Impact of the Turkish Language on Turkey Culture - Essay Example

?Impact of the Turkish Language on Turkey Culture Impact of the Turkish Language on Turkey Culture Language influences greatly on the culture of a people. The paper seeks to review the use of Turkish language as the medium of communication in Turkey. Turkish language is a key bondage factor for the people of Turkey. Moreover, it also confers an identity to the Islamic community. Turkish language is very old dating back 5500 to 8500 years. Its structure is morphological, phonetic, and syntactic structure, and in addition, it possesses an affluent vocabulary. The emergence and use of English in Turkey has also been discussed. English use has facilitated globalization and placed Turkey in the international scene. Christianity has also begun to spread with the increased use of English. The importance and influence of both languages has been extensively discussed. Introduction This report seeks to establish information on the impacts of language, cultures, and communication on a community. The report will analyze if language choice is a real choice in multilingual contexts, and more so considering issues like linguistic imperialism and language policy. In this report, the focus will be on Turkish language, and if English has been effective in Turkey. In the following part of the report, two sociolinguistic or intercultural issues will be reviewed in the context of the choice of language in this community, and how significant they are in their choice of language. These are language planning and language attitudes. There are several issues that influence a community or social network, and they include multilingualism, language planning, language shift, politeness, dialect variation, language attitudes, language, and gender. In its definition, a language is any set of defined regulations that can be used to put into words ideas, thought, or instructions. This has brought about variance in different languages. For instance Turkish language has basic features, which make it different from the Indo-European are the vowel harmony, the absence of gender, agglutination, adjectives preceding nouns, and verbs appear at the end of the sentence ( Turkish Cultural Foundation, 2011). Since most of the world’s inhabitants can converse in only one language, a reasonable minority can exchange a few words in two or more languages. For instance, out of the world’s 750 million speakers who speak English, only a small percentage of them use it as their native or first language. The other significant part of the English speakers uses it as a second or third language. Perfect examples of speakers who use English as their other language are people from Turkey who majorly speak the Turkish language as their first language. In situations where two or more speakers of languages gather at a place, a resolution has to be made about which language will be of use in expressing their ideas and thoughts. This is the choice of language (Turkish Cultural Foundation, 2011). Linguistic imperialism is the obligation of one language on speakers of other languages (Turkish Cultural Foundation, 2011). Currently, the worldwide expansion of English language has often been seen as the principal case of linguistic imperialism. Through the use of language policy the government attempts to put off or support the use of a language in its country or state. In this aspect, we consider both the written and spoken contexts of a language. This can be by the use of legislation, policies, or court decisions to decide on how the use of languages and encourages language skills necessary to establish the use of the language. Examples of language policies include policies of assimilation, policies of non-intervention, policies of differentiated legal status, policies of promotion of the official language and many other policies. Turkish is a Turkic language with about 70 million users in Turkey and other countries including Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Canada, Georgia, Denmark and others. In the past times, the writing of Turkish language was a version of the Perso-Arabic script known as Ottoman Turkish script. It later on changed from the Arabic script to the Latin version, which has been in use in these times. The Turkish language is the official first language in Turkey, and the minority languages include Kurdish and Arabic. It may be thought that the elements affecting choice of language are not many and straightforward, but, such is not the case. In most cases, no reasonable explanation can be provided as to why speakers make the choices they do in language (Turkish Cultural Foundation, 2011). Language can be either spoken or written and so is the Turkish language. There has been fascination to sociolinguists by the observable fact of bilingualism or multilingualism and the changing pattern that mostly go together with it. This is whereby a speaker can make use of two or more languages without any difficulty. Many of these speakers have the capability of changing from language to language with no difficulty, sometimes in mid-sentence. Researches trying to define such patterns have been able to provide a clear explanation as to how and why this happens. In clearer perspective, the choice of language bases majorly on setting in which the speaker finds himself (Haznedar, 2007). The recent establishments are that bilingual people differentiate between the grammatical systems they get exposed to from their early lives. When it comes to the Turkish language the choice of language is about the reasonable fluency a person has in many languages. A speaker of Turkish language will be more comfortable, and at ease communicating in this language, and especially if he or she is in a setting where Turkish language is in use. Turkish language is the lingua franca in Turkey. Therefore, anyone in Turkey will be comfortable to use this language in his or her communication, as it is the first language of this country. In Turkish language, the two sociolinguistic or intercultural issues that will affect it are language attitudes and language planning. These two factors shape the Turkish language along with other factors like multilingualism, language shift, politeness, dialect variation, and language and gender. Language planning is the process whereby the government of the country organizes various undertakings in a language, which in turn affect the popularity of the language. This takes place in various aspects, for example, in Turkey the education planning is in the Turkish language. The official language in education is the Turkish language as we see that it is the first official language with over 70million speakers. This means that any education that takes place is in Turkish language, and this makes the language popular. Language Planning Language planning and policy resolutions come from the reaction to sociopolitical needs. Language planning decisions on average try to get these needs together by minimizing linguistic diversity, for example, where a single language is a national language in a multilingual country. Language planning involves several steps, and the first stage requires analysis, engaging a sociopolitical analysis of communication patterns in the society. In the Turkish language, planning took the steps of codification, standardization, elaboration, and cultivation. The areas that this planning affects are writing, lexicon, and syntax. This language planning is effective in planning education for a country. In Turkey, the Turkish language is the medium of basic education for children. Formal education in Turkey, which includes pre-school education, primary education, and secondary education, takes place in the Turkish language. The first level of primary education is compulsory to all children in Turkey and, therefore, the Turkish language has a foundation in the citizens of Turkey from a young level. The teaching of all subjects in the Turkey education curriculum takes place in the Turkish language. Language Attitude A language attitude is another factor that affects the choice of language with exceptional attention to the Turkish language. Learning a language is in closely relation towards the languages (Karahan, 2007). A language attitude refers to the mind-set, which speakers of different languages or language varieties have in relation to each other’s languages or to their personal language. Depictions of negative or positive feelings towards a language may show impressions of linguistic hardship or simplicity, level of importance, social status, elegance, etc. Mind-set towards a language may also express what people feel about the speakers of that language. Mind-sets are a component of motivation in the process of language learning and so does it affect Turkish language (Issa 25). Attitudes tend to contain a cognitive element, which will comprise of beliefs about objects related to the attitude. Secondly, they have an evaluative element and lastly a behavioral component. If a learner of Turkish language has a wrong or negative attitude towards the culture of Turkey people, then it becomes difficult for someone to know and understand this language. The English language has impacted greatly on Turkish culture. English is the principal foreign language and speakers have the benefit of holding prestigious positions in many countries including Turkey. It is a second language in Turkey as it is not an official or a national language, but, it is mostly taught as a foreign language at all stages of learning. In Turkey, English learning begins during high school while other learners start as early as preschool or primary education. The demand for English is growing in Turkey, as it is the most useful language in international communication because most countries have the English language as their first and official language (Karahan, 2007). The teaching of English language is widespread in Turkey and this has led to the demand for more institutions where English is the major language for instruction. The international relations that most citizens of Turkey involve them in require the knowledge of English language. In the present times, there are increasing commercial and cultural connections between Turkey and the rest of the world, and English is the most influential linguistic means, which link Turkey to the rest of the world. In another perspective, most people in Turkey feel favor the adoption of English in most schools and institutions (Haznedar, 2007). This will be a link to the erosion of the Turkish cultures. These cultures have significantly stored by the use of teaching using the Turkish language. Many scholars feel that people can learn foreign languages by going to foreign language-medium schools, and this does not mean that all schools should use the English language in teaching (Hewitt, 2002). The introduction of English language in the Turkish education system has seen it undergo several changes for it to accommodate the English language. These changes are it terms of political and economic developments in the Turkey government. One of these notable changes is evident in the curriculum, which accommodates the English language policies (Haznedar, 2007). This introduction of English is not without any challenges and resistance from the Turkey citizens. Some of the rigid cultures of Turkey are becoming less rigid with the introduction of English language as the speakers adopt the culture aspects that come with the language. For instance, Turkey is the country whose total population is of Muslim religion, but, with the learning of English language, the citizens are embracing other religions like Christianity. Conclusion The choice of language relies on various factors and most people put these factors into considerations before making a decision on which language to use. The language attitudes and language planning are some of the factors that affect the language choice. The Turkish language has an impact on the choice of other languages like English language. The language speakers chose to use to convey their messages will an impact on the understanding of the message and the relationship the speakers will have with each other. The development of a strong tradition of language learning in Turkey is essential as an adding factor to the growth of the communication ability of Turkish. Turkish language is undergoing a transformation that is necessary so that it can accommodate other languages like English and French. Knowledge and learning of foreign languages and more so of the English language is a tremendously prominent part of the current world. In order for the Turkish language rise to the level where it can be of use in international relations and meet the degree of communication requirements of the current world, it has to allow the interaction of other languages like the English language. Works Cited Issa, Tozun. (2005) Talking Turkey: the language, culture, and identity of Turkish speaking children in Britain. London: Trent ham books. Turkish Cultural Foundation.(2011). A Brief History of Turkish language. [Assessed 20 Nov 2011]. Available at: http://www.turkishculture.org/literature-124.htm Haznedar, B. (2007). Crosslinguistic Influence in Turkish-English BilingualFirst Language Acquisition: The Overuse of Subjects in Turkish. Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA). [Assessed 20 Nov 2011]. Available at: http://www.lingref.com/cpp/galana/2/paper1553.pdf Karahan, F.(2007). Language attitudes of Turkish students towards the English language and its use in Turkish context. Journal of Arts and Sciences, 1,pp. 73-88. Hewitt, G.(2002). Language-planning for North Caucasian Languages in Turkey. [Assessed 21 Nov]. Available at: http://www.circassianworld.com/hewitt.html Read More