Persian Loanwords in Anatolian Turkish

Abstract

It is well known that Ottoman Turkish literature from its very beginning to the early part of this century was strongly influenced by the classical Persian literature. Knowledge of the Persian language and letters was a sine qua non of Ottoman education. No wonder that the dictionaries of Ottoman abound in poetic, but also prosaic, Persian loanwords. The prosaic ones include a large amount of househould terminology, which markedly differs from the high-level poetic terms by its stronger assimilation and integration in the Turkish language. These terms for domestic objects and concepts must have been borrowed at an early stage, however difficult it may be to state when. It is also difficult to assess the role which was played by erudite snobbery in their borrowing, although we may assume that it was not large. Less attention has been paid to the Persian loanwords which are not represented in the standard language, but are being used in the dialects of Anatolia. With some of these our present study intends to deal. All materials presented here have been extracted from the Saz derleme dergisi (DD, see Works cited in abbrevation, at end of article) which only lists those words that can be regarded as completely assimilated. In this, our study follows a number of earlier studies (Andreas Tietze: 'Griechische Lehnwdrter im anatolischen Tiirkisch', Oriens, vol. 8, 1955, pp. 204-257; 'Slavische Lehnwirter in der tiirkischen Volkssprache', Oriens, vol. 10, 1957, PP. 1-47; 'Direkte arabische Entlehnungen im anatolischen Tiirkisch', Melanges Jean Deny, Ankara, 1958, pp. 255-333; 'Einige weitere griechische Lehnw*rter im anatolischen Tiirkisch', Nemeth armagans, Ankara, 1962, pp. 373-388). The material presented in this article is arranged in the alphabetical order of the etyma. Each entry begins with the Modern Persian etymon, often followed by remarks about is formation, dialectical variants, and the distribution in geographically significant areas; a colon then leads