28-09-2022, 09:36 PM
Dear Cvetka,
I thought you wouldn't mind reading the long answers. If you do not want to read a long and broken English text, please do not read all.
First of all, thank you for your questions.
After reading your first sentence that starts with the words;"To solve the mystery of the VM, a lot more will be necessary than to prove that the language is Turkish, however, ...", I think you slowly begin to understand that the content of the VM is in Turkish.
When you encounter an alphabet that has never been seen before and cannot read the texts in the content, you normally first need to find some clues to suggest that the texts are in English, Greek, Slovenian, Turkish or any other language. Then, an alphabet transcription is made and if the transcription matching is correct or mostly correct, those texts can be read. The words read must be shown in a sentence and analyzed as a whole sentence. Then, it is necessary to show the words and word-suffixes in other ancient texts and existing dictionaries of that language. We are already doing exactly that. We explain the subject to linguists (who are working on the Turkish language) and all feedbacks are very positive. We explained the subject in detail to more than a hundred linguists, and not a single negative opinion has been reported yet, and all of them saw that the content was Turkish, but they could not understand the dialect (just like us). However, the details that are not yet understood will be more understandable as the studies continue in the future. Moreover, the main aim is to translate the entire book into the current language with the key we provide.
In other words, as you know, proving that the content is Turkish (or the presence of any other language) was the best possible start, and this was achieved.
The following sentence you made by referring to professors who are experts in Turkish language; "Maybe you should pick some other page that you had not 'translated' and let them do the independent transliteration, transcription and translation, using your Latin ATA alphabet." is interesting. No professor is my personal employee and they do not need my permission to read the pages. I am not imposing anything on them. I offered them a solution key. They can choose and read what they want from 240 pages. The aforementioned professor M. Asgarov himself told me that he translated 10 pages of the book into today's language. In fact, at the early stage of these translation works, texts that differ from each other to a certain extent may emerge. Linguists discuss these among themselves over time and decide which word should be taken in which phonetic value and meaning.
Again, the sentence you made by referring to Turkish language professors is also very interesting. You said that; "For all we know, they could have just fixed-up your translation by removing the nonsense that did not belong in that time and place." Please, if you don't mind, can you tell me more specifically, which word and sentence are you talking about that is not appropriate for that time? If the subject is about how the name of the sunflower plant was used before Christopher Columbus, the answer is not difficult at all. There may be more than one reason for this, but as I mentioned before, a Turkish plant name can sometimes be used to same name for different plants in some dialect groups. However, I will also mention some items that point to some different possibilities below.
Now let's look at historical events with some examples.
1-) First of all, this idea is based on a Western understanding of history and assumes that pre-Columbian Ottoman sailors did not go to the America. This assumption is also quite reasonable because it is necessary to prove that Ottoman sailors went to the America before Columbus. In fact, as you may be know, there are researchers and historians who claim that Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis is the owner of the oldest known world map which reminiscent of today's maps. And they think that some sailors before Columbus went to the America. We have done our own research on this subject and we present the results in our book. In this context, it is necessary to evaluate some information that we think is correct in history according to the available data.
2-) It is known that Viking or Norwegian sailors went to the Americas before Christopher Columbus. Moreover, it is known that there were migrations from Asia to America long before them. However, it is not known exactly by whom and at what time in history the sunflower was transported to Asia, to Europe and to Africa.
3-) In a short research we have done on the internet, we have seen that some researchers claim that the homeland of some endemic species of sunflower is Asia, not America. So, probably even this issue is still debatable.
4-) The homeland of some plants as sunflower is America. But some of the plant names from America to Europe seem to be related to Turkish. For example, the homeland of the corn plant is America. However, the word Turk was used in one of the first names given to the corn plant by the Europeans. In addition, it is understood that some of the place name used by the indigenous peoples in America are of Turkish origin.
Gregory C. McIntosh's article titled “The Piri Reis Map of 1513 is Important Because...” contains the following sentence; "Sandani may be San Diego or Santiago (Sp., St. James) , the name Columbus gave to Jamaica."
Accordingly, Gregory C. McIntosh makes a guess by writing "may be". So much so that it was mentioned that the indicated name of Sandani might have been written as a name for a region in South America on the map drawn by Piri Reis, and he conveys that information to the reader, by referring to his source.
What the person who first introduced this name/information does not know is that the word "Sandan" in Turkish means corn-plant, and if this word takes the suffix -ı to the end of the word it takes name as "Sandan-ı", which means "the place where the corn is" ("mısırlı" / "mısır-i").
By the way, the name of the country MISIR (Egypt) and the same name of the plant MISIR (corn-plant) are written in same way as MISIR in Turkish. In dictionaries, the word "sandan" is given as "Mısır".
See SANDAN = MISIR > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
In addition, There are sections on the map of Piri Reis that he references to Christopher Columbus for some quotes. However, while making his own map, Piri used the familiar maps of many sailors at that time, including the former Ottoman, Arab and other European sailors, and referred to them. I do not think that Columbus or any other European used Turkish names for toponyms or plant descriptions.
If Piri Reis or other Ottoman commodore did not give this toponym names himself, he may have taken it from another Turkish-speaking captain or crew who knew that the homeland of the corn plant was South America.
So much so that, it is already known that some maps of the captains before him were in the hands of the Piri.
Instead of the word sandan, which is about to be forgotten in Turkish today, synonymous words such as "darı/tarı", "mısır" have been used more and more over time. Although the word "sandan" (darı/tarı) is about to be forgotten because that synonymous words are used more widely in the language, it is known that this word sandan still (today) lives in the same sense in and around Turkey's Konya region only. In fact, the origin of the word sandan must be related to the fact that the words "san-ı + darı" are connected and the phonetic value of the word has changed with the dialect difference by forming a compound word by combining them.
The word DARI, which comes from the root of Old Turkic tar- "to scatter, to spread, to scatter", is seen as tara- (to scatter) in Mongolian, tarik (ekin) in Uzbek-Turkish, and taru and tari in Kyrgyz-Turkish. The word must have been used in the sense of seed (tohum) and cereal (tahıl) grains in Old Turkish and it is also related with the word "tarım" (agriculture).
Linguists should know that the words "sperma" and "spora", which mean "seed" and which are indicated as origin in the language they call Ancient Greek, are derived from the root word "sep/serp" in our Pre-Turkish language, which is also the root of the word "serpmek" in our Turkish language, or at least a should be shown as possibilities.
Words with the same meaning from this root in Old Turkish can be seen in Uighur written sources before year 1000, and the word "DARI" is mentioned in the form of "TARIĞ" before year 900 in the manuscript called Irk Bitig.
From this, we can understand that the expression "SAN-I" in front of the word should have been brought before the word "DARI", figuratively or as an adjective. For this reason, the word "SAN+DANI" ("SAN-I+DARI") should have been used in the sense of "the land of corn" as well as "the place where the corn is", "the place known for its corn".
Here, I make all these explanations just like the previous ones, using the same methods used by linguistics.
5-) You may have heard that there is toponym as the islands of “Türk and Kayık” (perhaps the phonetic value must have come across "by chance" according to some Westerners) and the phonetic value is close to “Turks & Caicos (kayık-os)”.
However, this word is one of the words in Turkish and the other in Spanish, but with different meanings. Europeans attribute this name to the word in their language. Let's assume that this is normal and perhaps really related to the word in their language.
The history of the “Turks & Caicos Islands” must have started long before Christopher Columbus first set foot on the capital “Grand Turk” (Great Turk) island in 1492 during his journey to discover the new world.
Taino (*Ata+İno/ina or *Ata+ana) and Lucayan (*Ulu+çayan) Indians lived on the “Turks and Caicos Islands”. Even the name of the country must have been coined by these first inhabitants, and there is no clear evidence as to when the name Turk was actually first coined.
The Turks & Caicos Islands, which are part of the United Kingdom, are a group of islands in the Caribbean, east of Cuba and north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with the capital "Grand Turk". The name of the largest of the islands of this group of islands, which is Turkish in its name, is also Turkish. There are different claims about why the names of these islands are Turk.
The existence of an island with a Turkish name in the Caribbean makes it necessary to question the origins of the name of this island. A widely known explanation for giving the name to the island seems to be generally accepted. According to this explanation, it is said that the British gave this name to this island, as a result of the appearance of the fez looking cactus, which was called melacactus and which was a type of headdress of the Ottomans.
The Turks and Caicos Islands are also known as the place where Columbus first set foot on land in the 1492 expedition. It is also known that the Spaniards came to this island before the British. If the Europeans who first set foot on the island did not name the island, is this a normal situation for the history of discoveries? Or, when the Europeans discovered a new region, did they name the toponyms with Turkic names?
Researcher Eren Erdoğdu, in his article on this subject, points out some issues that have drawn our attention, and states that:
"... This claim does not reflect the truth, as the Turks did not wear the fez when the island was named. There are other reasons why the island was named Turkish. … It can be thought that the Turks settled in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which is the most critical place in the Caribbean due to its pirate activity, defense and supply qualities. For this reason, the Spaniards named it Islas Turcany Caicos, that is, Turks and Thieves Islands … This expression may have been used as a warning against the influence of the Turks in the region by taking control of the island in 1706. Since the British who went to the islands later did not know their nation, the name Turks (and/or Turcany) used by the Spaniards continued to be used. It can be assumed that they do not mind.”
Let us repeat the most important detail that Eren Erdoğlu drew attention to in this matter. If the fez was not used by the Turks at that time, then how could these islands get their name from the fez cap, which the Turks did not wear at that time, in analogy with a fez-like cactus?
The fez, which was used in the Ottoman Empire from 1829 to 1925, was worn by some civilians and soldiers in Istanbul during the Tanzimat period.
In other words, the fez is not unique to the Ottoman Empire, it was born in Morocco and was used by different communities besides the Ottomans. Moreover, if this name was made when the Ottomans did not use the fez, it is understandable and not a normal situation why the Europeans did not call this island Morocco or the island of the Moroccans.
In addition, it is known that the Greeks used the fez in the same period, in fact, the Greeks may have started using the fez even before the Ottomans. As understood from a painting by Pierre Peytier depicting Greek soldiers during the inspection, the Greeks were already using the fez in 1830, and the use of the fez probably dates back to much earlier times in Greeks than in Turks. So, why didn't the British call these islands the Greek Islands or the Islands of Morocco or Fes?
However, if there are those who write by distorting the historical facts and in the form of imaginary fabrication, it will certainly create a perception of reality on people who will read their writings without questioning them.
Meanwhile, the word "Caicos" named “Turks and Caicos Islands” has evolved from the Old Turkic word "kayġuk" (small boat). This word is derived from the Old Turkish root word verb kay-. Linguist Prof. Clauson dwells on the interpretation of the "boat with the anterior and posterior ends curved up" (Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish p. 676). The word "Kayġuk" (boat) is also mentioned in the manuscript called "Divan-i Lugati't-Türk", which was written by Kaşgari Mahmut in 1073 (1071 - 1074) in the Old Turkish period.
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In fact, the word Caicos is also synonymous with the English word "Kayak"(n). However, Western dictionaries explain this word approximately as follows: [kayak (n.) is "type of Eskimo light boat", from Danish kajak, from Greenland Eskimo qayaq, literally "small boat of skins." The verb is attested from 1875, from the noun. Related: Kayaking; kayaker (1856).]
As can be seen, this word, which is written in a Turkish manuscript dictionary dating from 1073, can be seen in Eskimo, European languages, Taino or English, although with the exact same meaning. However, Western etymological words do not go back to 1757 when they refer to the oldest written form of this word. However, the written form of this word, 684 years older than the date shown in the European Etymology dictionaries, is in the Turkish language and is mentioned in the manuscript written by Kaşgari Mahmut.
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6-) While we have touched on this subject, let's touch on why the Americans, the British and some other peoples call the poultry turkey, whose homeland is America, as others like "turkey".
Harvard University Turcologist Prof. Dr. Şinasi Tekin, in response to a question from NPR's Giancarlo Casale, said:
“There is a bird in the villages in Turkey, it is called ÇULLUK (woodcock). It is similar to turkey but smaller and the meat is much more delicious. Long before the discovery of America, British merchants took this delicious ÇULLUK from the Ottoman Empire and brought it to England, and they called this animal 'Turkish bird' or 'turkey'. Later, when the British went to America, they were mistaken by thinking that the birds there were also ÇULLUK. But other countries in the world did not fall into this error. They knew that this bird came from America, and they called the bird 'castor bird', 'peru bird', 'ethiopian bird'. At that time, 'india', 'peru' and 'ethiopia' were the names given for the new continent America, people's knowledge of geography was not developed at that time and it took a long time for the name 'America' to become widespread. The Americans exported their birds all over the world and even the Turks began to eat the turkey. They had already forgotten their delicious snipe. This is quite sad, because the meat of the snipe is much tastier.”
This explanation made by Prof. Dr. Şinasi Tekin is unrealistic. Because the woodcock (woodcock/Scolopax rusticola) does not resemble a turkey at all in terms of its physical characteristics, except that they are both a bird species.
In addition, Europe is already in the natural habitat of this bird. Therefore, the idea that Europeans buy this bird from Turkish traders is absurd. Moreover, we have not been able to find any document showing that such a trade was carried out in history.
See the çulluk here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
In addition, some other countries have mentioned the turkey bird completely by including the names of other countries. In other words, it was not only the British who made a similar mistake or naming.
So why might the Ottoman Turks have called this creature as HINDI in the sense of India? Could it be that, just like Christopher Columbus, Ottoman sailors thought this geography was India when they reached America? Or did Ottoman sailors never go to America? If you look at the history written by the Westerners, we cannot say that the Ottomans went here. Of course, in our book, we show some of proofs on all these issues together with their documents.
We can see the expression "HINDI-ÇALI-TUTU" (indian bush tutu) among the explanations and synonyms for the name "sunflower" in Turkish. It is understood from the fact that this name or description is in our language, that among the people who can speak the Turkish language, the information that this plant is related to Hindi (America, which is thought to be India) was already established.
Of course, if Turkish sailors were the first to introduce turkey-bird to the British by bringing turkey to Europe from the America, then it would be a more logical approach to think that the British used the name "Turkey" to mean as like a "turkish bird".
The word TURK/TURKEY was mentioned in the first name of the Corn Plant, whose homeland is America, used in Europe. The naming situation was similar for sunflower plant. Moreover, we see the Turkish name within the America island toponym names. But linguists and historians explain each of these independently of each other and only with personal opinions (without showing any evidence).
7-) Some plant names in Turkish were also used to name different plants in some dialects. It is nonsense to think that we are making statements that do not coincide with the historical sequence without knowing this information.
Thus, another plant that is visually similar like sunflower may have been called as "GÜN+ÇİÇEĞİ" (sunflower).
While there are those who think that the Turks got the name of HİNDİ (turkey) from the French, there are also those who say that the French got it from the Turks.
While the British called this creature turkey, the Turks called it as HİND-İ (Indian) in connection with the name of India.
It is known that Malaysians call turkey "ayam belanda" or "Dutch/Holland chicken", while Cambodians call it "inilti barang (*groan barang) / (*groan+*shout)" or "French chicken". That is, probably, whichever society first got it from where it was named after the nation or geography it got it from.
The more plausible idea is that Ottoman sailors named this species turkey, meaning "a bird native to India". Because they probably thought that the geography of America, where the creature came from, was originally India. And it is possible that this creature was introduced to the British thanks to Ottoman sailors or merchants. Likewise, the turkey must have gone to France from the Turks, and the English must have named it turkey, while the French used the name used by the Turks.
According to the etymology dictionary of the Westerners called etymonline; In the 1540s, the "guinea fowl" ("guinea fowl" Numida meleagris) is a bird imported from Madagascar via Turkey and called guinea fowl when brought by traders from West Africa. The larger North American bird, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), was first domesticated by the Aztecs, introduced to Spain and from there to wider Europe by European conquistadors in 1523. The word turkey was identified with guinea fowl or accepted as a type of guinea fowl. The name was later used in English in the 1550s.
8-) The plant, whose homeland is America, but which is called Turkish corn (Indian corn), is also named as "turkey corn" or "turkey wheat" in English for the same reason.
We read the name GÜN+ÇİÇEĞİ (sunflower) in Turkish on the VM-33v page with the author's special word depiction. As I said, this name could also be the name of another plant at that time. But this probability is very small. More likely, it may be the case that Ottoman sailors went to the new continent long before Christopher Columbus and they mistook it for India. Perhaps, for political reasons or not to engage in commercial competition, they may have hidden such a situation from the Europeans. Of course, I am speculating to a certain extent when I say this. However, there is a need to explain why plants such as turkey, corn, and sunflower, whose homeland is America, were called with their name as "TÜRK" by the Europeans, along with the names of geographical regions (toponyms) with the Turkish name in the American continent. Unless these are explained, for me, all these names may have been first introduced to Europeans by Ottoman sailors, because linguistic data suggests that this possibility makes more sense.
By the way, in the old Turkish manuscripts, the word HİNT (India) is mentioned in the sentence “kimi rāy-i hindī, kimi kayṣarī” (kimi Hint racası, kimi Rum Kayseri) in the Kutadgu Bilig manuscript in year 1069.
Of course, the Ottomans could call these newly acquainted species HINDI (Indian). They mistook America for India and this naming is predictable for Turks. This naming means "the one belonging to India" in Turkish. There is a logic in that. But why did some Europeans call this bird and plants, which they thought to be India and brought with their own hands from America, not with a name related to India, but as "turkey"? So, that part of the current historical explanation is a bit more complicated and obscure.
We have given many more examples on this subject in our book and cited our sources and available evidence. I have explained only a small part of the issue here.
We learn from the article titled "The Polysemy in Plant Names" written by researcher Yasemin Yıldız and published in 2021;"Different names in the Turkish language can refer to the same plant, but plants with different meanings can take the same name due to some similarities. This reveals both polysemy and polyonymity."
You mentioned the nomenclature on the page we call the calendar page, which represents 12 MONTHS. In fact, we read all the names of the 12 months of the year. But we were able to find and show the names of some of them in old dictionaries. There could be two reasons for this. The first of these may be due to the fact that we have not examined enough articles and dictionaries yet. The second reason is that the author may have produced some of these names himself, or these words may have been used in the author's time and maybe before that, but written records may not have come to our day. Let me repeat. On the aforementioned page, some month names have already been found by us in old Turkish dictionaries. For example, the word ÇAĞI+ORAK (Sickle period/The sickle time) is written in the place corresponding to the seventh month of the year. The word ORAK was used to mean JULY in the Old Turkish period.
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When we cannot find some month names in the old dictionaries, it is understood from the root meaning and/or spelling that these are the names of the months.
Still, I try to explain by making some linguistic explanations. For example, we think that the word "seper period" means rainy time and even the English word SEPTEMBER comes from the Turkish verb SERPMEK / SEPELEMEK (*serpteber). In any case, we understand that such a designation refers to a certain period of time because of its written content in the Turkish language.
All words starting with the root word AY in Turkish do not have to have the same meaning. Some are the same, some are different. I have already explained the linguistic reasons for this phenomenon and how a word root meaning pools are formed, and I will not repeat it here.
You wrote that; "As for your other proofs, let me make some of my observations. It is not enough to proof that you find some Turkish words and in the VM, you would need to do a lot more, like disprove other theories ..." .
There are a lot of theories about what language the VM content is in, and there are those who nominate different languages, arguing that the content is a natural language. All of these individuals must substantiate their claims by using linguistic methods and presenting evidence. Each person should try to prove his/her own claim, and I am included in that. While doing this, we should not stray from science and we need to present related evidences. Please you prove your own claim in same way if you can.
We say that the VM book is written with approximately 180 characters. Of course, some of these have only been used once, and some have been used two or three times or more. A complete reading of this book is the main goal. To achieve this goal, these intricate writing signs need to be read. We understood how to read them and we express all these in our writings.
We continue our work with using scientific methods. After all, linguists working on Turkish should have the last word (whether we are successful or not). So they are the people we need to convince first. But in the meantime, please you can use your same advice here you give us and the methods you suggest us you can use to justify your own thesis too if you can.
We don't tell stories that occur in our minds as you say. If you think so, it means that you did not read our previous comments or did not understand what you read.
Regardless of EVA "daiin" or ATA "sam/sem", how they are used in sentences should be demonstrated and proven with many different sentence reading examples.
The word ATA "sem/sam" has several meanings. At the end of the word, they express that "that word belongs to the first person singular". However, when written as stand-alone words, they have various meanings. For example, in the manuscript "Divanü Lügati't-Türk", a dictionary book written around the year 1073, this word is used with meanings such as "medicine" and "ointment" and "healing/healing-giving".
In this case, should we be surprised that this word appears in so many places and sentences in a book like VM?
See the word SEM here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
This SAM/SEM word and the word suffix -SAM/-SEM also have other meanings and functions. Since I have explained these before, I will not mention the same details again.
We also talk about grammatical details in the sentences we read in Turkish and draw attention to the similar overlapping detail found in Ancient Manuscripts and written Turkish. In other words, there are no examples of sentence reading that we did not refer to some sources in our research. Many time we show some dictionarys, we show many words in the dictionaries. Moreover, we examine more than one sentence in which that word is read and show that they overlap with Turkish in every aspect, including grammar. The impressions we make with reference to sentences in these readings are not made in the form of expressing our personal opinion. In any case, we express with examples that grammatical structures also overlap. For each sentence example, we refer to a specific academic resource or dictionary.
You say that in prayer and poetry examples, word repetitions are also seen in other languages.
As a matter of fact, spectators watching a football match and cheering also repeat certain words dozens of times (in unwritten verbal language).
Neither of these can be considered equal examples.
First of all, we have not encountered a single academic study that mentions triple, quartet and quintuple repetitions in ancient manuscripts in Indo-European languages and claims that they are all found in a single manuscript.
Because in Indo-European languages, this structure cannot be shown except for the prayer or a few poetry examples you mentioned. If not so, please show it. Moreover, we could not find a single poem in English, German or any other European language with triple, quartet, quintuple repetitions too.
However, there are examples of this in all periods of written Turkish and in almost every manuscript. Even when we wrote about this subject, I also expressed the evidence on which of our other ancient manuscripts coincide with the word repetitions in terms of form, numerical diversity and frequency of occurrence in the texts.
You have also read our comments about the drawings in the VM content, but may be you did not understand. We are not saying that they burned every person who made drawings and sculptures of nude women. I am not saying that these have never been done in Europe. However, it is already known that many people who deal with books with content similar to VM content and making medicines from plants are also punished in many times in European history. In other words, we are asked this question very often and people think that the drawings in the content could not have been made in Ottoman culture. Of course, such nonsense thoughts are just unrealistic prejudices. Manuscripts and miniatures in which a large number of naked people are drawn are also available in the Ottoman Empire. Some of them are even directly pornographic.
You implied that we've changed some of our ideas about the VM.
In fact, we do not have a change of opinion on the issue you mentioned. There are 3 families and 9 people traveling and some of them are children. They travel like nomads with their herd of animals. We know these clearly from the readings of the encoded segments. However, we are still focused on examining straight lines and pages now. But I will address the coded sections in more detail later by giving examples of sentences in future.
I don't need to write anything more about VM plant images. When we read a new plant name, I can write it down. I have already touched on the issue of how the drawings are made and whether they express overlap. For this reason, I will not go into the same issue here. But I talked to a few botanists and showed them the images. They said that some of them were definitely similar. This includes drawings of plants such as onions, cucumbers, sesame (susam), and murts (sazak).
I hope that, many other linguists, botanists and doctors and pharmacists working in the field of Old Turkish should also be volunteers in this regard in the future.
We are not saying that we know the answer to all questions. We need help and if this help comes from volunteers, we say that it will be possible to progress faster and more unknown details will become known in short time.
Therefore, what we are doing now is to try to announce the issue to the academic community, which has studies on the Turkish language, and to try to create an awareness. And currently, we have to do this job only in our spare time only. Since we didn't have enough free time for a while, we were only able to look at 10% or 11% of the content of the book yet during readings.
We work when we have free time, and we do more or less a certain number of readings and translations each day we work. Earlier, I talked about the writing style that forced us in this process. I will not go into this detail again. However, these problems can be overcome if you do enough research. So this is not something we use as an excuse. The elements that make VM readings difficult are the most enjoyable parts to overcome in this puzzle.
Thanks
I thought you wouldn't mind reading the long answers. If you do not want to read a long and broken English text, please do not read all.
First of all, thank you for your questions.
After reading your first sentence that starts with the words;"To solve the mystery of the VM, a lot more will be necessary than to prove that the language is Turkish, however, ...", I think you slowly begin to understand that the content of the VM is in Turkish.
When you encounter an alphabet that has never been seen before and cannot read the texts in the content, you normally first need to find some clues to suggest that the texts are in English, Greek, Slovenian, Turkish or any other language. Then, an alphabet transcription is made and if the transcription matching is correct or mostly correct, those texts can be read. The words read must be shown in a sentence and analyzed as a whole sentence. Then, it is necessary to show the words and word-suffixes in other ancient texts and existing dictionaries of that language. We are already doing exactly that. We explain the subject to linguists (who are working on the Turkish language) and all feedbacks are very positive. We explained the subject in detail to more than a hundred linguists, and not a single negative opinion has been reported yet, and all of them saw that the content was Turkish, but they could not understand the dialect (just like us). However, the details that are not yet understood will be more understandable as the studies continue in the future. Moreover, the main aim is to translate the entire book into the current language with the key we provide.
In other words, as you know, proving that the content is Turkish (or the presence of any other language) was the best possible start, and this was achieved.
The following sentence you made by referring to professors who are experts in Turkish language; "Maybe you should pick some other page that you had not 'translated' and let them do the independent transliteration, transcription and translation, using your Latin ATA alphabet." is interesting. No professor is my personal employee and they do not need my permission to read the pages. I am not imposing anything on them. I offered them a solution key. They can choose and read what they want from 240 pages. The aforementioned professor M. Asgarov himself told me that he translated 10 pages of the book into today's language. In fact, at the early stage of these translation works, texts that differ from each other to a certain extent may emerge. Linguists discuss these among themselves over time and decide which word should be taken in which phonetic value and meaning.
Again, the sentence you made by referring to Turkish language professors is also very interesting. You said that; "For all we know, they could have just fixed-up your translation by removing the nonsense that did not belong in that time and place." Please, if you don't mind, can you tell me more specifically, which word and sentence are you talking about that is not appropriate for that time? If the subject is about how the name of the sunflower plant was used before Christopher Columbus, the answer is not difficult at all. There may be more than one reason for this, but as I mentioned before, a Turkish plant name can sometimes be used to same name for different plants in some dialect groups. However, I will also mention some items that point to some different possibilities below.
Now let's look at historical events with some examples.
1-) First of all, this idea is based on a Western understanding of history and assumes that pre-Columbian Ottoman sailors did not go to the America. This assumption is also quite reasonable because it is necessary to prove that Ottoman sailors went to the America before Columbus. In fact, as you may be know, there are researchers and historians who claim that Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis is the owner of the oldest known world map which reminiscent of today's maps. And they think that some sailors before Columbus went to the America. We have done our own research on this subject and we present the results in our book. In this context, it is necessary to evaluate some information that we think is correct in history according to the available data.
2-) It is known that Viking or Norwegian sailors went to the Americas before Christopher Columbus. Moreover, it is known that there were migrations from Asia to America long before them. However, it is not known exactly by whom and at what time in history the sunflower was transported to Asia, to Europe and to Africa.
3-) In a short research we have done on the internet, we have seen that some researchers claim that the homeland of some endemic species of sunflower is Asia, not America. So, probably even this issue is still debatable.
4-) The homeland of some plants as sunflower is America. But some of the plant names from America to Europe seem to be related to Turkish. For example, the homeland of the corn plant is America. However, the word Turk was used in one of the first names given to the corn plant by the Europeans. In addition, it is understood that some of the place name used by the indigenous peoples in America are of Turkish origin.
Gregory C. McIntosh's article titled “The Piri Reis Map of 1513 is Important Because...” contains the following sentence; "Sandani may be San Diego or Santiago (Sp., St. James) , the name Columbus gave to Jamaica."
Accordingly, Gregory C. McIntosh makes a guess by writing "may be". So much so that it was mentioned that the indicated name of Sandani might have been written as a name for a region in South America on the map drawn by Piri Reis, and he conveys that information to the reader, by referring to his source.
What the person who first introduced this name/information does not know is that the word "Sandan" in Turkish means corn-plant, and if this word takes the suffix -ı to the end of the word it takes name as "Sandan-ı", which means "the place where the corn is" ("mısırlı" / "mısır-i").
By the way, the name of the country MISIR (Egypt) and the same name of the plant MISIR (corn-plant) are written in same way as MISIR in Turkish. In dictionaries, the word "sandan" is given as "Mısır".
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In addition, There are sections on the map of Piri Reis that he references to Christopher Columbus for some quotes. However, while making his own map, Piri used the familiar maps of many sailors at that time, including the former Ottoman, Arab and other European sailors, and referred to them. I do not think that Columbus or any other European used Turkish names for toponyms or plant descriptions.
If Piri Reis or other Ottoman commodore did not give this toponym names himself, he may have taken it from another Turkish-speaking captain or crew who knew that the homeland of the corn plant was South America.
So much so that, it is already known that some maps of the captains before him were in the hands of the Piri.
Instead of the word sandan, which is about to be forgotten in Turkish today, synonymous words such as "darı/tarı", "mısır" have been used more and more over time. Although the word "sandan" (darı/tarı) is about to be forgotten because that synonymous words are used more widely in the language, it is known that this word sandan still (today) lives in the same sense in and around Turkey's Konya region only. In fact, the origin of the word sandan must be related to the fact that the words "san-ı + darı" are connected and the phonetic value of the word has changed with the dialect difference by forming a compound word by combining them.
The word DARI, which comes from the root of Old Turkic tar- "to scatter, to spread, to scatter", is seen as tara- (to scatter) in Mongolian, tarik (ekin) in Uzbek-Turkish, and taru and tari in Kyrgyz-Turkish. The word must have been used in the sense of seed (tohum) and cereal (tahıl) grains in Old Turkish and it is also related with the word "tarım" (agriculture).
Linguists should know that the words "sperma" and "spora", which mean "seed" and which are indicated as origin in the language they call Ancient Greek, are derived from the root word "sep/serp" in our Pre-Turkish language, which is also the root of the word "serpmek" in our Turkish language, or at least a should be shown as possibilities.
Words with the same meaning from this root in Old Turkish can be seen in Uighur written sources before year 1000, and the word "DARI" is mentioned in the form of "TARIĞ" before year 900 in the manuscript called Irk Bitig.
From this, we can understand that the expression "SAN-I" in front of the word should have been brought before the word "DARI", figuratively or as an adjective. For this reason, the word "SAN+DANI" ("SAN-I+DARI") should have been used in the sense of "the land of corn" as well as "the place where the corn is", "the place known for its corn".
Here, I make all these explanations just like the previous ones, using the same methods used by linguistics.
5-) You may have heard that there is toponym as the islands of “Türk and Kayık” (perhaps the phonetic value must have come across "by chance" according to some Westerners) and the phonetic value is close to “Turks & Caicos (kayık-os)”.
However, this word is one of the words in Turkish and the other in Spanish, but with different meanings. Europeans attribute this name to the word in their language. Let's assume that this is normal and perhaps really related to the word in their language.
The history of the “Turks & Caicos Islands” must have started long before Christopher Columbus first set foot on the capital “Grand Turk” (Great Turk) island in 1492 during his journey to discover the new world.
Taino (*Ata+İno/ina or *Ata+ana) and Lucayan (*Ulu+çayan) Indians lived on the “Turks and Caicos Islands”. Even the name of the country must have been coined by these first inhabitants, and there is no clear evidence as to when the name Turk was actually first coined.
The Turks & Caicos Islands, which are part of the United Kingdom, are a group of islands in the Caribbean, east of Cuba and north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with the capital "Grand Turk". The name of the largest of the islands of this group of islands, which is Turkish in its name, is also Turkish. There are different claims about why the names of these islands are Turk.
The existence of an island with a Turkish name in the Caribbean makes it necessary to question the origins of the name of this island. A widely known explanation for giving the name to the island seems to be generally accepted. According to this explanation, it is said that the British gave this name to this island, as a result of the appearance of the fez looking cactus, which was called melacactus and which was a type of headdress of the Ottomans.
The Turks and Caicos Islands are also known as the place where Columbus first set foot on land in the 1492 expedition. It is also known that the Spaniards came to this island before the British. If the Europeans who first set foot on the island did not name the island, is this a normal situation for the history of discoveries? Or, when the Europeans discovered a new region, did they name the toponyms with Turkic names?
Researcher Eren Erdoğdu, in his article on this subject, points out some issues that have drawn our attention, and states that:
"... This claim does not reflect the truth, as the Turks did not wear the fez when the island was named. There are other reasons why the island was named Turkish. … It can be thought that the Turks settled in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which is the most critical place in the Caribbean due to its pirate activity, defense and supply qualities. For this reason, the Spaniards named it Islas Turcany Caicos, that is, Turks and Thieves Islands … This expression may have been used as a warning against the influence of the Turks in the region by taking control of the island in 1706. Since the British who went to the islands later did not know their nation, the name Turks (and/or Turcany) used by the Spaniards continued to be used. It can be assumed that they do not mind.”
Let us repeat the most important detail that Eren Erdoğlu drew attention to in this matter. If the fez was not used by the Turks at that time, then how could these islands get their name from the fez cap, which the Turks did not wear at that time, in analogy with a fez-like cactus?
The fez, which was used in the Ottoman Empire from 1829 to 1925, was worn by some civilians and soldiers in Istanbul during the Tanzimat period.
In other words, the fez is not unique to the Ottoman Empire, it was born in Morocco and was used by different communities besides the Ottomans. Moreover, if this name was made when the Ottomans did not use the fez, it is understandable and not a normal situation why the Europeans did not call this island Morocco or the island of the Moroccans.
In addition, it is known that the Greeks used the fez in the same period, in fact, the Greeks may have started using the fez even before the Ottomans. As understood from a painting by Pierre Peytier depicting Greek soldiers during the inspection, the Greeks were already using the fez in 1830, and the use of the fez probably dates back to much earlier times in Greeks than in Turks. So, why didn't the British call these islands the Greek Islands or the Islands of Morocco or Fes?
However, if there are those who write by distorting the historical facts and in the form of imaginary fabrication, it will certainly create a perception of reality on people who will read their writings without questioning them.
Meanwhile, the word "Caicos" named “Turks and Caicos Islands” has evolved from the Old Turkic word "kayġuk" (small boat). This word is derived from the Old Turkish root word verb kay-. Linguist Prof. Clauson dwells on the interpretation of the "boat with the anterior and posterior ends curved up" (Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish p. 676). The word "Kayġuk" (boat) is also mentioned in the manuscript called "Divan-i Lugati't-Türk", which was written by Kaşgari Mahmut in 1073 (1071 - 1074) in the Old Turkish period.
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In fact, the word Caicos is also synonymous with the English word "Kayak"(n). However, Western dictionaries explain this word approximately as follows: [kayak (n.) is "type of Eskimo light boat", from Danish kajak, from Greenland Eskimo qayaq, literally "small boat of skins." The verb is attested from 1875, from the noun. Related: Kayaking; kayaker (1856).]
As can be seen, this word, which is written in a Turkish manuscript dictionary dating from 1073, can be seen in Eskimo, European languages, Taino or English, although with the exact same meaning. However, Western etymological words do not go back to 1757 when they refer to the oldest written form of this word. However, the written form of this word, 684 years older than the date shown in the European Etymology dictionaries, is in the Turkish language and is mentioned in the manuscript written by Kaşgari Mahmut.
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6-) While we have touched on this subject, let's touch on why the Americans, the British and some other peoples call the poultry turkey, whose homeland is America, as others like "turkey".
Harvard University Turcologist Prof. Dr. Şinasi Tekin, in response to a question from NPR's Giancarlo Casale, said:
“There is a bird in the villages in Turkey, it is called ÇULLUK (woodcock). It is similar to turkey but smaller and the meat is much more delicious. Long before the discovery of America, British merchants took this delicious ÇULLUK from the Ottoman Empire and brought it to England, and they called this animal 'Turkish bird' or 'turkey'. Later, when the British went to America, they were mistaken by thinking that the birds there were also ÇULLUK. But other countries in the world did not fall into this error. They knew that this bird came from America, and they called the bird 'castor bird', 'peru bird', 'ethiopian bird'. At that time, 'india', 'peru' and 'ethiopia' were the names given for the new continent America, people's knowledge of geography was not developed at that time and it took a long time for the name 'America' to become widespread. The Americans exported their birds all over the world and even the Turks began to eat the turkey. They had already forgotten their delicious snipe. This is quite sad, because the meat of the snipe is much tastier.”
This explanation made by Prof. Dr. Şinasi Tekin is unrealistic. Because the woodcock (woodcock/Scolopax rusticola) does not resemble a turkey at all in terms of its physical characteristics, except that they are both a bird species.
In addition, Europe is already in the natural habitat of this bird. Therefore, the idea that Europeans buy this bird from Turkish traders is absurd. Moreover, we have not been able to find any document showing that such a trade was carried out in history.
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In addition, some other countries have mentioned the turkey bird completely by including the names of other countries. In other words, it was not only the British who made a similar mistake or naming.
So why might the Ottoman Turks have called this creature as HINDI in the sense of India? Could it be that, just like Christopher Columbus, Ottoman sailors thought this geography was India when they reached America? Or did Ottoman sailors never go to America? If you look at the history written by the Westerners, we cannot say that the Ottomans went here. Of course, in our book, we show some of proofs on all these issues together with their documents.
We can see the expression "HINDI-ÇALI-TUTU" (indian bush tutu) among the explanations and synonyms for the name "sunflower" in Turkish. It is understood from the fact that this name or description is in our language, that among the people who can speak the Turkish language, the information that this plant is related to Hindi (America, which is thought to be India) was already established.
Of course, if Turkish sailors were the first to introduce turkey-bird to the British by bringing turkey to Europe from the America, then it would be a more logical approach to think that the British used the name "Turkey" to mean as like a "turkish bird".
The word TURK/TURKEY was mentioned in the first name of the Corn Plant, whose homeland is America, used in Europe. The naming situation was similar for sunflower plant. Moreover, we see the Turkish name within the America island toponym names. But linguists and historians explain each of these independently of each other and only with personal opinions (without showing any evidence).
7-) Some plant names in Turkish were also used to name different plants in some dialects. It is nonsense to think that we are making statements that do not coincide with the historical sequence without knowing this information.
Thus, another plant that is visually similar like sunflower may have been called as "GÜN+ÇİÇEĞİ" (sunflower).
While there are those who think that the Turks got the name of HİNDİ (turkey) from the French, there are also those who say that the French got it from the Turks.
While the British called this creature turkey, the Turks called it as HİND-İ (Indian) in connection with the name of India.
It is known that Malaysians call turkey "ayam belanda" or "Dutch/Holland chicken", while Cambodians call it "inilti barang (*groan barang) / (*groan+*shout)" or "French chicken". That is, probably, whichever society first got it from where it was named after the nation or geography it got it from.
The more plausible idea is that Ottoman sailors named this species turkey, meaning "a bird native to India". Because they probably thought that the geography of America, where the creature came from, was originally India. And it is possible that this creature was introduced to the British thanks to Ottoman sailors or merchants. Likewise, the turkey must have gone to France from the Turks, and the English must have named it turkey, while the French used the name used by the Turks.
According to the etymology dictionary of the Westerners called etymonline; In the 1540s, the "guinea fowl" ("guinea fowl" Numida meleagris) is a bird imported from Madagascar via Turkey and called guinea fowl when brought by traders from West Africa. The larger North American bird, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), was first domesticated by the Aztecs, introduced to Spain and from there to wider Europe by European conquistadors in 1523. The word turkey was identified with guinea fowl or accepted as a type of guinea fowl. The name was later used in English in the 1550s.
8-) The plant, whose homeland is America, but which is called Turkish corn (Indian corn), is also named as "turkey corn" or "turkey wheat" in English for the same reason.
We read the name GÜN+ÇİÇEĞİ (sunflower) in Turkish on the VM-33v page with the author's special word depiction. As I said, this name could also be the name of another plant at that time. But this probability is very small. More likely, it may be the case that Ottoman sailors went to the new continent long before Christopher Columbus and they mistook it for India. Perhaps, for political reasons or not to engage in commercial competition, they may have hidden such a situation from the Europeans. Of course, I am speculating to a certain extent when I say this. However, there is a need to explain why plants such as turkey, corn, and sunflower, whose homeland is America, were called with their name as "TÜRK" by the Europeans, along with the names of geographical regions (toponyms) with the Turkish name in the American continent. Unless these are explained, for me, all these names may have been first introduced to Europeans by Ottoman sailors, because linguistic data suggests that this possibility makes more sense.
By the way, in the old Turkish manuscripts, the word HİNT (India) is mentioned in the sentence “kimi rāy-i hindī, kimi kayṣarī” (kimi Hint racası, kimi Rum Kayseri) in the Kutadgu Bilig manuscript in year 1069.
Of course, the Ottomans could call these newly acquainted species HINDI (Indian). They mistook America for India and this naming is predictable for Turks. This naming means "the one belonging to India" in Turkish. There is a logic in that. But why did some Europeans call this bird and plants, which they thought to be India and brought with their own hands from America, not with a name related to India, but as "turkey"? So, that part of the current historical explanation is a bit more complicated and obscure.
We have given many more examples on this subject in our book and cited our sources and available evidence. I have explained only a small part of the issue here.
We learn from the article titled "The Polysemy in Plant Names" written by researcher Yasemin Yıldız and published in 2021;"Different names in the Turkish language can refer to the same plant, but plants with different meanings can take the same name due to some similarities. This reveals both polysemy and polyonymity."
You mentioned the nomenclature on the page we call the calendar page, which represents 12 MONTHS. In fact, we read all the names of the 12 months of the year. But we were able to find and show the names of some of them in old dictionaries. There could be two reasons for this. The first of these may be due to the fact that we have not examined enough articles and dictionaries yet. The second reason is that the author may have produced some of these names himself, or these words may have been used in the author's time and maybe before that, but written records may not have come to our day. Let me repeat. On the aforementioned page, some month names have already been found by us in old Turkish dictionaries. For example, the word ÇAĞI+ORAK (Sickle period/The sickle time) is written in the place corresponding to the seventh month of the year. The word ORAK was used to mean JULY in the Old Turkish period.
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When we cannot find some month names in the old dictionaries, it is understood from the root meaning and/or spelling that these are the names of the months.
Still, I try to explain by making some linguistic explanations. For example, we think that the word "seper period" means rainy time and even the English word SEPTEMBER comes from the Turkish verb SERPMEK / SEPELEMEK (*serpteber). In any case, we understand that such a designation refers to a certain period of time because of its written content in the Turkish language.
All words starting with the root word AY in Turkish do not have to have the same meaning. Some are the same, some are different. I have already explained the linguistic reasons for this phenomenon and how a word root meaning pools are formed, and I will not repeat it here.
You wrote that; "As for your other proofs, let me make some of my observations. It is not enough to proof that you find some Turkish words and in the VM, you would need to do a lot more, like disprove other theories ..." .
There are a lot of theories about what language the VM content is in, and there are those who nominate different languages, arguing that the content is a natural language. All of these individuals must substantiate their claims by using linguistic methods and presenting evidence. Each person should try to prove his/her own claim, and I am included in that. While doing this, we should not stray from science and we need to present related evidences. Please you prove your own claim in same way if you can.
We say that the VM book is written with approximately 180 characters. Of course, some of these have only been used once, and some have been used two or three times or more. A complete reading of this book is the main goal. To achieve this goal, these intricate writing signs need to be read. We understood how to read them and we express all these in our writings.
We continue our work with using scientific methods. After all, linguists working on Turkish should have the last word (whether we are successful or not). So they are the people we need to convince first. But in the meantime, please you can use your same advice here you give us and the methods you suggest us you can use to justify your own thesis too if you can.
We don't tell stories that occur in our minds as you say. If you think so, it means that you did not read our previous comments or did not understand what you read.
Regardless of EVA "daiin" or ATA "sam/sem", how they are used in sentences should be demonstrated and proven with many different sentence reading examples.
The word ATA "sem/sam" has several meanings. At the end of the word, they express that "that word belongs to the first person singular". However, when written as stand-alone words, they have various meanings. For example, in the manuscript "Divanü Lügati't-Türk", a dictionary book written around the year 1073, this word is used with meanings such as "medicine" and "ointment" and "healing/healing-giving".
In this case, should we be surprised that this word appears in so many places and sentences in a book like VM?
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This SAM/SEM word and the word suffix -SAM/-SEM also have other meanings and functions. Since I have explained these before, I will not mention the same details again.
We also talk about grammatical details in the sentences we read in Turkish and draw attention to the similar overlapping detail found in Ancient Manuscripts and written Turkish. In other words, there are no examples of sentence reading that we did not refer to some sources in our research. Many time we show some dictionarys, we show many words in the dictionaries. Moreover, we examine more than one sentence in which that word is read and show that they overlap with Turkish in every aspect, including grammar. The impressions we make with reference to sentences in these readings are not made in the form of expressing our personal opinion. In any case, we express with examples that grammatical structures also overlap. For each sentence example, we refer to a specific academic resource or dictionary.
You say that in prayer and poetry examples, word repetitions are also seen in other languages.
As a matter of fact, spectators watching a football match and cheering also repeat certain words dozens of times (in unwritten verbal language).
Neither of these can be considered equal examples.
First of all, we have not encountered a single academic study that mentions triple, quartet and quintuple repetitions in ancient manuscripts in Indo-European languages and claims that they are all found in a single manuscript.
Because in Indo-European languages, this structure cannot be shown except for the prayer or a few poetry examples you mentioned. If not so, please show it. Moreover, we could not find a single poem in English, German or any other European language with triple, quartet, quintuple repetitions too.
However, there are examples of this in all periods of written Turkish and in almost every manuscript. Even when we wrote about this subject, I also expressed the evidence on which of our other ancient manuscripts coincide with the word repetitions in terms of form, numerical diversity and frequency of occurrence in the texts.
You have also read our comments about the drawings in the VM content, but may be you did not understand. We are not saying that they burned every person who made drawings and sculptures of nude women. I am not saying that these have never been done in Europe. However, it is already known that many people who deal with books with content similar to VM content and making medicines from plants are also punished in many times in European history. In other words, we are asked this question very often and people think that the drawings in the content could not have been made in Ottoman culture. Of course, such nonsense thoughts are just unrealistic prejudices. Manuscripts and miniatures in which a large number of naked people are drawn are also available in the Ottoman Empire. Some of them are even directly pornographic.
You implied that we've changed some of our ideas about the VM.
In fact, we do not have a change of opinion on the issue you mentioned. There are 3 families and 9 people traveling and some of them are children. They travel like nomads with their herd of animals. We know these clearly from the readings of the encoded segments. However, we are still focused on examining straight lines and pages now. But I will address the coded sections in more detail later by giving examples of sentences in future.
I don't need to write anything more about VM plant images. When we read a new plant name, I can write it down. I have already touched on the issue of how the drawings are made and whether they express overlap. For this reason, I will not go into the same issue here. But I talked to a few botanists and showed them the images. They said that some of them were definitely similar. This includes drawings of plants such as onions, cucumbers, sesame (susam), and murts (sazak).
I hope that, many other linguists, botanists and doctors and pharmacists working in the field of Old Turkish should also be volunteers in this regard in the future.
We are not saying that we know the answer to all questions. We need help and if this help comes from volunteers, we say that it will be possible to progress faster and more unknown details will become known in short time.
Therefore, what we are doing now is to try to announce the issue to the academic community, which has studies on the Turkish language, and to try to create an awareness. And currently, we have to do this job only in our spare time only. Since we didn't have enough free time for a while, we were only able to look at 10% or 11% of the content of the book yet during readings.
We work when we have free time, and we do more or less a certain number of readings and translations each day we work. Earlier, I talked about the writing style that forced us in this process. I will not go into this detail again. However, these problems can be overcome if you do enough research. So this is not something we use as an excuse. The elements that make VM readings difficult are the most enjoyable parts to overcome in this puzzle.
Thanks