Is Turkish Sumerian?

[Deltabravo]

I've been studying Turkish for several years.   It's a fascinating language because it's so simple in it's structure, has so few actual "words" and is backwards. It has the same structure as Sumerian

But, once you figure out the rules, you find that core words are the same as in English and particularly American slang.

The word for "go" in Turkish, for instance is "git".   "Big" is "buyuk".  And so on. 

Word endings in English are also directly from Turkish.    So, you add "li" to anything you like and you get a word denoting "with".   So, "with sugar" is "sekerli" pronounced "shegerly".    Instead of adding an "s" to get the possessive tense, they add "n" so you would get "America'n".  Add "ci" and you get what a person does for a living.  Any noun placed after a possessive noun has to have the ending "i" attached to it. "Cat" is "keddi".  When you refer to yourself, you are "ben", being.  

What you can do is use this to deconstruct English words.  So, for instance "bu" means "this" and "ra" means "place" so together they are "bura".  Which is the ending "borough".  "Good" is "iy", pronounced "eee" and "from" is "den", so you "iy den" (eden) would mean "good from" and "iyedenbura" would mean "good from this place"....Edinburgh. 

The verbs are the core of the sentence because you just keep adding endings and verbs are conjugated as in French. 

If you were going "to" New York, you'd add the ending "a" as in French for "to" or English "at" and you get "New York'a.  Put this together and you get  "Ben, new york'a gidiyorum".   "me, New York to, getting I am".  

Because of this I began taking an interest in Turkey and the claim that it is the birthplace of Europe. It's also called Anatolia, which translates as "motherland";  "ana" means "mother". 

I just now googled Turkey and Sumeria and I got this site: Sumerian Turks

The Seljuk Turks, whose DNA is actually European, drove the Christians out of Constantinople so that the Eastern Roman Empire became the Ottoman Empire and a mortal threat to Christendom until it came to an end under Mutafa Kemal "Ataturk" as recently as the 1920's.  Since then we've had two wars, the cold war and lots more to preoccupy our thoughts. Added to that, the Ottomans imposed Islam which takes no interest in history prior to Mohammed.

It's really only since the discovery of Gobekli Tepe that we are starting to realize how important this part of the world is to an understanding of the origins of civilization. 

So, rather than disappearing off the face of the earth, did the Sumerian language survive as Turkish?

[PopeyesPappy]

Is Turkish Sumerian? No, but the two probably share Uralic origins. According to the site you linked they would have started together, diverged into different languages, then they were both influenced by other related but separate languages.

[Deltabravo]

I think that the Sumerian language is the parent language of Turkish.

What is interesting about Turkish is that it will use the same word for lots of different things. It doesn't have lots of words for the same thing, like English does. Instead, you use a word like "yok" to mean "no" or "nothing" or anything negative. There's only one word for the third person singular "on" which is where we get "one" from. There's no gender in the language. The rules are also absolutely strict as is pronunciation. No deviations allowed. I can see that it is a language which works for illiterate primitive people because you can't have a large vocabulary in a primitive, unwritten language nor can you afford to vary from the strict rules or the language would fall apart.

I have a theory that if you want to figure out how language developed from animal sounds, Turkish is a model for the first human "language" used by people who could think like modern humans as opposed to animals using sounds. The Turkish language takes a sound and then develops it by sticking endings, always the same and making multiple words and the original sound or root of the word can mean a variety of different things.

Sort of like how dogs make noises. They only have a limited number of sounds so that what the sound "means" depends on what they are reacting to. They can growl out of fear, or anger or territoriality or over food.

[Old Man Marsh]

No, Turkish is British.

[epronovost]

i doubt Turkish has much roots in common with Sumerian considering Turks migrated from eastern asia over their history to their current borders. They didn't reach Iraq and Anatolia, the area Sumerian civilisation inhabited until the medieval era, but its true that the turkish language incorporated a lot of words and structures from Persian and Arabic, two languages that have a stronger link with Sumerian (especially the first one). The closest cousin of Turkish is still Mogolian which shouldn't come as a surprise both culture are close cousins and have shared the same area for most of their history.

[tomilay]

I have a theory that if you want to figure out how language developed from animal sounds, Turkish is a model for the first human "language" used by people who could think like modern humans as opposed to animals using sounds.  The Turkish language takes a sound and then develops it by sticking endings, always the same and making multiple words and the original sound or root of the word can mean a variety of different things.  

That describes just about every human language today.  Arguably what we describe as separate words and clauses is arbitrary.

[c172]

I was reading a text in Azeri, and that seems to be a pretty related language, though I can't really define how (I should've minored in linguistics. I love conlanging when I have time and motivation). I think their use of the schwa symbol is interesting.

[Vera]

That describes just about every human language today.  Arguably what we describe as separate words and clauses is arbitrary.

It's called an agglutinative language, like many others. That is all it means.

[epronovost]

That describes just about every human language today.  Arguably what we describe as separate words and clauses is arbitrary.

It's called an agglutinative language, like many others. That is all it means.

There is a lot of bullshit on the Turkish language peddled by Turkish ultranationalist in an effort to place their nation as the cornerstone of the world's civilisations.

[Deltabravo]

I have a theory that if you want to figure out how language developed from animal sounds, Turkish is a model for the first human "language" used by people who could think like modern humans as opposed to animals using sounds.  The Turkish language takes a sound and then develops it by sticking endings, always the same and making multiple words and the original sound or root of the word can mean a variety of different things.  

That describes just about every human language today.  Arguably what we describe as separate words and clauses is arbitrary.

Yes, that's right, all languages are more or less aglutinative.  The question is whether all language began as agglutinative. 

Turks are very snooty about their language because they say it follows an immutable form.  But there's a trend in some parts to de-agglutinize the language and make up slang words.  The problem with Turkish as a useful language is that it doesn't flow in a sensible way.  You start off by setting out the noun, adjectives, adverbs, the object of the sentence, then you get to the verb and you don't know the ultimate meaning of the sentence until the end of the verb because the verb contains the tense, future or past etc, and the negative.  You can't change any of this, unlike English where you can throw words into any kind of order and still be understood.  Get any aspect of a Turkish sentence wrong and they stare at you in bewilderment. 

Logically, languages have to have began like this because, in order for it to be useful across a large population in times before language was written, you have to have rules that are unchanging. The more this structure breaks down, the more it becomes difficult for different groups to communicate and I guess that is where languages diverge.

Turks see Turkey as the motherland of all civilization, ie., it is at the top end of the Fertile Crescent.  There is a split between Turkic people in Turkey; those who are more western in appearance and those who look oriental.  One Turk told me that people from Turkmenistan look down on Turkish Turks as not being as "pure" since they figure Turks came from Asia.

There's a Turkish equivalent to Aryanism called Turanism and Turks from the east call themselves "Gok Turks" or "Celestian Turks".  A Turkish friend of mine said that they believe they came from the skies, like the Annunaki of the Sumerians.

I'm not asking whether Sumerian derives from Turkish.  What I wonder is whether modern Turkish is derived ultimately from Sumerian.  The Ottomans and Turanians would put Turkish first while I'm wondering if the Turkish of Turkey is actually the indigenous language of the area, which spread out eastwards from the centre.

[Phaedrus]

http://sumerianturks.org/
http://sumerianturks.org/sumerian_turkish.htm

Nothing cures my curiosity quite like a good ole google search.

[Deltabravo]

http://sumerianturks.org/
http://sumerianturks.org/sumerian_turkish.htm

Nothing cures my curiosity quite like a good ole google search.

I found those sites, but that states it the other way around.  Because the "Turks" invaded from the East and were Asian, it's considered that Turkish comes from the East.  What those sites say is that Sumerian, way down in southern Iraq, is an Asian language!  

I would describe Turkish as like a chassis of a car with the engine at the back.  It's a very rudimentary language with a lot vewer core words compared with English, and very rigid rules.

[tomilay]

I have a theory that if you want to figure out how language developed from animal sounds, Turkish is a model for the first human "language" used by people who could think like modern humans as opposed to animals using sounds.  The Turkish language takes a sound and then develops it by sticking endings, always the same and making multiple words and the original sound or root of the word can mean a variety of different things.  

That describes just about every human language today.  Arguably what we describe as separate words and clauses is arbitrary.

Yes, that's right, all languages are more or less aglutinative.  The question is whether all language began as agglutinative. 

Turks are very snooty about their language because they say it follows an immutable form.  But there's a trend in some parts to de-agglutinize the language and make up slang words.  The problem with Turkish as a useful language is that it doesn't flow in a sensible way.  You start off by setting out the noun, adjectives, adverbs, the object of the sentence, then you get to the verb and you don't know the ultimate meaning of the sentence until the end of the verb because the verb contains the tense, future or past etc, and the negative.  You can't change any of this, unlike English where you can throw words into any kind of order and still be understood.  Get any aspect of a Turkish sentence wrong and they stare at you in bewilderment. 

Logically, languages have to have began like this because, in order for it to be useful across a large population in times before language was written, you have to have rules that are unchanging. The more this structure breaks down, the more it becomes difficult for different groups to communicate and I guess that is where languages diverge.

Turks see Turkey as the motherland of all civilization, ie., it is at the top end of the Fertile Crescent.  There is a split between Turkic people in Turkey; those who are more western in appearance and those who look oriental.  One Turk told me that people from Turkmenistan look down on Turkish Turks as not being as "pure" since they figure Turks came from Asia.

There's a Turkish equivalent to Aryanism called Turanism and Turks from the east call themselves "Gok Turks" or "Celestian Turks".  A Turkish friend of mine said that they believe they came from the skies, like the Annunaki of the Sumerians.

I'm not asking whether Sumerian derives from Turkish.  What I wonder is whether modern Turkish is derived ultimately from Sumerian.  The Ottomans and Turanians would put Turkish first while I'm wondering if the Turkish of Turkey is actually the indigenous language of the area, which spread out eastwards from the centre.

This is a lot to digest.  I am still trying to wrap my head around agglutination.

Agglutination is a linguistic process pertaining to derivational morphology in which complex words are formed by stringing together morphemes without changing them in spelling or phonetics. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages. An example of such a language is Turkish, where for example, the word evlerinizden, or "from your houses", consists of the morphemes ev-ler-iniz-den with the meanings house-plural-your-from.

I don't understand why the Turkish example given is considered special apart from the word ordering.  Otherwise how is it different from fromyourhouses with the morphemes from-your-house-plural?