missing entries to the list. You could simply add Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan. Please also note that it is me who did all of the referencing work in the Turkish diaspora article and it took many days, so I'm very much aware of the numbers there. At least after noticing the numbers for France, The Netherlands, and Belgium, I hope you can agree with merging these two versions together. I really do not get why you've done a complete revert instead of an addition. Regards, Atilim Gunes Baydin 20:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nominated as good article

Hi, I just listed the article as a good article candidate, after implementing the changes sugested by User:Michkalas as much as I can. Let's see how the review will proceed. I thank Michkalas for making very constructive suggestions recently and in the past, and also causing me to feel an urge for improving this article. Regards, Atilim Gunes Baydin 04:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] some thoughts

Atılım, I think there should be a section titled agglunitation, in my opinion it should be section 4.1, all the current contents of vocabulary should be moved there. in vocabulary section we should have information about say having this many percent the same vocabulary with this other Turkic language X, and the examples are: ... we should also tell how many loaned words from each languages there are (not just in the history section). We can talk about current Turkish's similarity with say Yunus Emre's Turkish especially compared to Ottoman Turkish. We should also mention that many words were created by Turk Dil Kurumu to replace those loan words, like yargıç.

deniz 07:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


Please see vocabulary sections of these featured articles:

Bengali_language#Vocabulary, Russian_language#Vocabulary, Swedish_language#Vocabulary, Taiwanese_(linguistics)#Vocabulary, Tamil_language#Vocabulary

The other pages don't have vocabulary sections

good articles:

English_language#Vocabulary, Esperanto#Vocabulary, Nahuatl_language#Vocabulary, Scanian_(linguistics)#Vocabulary

Here is the list of good and featured articles

Should I go ahead and do these changes here and on the vocabulary page? deniz 23:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Deniz, I think we should keep the two word derivation examples in the vocabulary section, because it is without doubt the defining characteristic of the Turkish lexis. If you move these to a new section, nothing much remains for the vocabulary (Do you propose to delete the section altogether? If so, I don't agree with that either, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Template). Almost all the tables in the grammar section pertains to agglutination due to the nature of Turkish. I don't think it would be good to collect these all into a new section dedicated to agglutination, because such a section would be just a collection of examples and the existing sections will be stripped of content. You could think of the current situation as describing agglutination as it occurs in different parts of speech (current subsections of nouns, verbs, etc.). Having a look to what's been done on other good and featured articles is a very good idea, I try to do the same thing to get ideas. I completely agree that there is much room for improvement in the grammar section in general, and my latest contributions and cleanup almost excluded that part. If you mean to mention numbers or percentages, these would be good additions (I think I've seen some information on the number of loandwords from each language in modern Turkish somewhere, I'll try to find that reference). And I think there is already enough (possibly, more than enough) mention of Türk Dil Kurumu and the new words issue. Regards, Atilim Gunes Baydin 00:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Atilim, do we have "sessiz unsuz benzesmesi" on the article? Also, this might be what we are looking for: [1]. Arabic is most common(6463 words), then comes French (4974 words), Persian (1374 words) then Italian (632) ,... Here is the first 12 words from French: abajur abaküs abandone aberasyon abis abiye

ablatif abone abonman Aborjin abrakadabra absent. Likewise we can get others as well.I checked the Turkish page of this tr:Türkiye Türkçesi, they are listed there as well, and according to that site, ~14% of the words in Turkish are loanwords. denizTC 13:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Currently the only information we have in the article about "ünsüz benzeşmesi" is the following in the nouns and adjectives section:
"The initial consonant of the suffixes for the ablative and locative cases can also vary depending on the last consonant of the noun being voiced or unvoiced, such as having hava ("air") + -da (locative suffix) = havada ("in the air"), but, ağaç ("tree") + -da (locative suffix) = ağaçta ("on the tree"), instead of ağaçda."
The source you provided for the count of current loanwords is wonderful. I think we can incorporate that information into the article, with a nice pie graph. I don't trust much any information on the Turkish Vikipedi, because the contributors there don't seem yet to care about referencing or reliable sources, unfortunately. Atilim Gunes Baydin 17:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I've just made the addition. Atilim Gunes Baydin 18:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] On diphthongs

Atılım, you have worked a lot on this article and I hope it becomes GA. Reading again the article I noticed one inconsistency. "There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound." (section: Vowels) vs. "[Turkish] features eight fundamental vowel sounds and a host of diphthongs based thereupon." I do not know which of the two is true, but they can't be both true at the same time. There are is also another comment on diphthongs above in this talk page. --Michkalas 10:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out, I've deleted the second sentence for the time being for consistency within the article. As I understand, the people thinking that there are diphthongs in Turkish are talking about situations where Turkish letter y (/j/) follows a vowel. I will try to find a good reference for this diphthongs issue and update the information in the article accordingly. Atilim Gunes Baydin 15:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Congratulations

Thanks a lot Atilim for your hard work denizTC

Thanks. Honestly, I was expecting at least a short review and a list of suggestions by the GA reviewer as usual. Cheers, Atilim Gunes Baydin 23:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Congratulations!!! Baristarim 19:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
You know what the next step is. ;-) Khoikhoi 01:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we have any A class articles? denizTC 02:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Advancing this article to FA

This is possible. Most (if not all) the information are here. Maybe two important things for FA is a considerably expanded lead and more references, especially to English language bibliography. Good and -more or less- updated sources in English and widely available in an academic library near you are: The chapter on Turkish language in the 1998 or 2006 edition of Eva Csato and Lars Johanson's "The Turkic Languages" (good for the grammatical description). Also Jacklin Kornfilt's Turkish is considerable more updated than Lewis. These should be available in any university linguistics library in Istanbul, Izmir or Ankara (and outside Turkey, of course). But, for a FA, compatibility with Wikipedia criteria on how an article should look like (structure, style etc) is crucial. Many useful comments for this purpose can be obtained through Wikipedia:Peer review. We can also leave a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages to get more and more specialised comments. In any case, criteria for FA are becoming more and more stricter, so be patient as it will take time. You can check Bengali language, probably the most recently promoted FA article with a modern language as its subject. Compare it with this article and also chech the comments when it was a FA candidate. Anyway, in my opinion, a peer review should be the next step forward.--Michkalas 14:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the professional advice! I have access to all Nordic libraries through my university and I'll be looking for these sources. Most of them seem to be available already in my city. We currently list Johanson's Discoveries on the Turkic linguistic map (also with a pdf link), a very nice short report on the state of Turkic linguistics, for those who are interested. The book should be even better. I agree with the other points you've made. Eυχαριστώ, Atilim Gunes Baydin 17:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
True, with a little work it can easily become FA, also because it is not a controversial or political article or anything.. Baristarim 23:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
One suggestion, I think History and Writing System should be placed immeditately after Classification. The Bengali language article would seem to confirm this as a better stucture. --A.Garnet 23:03, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
There's a set layout at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Template.--Domitius 23:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stress

Article currently says:

Stress is usually on the last syllable, with the exception of some suffix combinations, and words like masa ('masa). Also, in the use of proper names, the stress is transferred to the syllable before the last (e.g. İstánbul), although there are exceptions to this (e.g. Ánkara).

I'm far from an expert, and I haven't been in Turkey for some years now, but I think stress and vowel length need to be discussed more fully. First of all, what does "words like masa" mean? "Like" masa in what way? From the synchronic Turkish point of view (forgetting about etymology), stress is unpredictable (though it is mostly commonly on the last syllable). This includes many common words: 'radyo, e'fendim, is'kele, 'kolkola, lo'kanta, even 'vişne, the example of vowel harmony in the previous sentence! I am not sure what is meant by "some suffix combinations". Some suffixes have stress patterns attached to them, e.g. present tense -'*yor, negative '*-me.

As for vowel length, the current article only mentions it in connection with yumuşak ge. But again there are many words with long vowels, e.g. sa:de, ka:fir, kahveha:ne, ka:nu:n, etc. Obviously in an article of this length, we can't go into the details.... --Macrakis 22:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It says "usually" though, not always. I think for example that the stress moves to the syllable before the syllable "me" when one makes a verb negative. As for vowel length, many of those long vowels are actually in loan words from Arabic.--Domitius 23:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I mentioned the '*-me case, and yes, the long vowels all come (as far as I know) from Arabic and Persian, but so what? They are active, assimilated parts of the modern vocabulary. Unless the language reformers have been working overtime, I think you still go to the kahvehane and order your sade with long vowels.... --Macrakis 17:01, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
unless you were referring to Sade :) We can add that 'many loanwords are exceptions to the stress is on te last syllable rule', that will cover all the words Macrakis listed above, except 'kolkola', which is in fact 'kol kola' (arm to arm). In that case, in my opinion, we should also note whether most of loanwords are exceptions to 'stress is on the last syllable' rule.denizTC 21:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number

EU sources are reliable, but Ethnologue is reliable too. I think it's fine to include both sources. See also Turks in Germany. Khoikhoi 01:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is reliable, but for 1987.. Since it is given as the lower end of the spectrum, then it would be better to have source from a couple of years back for the lower end of the spectrum, rather from two decades ago.. If there is a better source, it supercedes it, and the way it is given it makes it look like it refers to an estimate of today. It really doesn't make much sense. The range given goes 50 percent up from the lower range - that is not a range, we might as well write we have no friggin idea how many people speak it!! lool. I am taking it out, if it will be included, then mention it after the recent EU survey, and give the 1987 date.. Come on, what is the big deal? First at Kurds in Turkey, now here? Is the EU and private survey agencies engaged in a vast conspiracy theory to screw the Kurds? That's just the way it is: CIA and Ethnologue take a backseat to surveys from 2006 and 2007, I am sorry but that is the case.. The ethnicity survey in the article was an extremely quality, vast and comprehensive survey done by some of the best universities in Turkey, and their surveys include the precise methodology that they have employed in gathering that information - what is the source for the CIA figure? It is some random rounded figure 80-20. No academic would take that seriously against precise figures of 13,xx and 15,xx from a survey from two weeks ago.. Baristarim 01:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I've found another source, it's dated 2000. It says, "Turkish has close to 50 million native speakers, most of them in Turkey, but there are sizeable indigenous communities also in Cyprus ..." Khoikhoi 01:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Listen, that source you cited most probably used the Ethnologue figure, can you take a look at its bibliography and check it please? That Eurostat survey was one of the first in its kind as far as Turkey is concerned, as well. It is used in the Languages of the European Union - if it is good enough for there, it must be good enough for here as well. Nobody is placing outdated Ethnologue figures in that article, since it is pretty much assumed that a EU 2006 survey by Eurostat supercedes an Ethnologue figure from 1987.. That's all I am saying. If we would like to have the best encyclopedia possible, we have to use the best sources out there. I really doubt that Eurostat is out there to get the Kurds, you know - It clearly says 93 percent of TR population, 8 percent of Bulgaria's population + overwhelming majority of the Turkish diaspora in the EU speak Turkish as a native language. 50 million for all TR speakers (which would mean 45 for Turkey), would mean 65 percent of Turkey's population - if there is anyone in Eurostat who is getting their survey results wrong by 28 percent, I have nothing more to say, but if not, that's the only figure we must be using, right? Baristarim 01:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The other survey in the Kurds in Turkey article (interestingly done by Turks) gives a slightly lower percentage for native Turkish speakers in Turkey, we can use that I think for the lower end number.. Baristarim 01:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I see no harm in keeping multiple sources and giving a range, but using a reference from 1987 (reporting 46M native speakers in Turkey) really does not make much sense (taking native Turkish speakers as 80%, the lowest estimate, with the current population gives 57.5 M native speakers). The source from 2000 (Language and Nationalism in Europe) seems like a social study and a secondary source for this matter. As I understand, the reference introduced by Baristarim reports 93% native speakers (67.5 M) and I changed the 74+M into this figure. Am I right? Atilim Gunes Baydin 02:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
As a note, please do not make blind reverts to versions prior to my last edit (I fixed a broken reference and another's format). Could Khoikhoi please add his reference on top of this version, if he decides to revert? Thanks, Atilim Gunes Baydin 02:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Not quite - it says 93 percent for Turkey, but it also says 8 percent for Bulgaria, mentions Greece and Cyprus + the Turkish diaspora in Europe, I added them up from the report and got ~73,5+ mil. I know that at first sight it would seem a bit odd to have 74mil for 93 percent, but the catch is that the report also includes the number of native Turkish speakers in Europe.. Baristarim 02:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the reference. Sorry about earlier reverts btw. Baristarim 02:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh I'm very sorry, I suddenly forgot about people outside Turkey. It might be good to state this in detail in the geographical distribution section (something like 67.5 M in Turkey (93%), 74M world total). It would also prevent future editors from making the same mistake. Atilim Gunes Baydin 02:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Sure.. This article will reach FA eventually, I am confident :) Baristarim 02:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Some trimming of the article would help. Artaxiad 04:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've checked the book, and could find no evidence that it uses Ethnologue as a source. Saying that the book "most probably used the Ethnologue figure" is original research. Since it appears to be a third-party, published work, I think it meets WP:RS. I'm going to restore it based on that. If you can prove that it indeed got the figure from Ethnologue, it can be removed. Khoikhoi 05:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Khoikhoi, what's your personal impression / guess regarding the reason for this discrepancy of about 20 million people between the two figures? Atilim Gunes Baydin 15:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Even the Eurostat figures are new in their domain: such statistics were not done before. I am sorry, but considering the Eurostat's reliability, logistic and academic organization as well as its budget, I am sure it has the capacity to reach a much better number than any single author: In fact, that survey was done to serve as a reference to other individual authors and encyclopedias. The discrepancy is way too big (33 percent) for it to be considered a normal "range". It is seriously making the article look bad. Eurostat figures from 2006 are reliable, sound and are used in many articles in Wikipedia like Languages of the European Union. What is our goal as a Wikipedian? To have the best and most accurate encyclopedia as possible, and it is just common sense that Eurostat statistics are some of the best and most reliable figures out there, am I wrong? Giving an individual author equal weight also violates "Undue weight". Eurostat's survey organization is clearly set out and scientifically explained, which is not the case for all these authors + I really doubt that Eurostat has been bribed by Turkey or anything. Baristarim 16:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Favoring one source over another when they both meet WP:RS violates WP:V. Khoikhoi 18:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
But it also violates Undue weight, giving equal coverage to a 2000 book by an individual author as much as 2006 figures from Eurostat, a huge, scientific, impartial and serious organization whose statistics form the basis of many books in real life, and articles such as Languages of the European Union in Wikipedia. Surely you must see that a source who is 40 percent off than 2006 Eurostat figures doesn't have the same stature and is undue weight? Baristarim 18:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Anyways, no biggie. The latest version seems ok and gives a reasonable range. Baristarim 18:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
The "Language and Nationalism in Europe" book [2] is not a language atlas (it discusses the influence of language on the national identities in Europe), and does not primarily pertain to the place it is cited here (total number of Turkish speakers). A new reference I've found today, "Languages of the World" [3] by Katzner, is a recent language atlas documenting language families of the world with the total number of speakers, reports 60M native speakers in Turkey (also reports it as 90% of the total population), and specifically notes 3M of the Turkish diaspora. Giving a 50 million figure as the world total of Turkish speakers, doesn't comply with this and other current language atlases I've checked today, contradicts the fact that Turkey's population is about 72M (the lowest estimate of 80% Turkish speakers gives 72 * 0.8 = 57.6M, and there are about 5M Turkish speakers outside Turkey, thoroughly referenced on Turkish diaspora article), and makes the "Language and Nationalism in Europe" book unreliable as a reference for this subject, in my view. Atilim Gunes Baydin 18:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mıydınız?

I often wondered as I was growing up why people kept repeating the claim that 'Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mıydınız?' is the longest word in Turkish. Obviously it is made of two words, because what follows the 'mı' needs to be separated. You can easily modify it, though, to make 'Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız', which means, "reportedly you are one of those whom we have not been able to make Czechoslovakian." --InfoCan 19:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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