Talk:Languages of Turkey

Sorry but Zaza is Kurd

Well, i didn't understand something because there is a new rechearch on kurdish languages and DNA, it is said that there is no zaza ethnical group or nation, that the zaza theory is not support. The rapport on Kurds DNA says that zaza are real kurd like soranies or kurmanjies!

http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Kurds.pdf . Some scientist say zaza are a different group but most of them say that zazas are kurds, and now we have a well completed rapport on the issue!--Alsace38 (talk) 13:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

This article isn't about DNA, but languages. DNA doesn't speak a language. --Taivo (talk) 14:11, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

try to read the rapport! zaza are kurds are zazaki is one of the pultiple kurdish languages!--Alsace38 (talk) 11:56, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Genetics do not prove linguistic relationships. --Taivo (talk) 13:01, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

did you know that there are some 150 kurdish words which are common to hittite? so what can we say?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alsace38 (talk • contribs) 18:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I get your point. Languages unlike people borrow (think how many words of non-Indo-European origin are in English); they also merge (e.g., Creoles). They most definitely can be disconnected from genetics (consider the diversity of people who speak English as a native tongue). Now if you want to add information on genetics, that belongs in an article on demographics not language. --Erp (talk) 04:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but how can you consider kurmanji as a kurd, sorani as a kurd and not kirdmancki/dimili as a kurd? some racist people say that sorani is a kurd and not zaza, but how? are they sure that sorani are kurds? --Alsace38 (talk) 15:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Alsace38, this article is NOT about ethnicity or genetics. It is about language only. If you have a reliable reference that says the Zaza language is a dialect of Kurdish, then please present it. Otherwise, your comments are not relevant here. --Taivo (talk) 16:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I never did say that zaza is a dialect, i said that zaza is one of the kurdish languages! And when you present in this article on "turkey's language" you should understand that zaza is a kurdish language! Some scientists say zaza is kurdish some as non kurdish, but the debate is not finished! so how can choose that zaza is not kurdish language?--Alsace38 (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

The principal linguistic sources on the Iranian languages that I've seen do not place Zaza in the Kurdish group. If you have reliable linguistic references that say otherwise then cite them. (Remember, linguistic references, not ethnic or genetic ones.) --Taivo (talk) 19:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I think there may be confusion on the part of Alsace38 between two different definitions of 'Kurdish'. The first is pertaining to people who are Kurds. The second is pertaining to the languages spoken by most Kurds (Kumanji and Sorani and a few others). Dimli or Zazaki and similar languages are sufficiently different from the Kurdish languages that linguists did not want to put them in the same group (though the groups are themselves closely related within the Indo-Iranian supergroup of languages). Hence in linguistics Zaza languages and Kurdish languages. In both cases the adjective refers to the languages not to the people who speak them. Both can be considered 'Kurdish' in the sense that they are spoken by Kurds but that is not what this article is talking about.--Erp (talk) 05:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Can we have proper sources for the numbers?

The article on Lak says there are 157000 speakers of Lak, most of them in Dagestan, yet this article suggests that there are 250.000 speakers in Turkey. This is obviously a flaw. So, since there is already a problem with Genetics and Speakers in the discussion above this one, could these two be carefully separated? Can this article be either flagged for lack of sources, of be dealt with properly by someone? (h, 81.215.121.241 (talk) 15:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC))

This seems to have been some subtle vandalism where Laz which is spoken in Turkey was replaced with Lak which is not. Also the numbers were upped even earlier from 30,000 to 250,000 with admittedly a more recent date. Now 250,000 might be accurate for Laz now (though unlikely) and we could do with some more recent numbers for many of these languages; however, if they differ from the two sources used for the table, then they need to be individually referenced. I've just checked all the numbers in the table against the two sources and they are accurate again now--Erp (talk) 05:36, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

And only 5000 Abkhaz, 10000 Abaza, something is fundementally wrong with these numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.177.213.250 (talk) 18:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Numbers for Pontic and other languages

In this edit, @Listofpeople: added a large amount of information to the "Languages by numbers of speakers in Turkey" table. The table header cites Ethnologue. But the number for Pontic Greek was grossly incorrect: it was shown as 300,000 (where did that come from? -- almost all the Pontians were expelled or killed) where Ethnologue shows 5,000. I have not checked other numbers, but someone should. --Macrakis (talk) 18:06, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Indigenous?

The Notes column calls various languages "non-indigenous". This is taken from Ethnologue, but unfortunately Ethnologue seems to have screwed up badly here. Northern Levantine Arabic is listed as indigenous, but in fact Arabic only arrived in Anatolia in the 7th century CE. Bulgarian didn't exist in Bulgaria, let alone Anatolia, until the 5-6th centuries CE. Turkish is listed as non-indigenous (having arrived in about the 10th century), but bizarrely Balkan Gagauz Turkish is not listed as non-indigenous. Greek was listed as non-indigenous, though it's been present since at least the 7th century BCE. Is there reliable documentation on when Kurdish, Lazuri, and Georgian appeared in Anatolia? All in all, this seems like a very problematic category. --Macrakis (talk) 18:06, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

"Languages are guaranteed (...)"

The current article text includes:

"and a number of less common minority languages, some of which are guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne."

I wonder whether these "languages are guaranteed" (I am unsure if a language can be guaranteed: if it already exists, it exists.) or these "languages are guaranteed something" (e.g. protection). Could the author explain the intended meaning/reading?Redav (talk) 01:05, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@Redav: You can check the edit history and see which editor put the info in. WhisperToMe (talk) 12:51, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

salikbhat

nothing 122.161.241.21 (talk) 09:52, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Does Albanian origin don't exist!

There are an estimated at least 2 million citizens of the Republic of Türkiye of Albanian descent. 2A00:23C6:F487:9A01:7079:5A9B:B0DB:ADE4 (talk) 11:11, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Sections on minority languages

@A455bcd9: Hello! It was not meant to be a section on Ladino only, but on the states of various minority languages in Turkey. Language death is a thing, and reliable sources document it. Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 12:50, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I decided to just elaborate in the main history section. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I was traveling (to Turkey, with Ladino heritage speakers...). I think the paragraph is undue here given the tiny % of Jews in Turkey. I added the same information in October to History_of_the_Jews_in_Turkey#Languages, where it is due.

What would be due here is a paragraph about the general language shift to Turkish and the death of minority and emigrant languages during the 20th century: Georgian, Laz, various Albanian dialects, Bosnian, Syriac, Tatar, Bulgarian, Circassian, Arabic, Ladino, etc. All linguistic communities switched to Istanbul Turkish (voluntarily or not), with the notable exception of Kurdish people (and some Arabs in Hatay). FYI, I uploaded the detailed linguistic results of the 1927 Turkish census here: https://github.com/a455bcd9/1927-Turkish-census a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2023 (UTC)