06-10-2021, 10:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-10-2021, 01:36 PM by Ahmet Ardıç.)
[quote="Aga Tentakulus" pid='47497' dateline='1633521479']
Mr Tentaculus,
We do not yet know which dialect or sub-dialect the VM author used 600 years ago. For example, we do not have in-depth knowledge of the languages of some historical Turkish communities living in the Balkan geography and in the north of the Black Sea. In other words, not only me but also linguists have not analyzed some of these dialects in depth since they could not find much written material about the language of certain Turkish communities or geography. For this reason, it is not possible at this stage to make a positive or negative comment about the author's spoken language in the detail you mentioned. Moreover, it would be useful for me to inform you about the following issues.
1-) Approximately 50% of the words we read are available in the dialects of the Black Sea (Karadeniz) region of Turkey today. An important part of the remaining part is the words in the dialects of Thrace (Trakya) and Aegean (Ege) region. However, the Black Sea, Thrace and Aegean regions are close to each other. Less part of the words read are the words from various parts of Anatolia and in the Azerbaijani Turkish language. We have also seen words written with sound value used in some of today's Uzbek-Turkish languages. However, later on, we learned about the phonetic structures that inform us that these could be in the old Anatolian dialects too.
2-) In the early days when we started reading in VM, I thought that the author was someone who lived with groups that spoke Uzbek-Turkish in the Azerbaijani-Turkish geography and spent a part of his life in Anatolia. Because we know that people who are exposed to different Turkish dialects for various periods of time exchange words from each other after a while, and there are cases of shifting and/or mixing in their dialects. For this reason, the existence of people who use mixed dialects is already known. Moreover, it is known that there are manuscripts written using mixed languages other than dialects.
3-) Studies on the compilation of Turkic languages words with field studies have not been carried out sufficiently broadly and in detail. Linguists should have worked harder in this area and completed the deficiencies. However, especially in the widest-time of Ottoman period almost no study in this field. In addition, after the 1970s, studies in this area remained rather weakly too. Moreover, the task of compiling the words in the language of the Turkic-speaking peoples in the former Soviet geography remained in a worse condition. The Russians authority may not have enough supported that kind of the academic studies in this field because these studies were mostly tried to be done partially after 1991. As a result, recorded word recording works for region by region did not make in detail in largest Turkish speaking geography. It is possible to look at the current table and think that word was used only in a certain place is not realistic. Linguistics is already looking at the available data. But if you don't collect enough data from some region, the weak collected results will be deceiving. For example, I explained the word ZULAK, which means onion, a few comments ago. (I showed that the onion plant image drawn in the VM manuscript is also realistic and matches the selected photograph.) That plant name was recorded in Black Sea region according to the dictionary. But I have personally witnessed the people who sing this plant as ZULAK in the Aegean and Mediterranean area too.
In another example, many of the words that are thought to be seen in the dialects of some regions such as Kars region, Erzincan, Sivas, and Iğdır region are also present in Azeri Turkish dialects. In other words, if the subject is the Turkish language, this detail that you think and write is not exactly like that.
4-) The author must have developed this special alphabet just for writing this script. Because she/he did not want everyone to read the content for two reasons, and this work was written for only one or a few readers.
A-) The author was coding about some confidential information or spying activities in the work. For this reason, its content should not be for everyone.
B-) The author may not want the medical information in this book to be read and understood by rival physicians or ordinary people. In other words, as a doctor and pharmacist, she/he must be writing his writings for specific purpose. Or, she/he may have needed to develop a medical language for herself/himself, as she/he did not want every reader to understand the content related to drug making or medical applications.
5-) For all of these reasons, (/or, for some of this reasons) the author may have written the words using a mixed dialect, with sound values that are not in his daily speech but found in other dialects. So she/he must have deliberately created this structure. Thus, when she/he needs a word that starts with the letter O during the coding, she/he may deliberately write the OY form used in Uzbek dialects instead of the word AY in Anatolian Turkish dialects. She/He must have used the mixed dialect consciously in this way and made it easier for her/him to code.
6-) The author may have used one of the minority dialects. So maybe his mother tongue was not Turkish. Maybe his parents were from different regions and languages, and the author was using a mixed language or one of the minority dialects 600 years ago. The head of the Turkish department of Istanbul İstinye University told me this after my presentation at this university. But actually I don't fully agree with this idea. Although I am giving you this idea as a possibility here, I myself think that the author would prefer to write such a book only in his native language. In other words, if the main sentence structure and the majority of the words are integrated with Turkish (which it is), I think that the possibility of the author using one of the sub-dialects that is now forgotten is stronger. For this reason, the author must not have written in one of the minority dialects. However, I cannot say that this probability is zero.
7- Turkish language is a language in which new meanings are derived with the help of root meaning contents of word roots and word suffixes. In other words, word suffixes do not change the meaning content of the root of the word in any case. However, affixes diversify the root meaning and provide the derivation of new words. We know that some words to be used in a very wide geography in the past are still alive, but only in some local dialects, although they are totally forgotten in certain geographies today. This means that, these issues cannot be looked at independently of the time factor. So, if you look at today's table and say that this word is using in the Sivas region and the other word only is in for Muğla region, unfortunately you will be saying this information by looking at the current situation. How can we claim that a word we are reading in 600 years old VM today not used in a wider geography 600 years before today? While the words were spoken in a wider geography in a certain time period, they may be used in a narrower region today. This does not mean that this was the case in the past if this is the case for today.
As you can see, this issue is not what you think. If one or several of the 7 possibilities I have given above have occurred at once, the example you have suggested will not be valid for VM writing. Anyway, this writing is not an ordinary writing. In other words, I can say that it is out of the known examples and the first and last example of its kind. For this reason, it is difficult to explain this with the expectations of ordinary linguistics. Today's expectations come from reading other experienced and well-known manuscripts. But this type of manuscript had never been experienced before.
Regards,
Mr Tentaculus,
We do not yet know which dialect or sub-dialect the VM author used 600 years ago. For example, we do not have in-depth knowledge of the languages of some historical Turkish communities living in the Balkan geography and in the north of the Black Sea. In other words, not only me but also linguists have not analyzed some of these dialects in depth since they could not find much written material about the language of certain Turkish communities or geography. For this reason, it is not possible at this stage to make a positive or negative comment about the author's spoken language in the detail you mentioned. Moreover, it would be useful for me to inform you about the following issues.
1-) Approximately 50% of the words we read are available in the dialects of the Black Sea (Karadeniz) region of Turkey today. An important part of the remaining part is the words in the dialects of Thrace (Trakya) and Aegean (Ege) region. However, the Black Sea, Thrace and Aegean regions are close to each other. Less part of the words read are the words from various parts of Anatolia and in the Azerbaijani Turkish language. We have also seen words written with sound value used in some of today's Uzbek-Turkish languages. However, later on, we learned about the phonetic structures that inform us that these could be in the old Anatolian dialects too.
2-) In the early days when we started reading in VM, I thought that the author was someone who lived with groups that spoke Uzbek-Turkish in the Azerbaijani-Turkish geography and spent a part of his life in Anatolia. Because we know that people who are exposed to different Turkish dialects for various periods of time exchange words from each other after a while, and there are cases of shifting and/or mixing in their dialects. For this reason, the existence of people who use mixed dialects is already known. Moreover, it is known that there are manuscripts written using mixed languages other than dialects.
3-) Studies on the compilation of Turkic languages words with field studies have not been carried out sufficiently broadly and in detail. Linguists should have worked harder in this area and completed the deficiencies. However, especially in the widest-time of Ottoman period almost no study in this field. In addition, after the 1970s, studies in this area remained rather weakly too. Moreover, the task of compiling the words in the language of the Turkic-speaking peoples in the former Soviet geography remained in a worse condition. The Russians authority may not have enough supported that kind of the academic studies in this field because these studies were mostly tried to be done partially after 1991. As a result, recorded word recording works for region by region did not make in detail in largest Turkish speaking geography. It is possible to look at the current table and think that word was used only in a certain place is not realistic. Linguistics is already looking at the available data. But if you don't collect enough data from some region, the weak collected results will be deceiving. For example, I explained the word ZULAK, which means onion, a few comments ago. (I showed that the onion plant image drawn in the VM manuscript is also realistic and matches the selected photograph.) That plant name was recorded in Black Sea region according to the dictionary. But I have personally witnessed the people who sing this plant as ZULAK in the Aegean and Mediterranean area too.
In another example, many of the words that are thought to be seen in the dialects of some regions such as Kars region, Erzincan, Sivas, and Iğdır region are also present in Azeri Turkish dialects. In other words, if the subject is the Turkish language, this detail that you think and write is not exactly like that.
4-) The author must have developed this special alphabet just for writing this script. Because she/he did not want everyone to read the content for two reasons, and this work was written for only one or a few readers.
A-) The author was coding about some confidential information or spying activities in the work. For this reason, its content should not be for everyone.
B-) The author may not want the medical information in this book to be read and understood by rival physicians or ordinary people. In other words, as a doctor and pharmacist, she/he must be writing his writings for specific purpose. Or, she/he may have needed to develop a medical language for herself/himself, as she/he did not want every reader to understand the content related to drug making or medical applications.
5-) For all of these reasons, (/or, for some of this reasons) the author may have written the words using a mixed dialect, with sound values that are not in his daily speech but found in other dialects. So she/he must have deliberately created this structure. Thus, when she/he needs a word that starts with the letter O during the coding, she/he may deliberately write the OY form used in Uzbek dialects instead of the word AY in Anatolian Turkish dialects. She/He must have used the mixed dialect consciously in this way and made it easier for her/him to code.
6-) The author may have used one of the minority dialects. So maybe his mother tongue was not Turkish. Maybe his parents were from different regions and languages, and the author was using a mixed language or one of the minority dialects 600 years ago. The head of the Turkish department of Istanbul İstinye University told me this after my presentation at this university. But actually I don't fully agree with this idea. Although I am giving you this idea as a possibility here, I myself think that the author would prefer to write such a book only in his native language. In other words, if the main sentence structure and the majority of the words are integrated with Turkish (which it is), I think that the possibility of the author using one of the sub-dialects that is now forgotten is stronger. For this reason, the author must not have written in one of the minority dialects. However, I cannot say that this probability is zero.
7- Turkish language is a language in which new meanings are derived with the help of root meaning contents of word roots and word suffixes. In other words, word suffixes do not change the meaning content of the root of the word in any case. However, affixes diversify the root meaning and provide the derivation of new words. We know that some words to be used in a very wide geography in the past are still alive, but only in some local dialects, although they are totally forgotten in certain geographies today. This means that, these issues cannot be looked at independently of the time factor. So, if you look at today's table and say that this word is using in the Sivas region and the other word only is in for Muğla region, unfortunately you will be saying this information by looking at the current situation. How can we claim that a word we are reading in 600 years old VM today not used in a wider geography 600 years before today? While the words were spoken in a wider geography in a certain time period, they may be used in a narrower region today. This does not mean that this was the case in the past if this is the case for today.
As you can see, this issue is not what you think. If one or several of the 7 possibilities I have given above have occurred at once, the example you have suggested will not be valid for VM writing. Anyway, this writing is not an ordinary writing. In other words, I can say that it is out of the known examples and the first and last example of its kind. For this reason, it is difficult to explain this with the expectations of ordinary linguistics. Today's expectations come from reading other experienced and well-known manuscripts. But this type of manuscript had never been experienced before.
Regards,