The Birth and Death of Bosnian Varieties of Turkish

Authors : Ekrem čaušević
Pages : 11-18
View : 178 | Download : 135
Publication Date : 2024-12-05
Article Type : Research Paper
Abstract :Today it is widely accepted to make the assertion that the dialects of Turkish are divided into two large branches: (I) Anatolian and (II) Balkan (or Rumelian). Anatolian dialects are divided into three main groups, (a) Eastern, (b) Northeastern, and (c) Western, each of which has several subgroups. These categories are based upon the classification laid down by Németh, who included not only the Turkish dialects of western Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo in the West Rumelian group, but also those of Albania, Bosnia, and Serbia (NEƵMETH 1956: 12-56; IDEM 1982: 119). This classification has been in continuous use up to the present day (TRYJARSKI 1990: 441; KARAHAN 1996: 1-2). I do not think BVT can be considered a Balkan dialect of Turkish, although it developed on the basis of an Old Ottoman substratum brought to Bosnia by the Ottomans. Bosnians did not replace their maternal (Bosnian) language with a dialect of Turkish and impose non-Turkish characteristics on it, as was the case with autochtonous non-Turks in other parts of the Ottoman Empire who dropped their native languages and adopted Turkish varieties. WRT is the native language of Turkish immigrants in western Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, while the Bosnian variety, which came into being as a result of the cultural and business contacts between the local South Slavic population and native speakers of Turkish, had to be learned as a foreign language. Aside from that, they did not use Bosnian Turkish when communicating with one another in public (which was almost universally noted by foreign travel writers) or within the family. We do not know enough even about how well it was spoken by Muslim women, whose education was generally limited to elementary religious instruction in maktabs, and whose social contacts consisted of immediate family members and relatives. BVT was never spoken by the majority of the population, which is why it died out after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina began in 1878.
Keywords : Türk lehçeleri, Batı Rumeli Türkçesi, Türkçenin Boşnakça varyantı

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