Persian language, Ottoman pronunciation

[ceonni]

Ihsan and Temujin: I am still looking all over wikipedia for the academic term that describes the variant of the Persian language spoken, or at least studied by the (in particular) Ottoman and Anatolia Seljuk period Turks, especially Turkish courtiers and intellectuals.

As you know, the Persian language, throughout history and throughout many lands of Eurasia, including Afghanistan, India, Turkey, Iraq, Central Asia etc, were usually not called "Farsi" (which implies articulation of the language as a local dialect of the Province of Fars), but called "Dari" (the literary language of the "Dar", or the palace gate).

It is also called Tajiki in Central Asia because Muslim Persians, Persified Muslim Arab colonists and Muslim Soghdians who adopted the Persian language were in general covered under the ethnonym "Tajik" in Greater Khorasan.

But today I want to focus on Anatolia: vocabulary in the modern or Ottoman Turkish languages of Persian origin are articulated in their uniquely "Ottoman", or "Anatolian Turkish" pronunciation that they are never really pronounced with the more back-voweled and "muddy" flavor as in today's Standard Farsi.

I suppose, throughout Ottoman history, most Turkish students or writers in the literary Dari language (presuming it was called such), never needed to copy the accent of Fars unless diplomacy with the Saffavids or Qajjars became a necessity.

As a result of long tradition of study and use of literary Persian in Turkey, I wonder, if scholars who study poetry, literary works written in Persian in contemporary Turkey still mainly pronounce whole articles in this "Ottoman" articulation of literary Persian, without having to discard the pronunciation they are used to from Turkish words of Persian origins, and to learn a whole new language from scratch that is the national language of modern Iran?

If many Turkish scholars do still study Persian through its traditional, Ottoman trappings, what do we call this system of pronunciation and perhaps, style of grammatical and vocabulary use? Should it be called "Turco-Persian", "Ottoman Persian", just as Japanese pronunciation of words of Chinese origin is called "Sino-Japanese", or "Japano-Chinese"?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Hello Ceonni,

Most of the scholars in Turkey still prefer the Ottoman or Modern Turkish pronunciation, as well as writing style, of Persian words in Anatolian Turkish. You can find examples in the city and region names like Tahran (Tahrân), Þiraz (Šîrâz), Ýsfahan/Isfahan (Isfahân/Esfahân), Tebriz (Tabrîz), Kirman (Kîrmân), Horasan (Khorâsân), etc. I prefer to write in the modern pronunciation version but I always give the original form in paranthesis. I would call your question as "Turko-Persian".

[ceonni]

I am pretty certain about this fact actually. Throughout a modern Turkish piece of writing one can only find words or names of Persian origin that are thoroughly "naturalized" into the Turkish phonology, without imitating the modern pronunciations of the dialect of Fars (ie. the Iranian national language). So, we can say there there is no "code switching in a phonological way" in a sense that English speakers nowadays use French words "deja vu", "connoisseur", "confidant"---a la franca.

However, what I am more interested is, whether there are still great enthusiasm among students of Turkish literature, to learn, not only Osmanlica, but the Persian language that was widely used in many sections of the Ottoman learned classes. I mean "Persian language", not "Osmanlica words of Persian origins". For example, a miniature recounting the battle of Mohics could be provided with captions entirely in the Persian language. Rumi and other Turkish poets also wrote many poems that were entirely Persian.

I am wondering: are students in Turkish literature who learn Persian in order to interpret Persian writings exclusively on Ottoman subjects (rather than things related to Modern Iran) rather rare? When they study Persian (the whole literary language, not simply Turkish words with persian origins), do they tend to update their pronunciation system according to the modern national language Iran, or otherwise?

If I show you a poem by Rumi entirely written in the Persian language, how would you have pronounced it and transliterated it into the Latin script? How would most students that major in Turkish Literature at school?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Well, sir, the number of students who learn Persian is law as far as I see. I personally know only one person, an assistant in the History Department of the Gazi University, who studies Aqqoyunlu-Qaraqoyunlu history so she needs to learn it. I also sometimes see advertisements and announcements of Persian language courses being distributed in departments. I also know the place of the "Persian Language Teaching Center" in downtown Ankara. Yet, none of my classmates in my undergraduate years learned Persian. Appearently, people don't feel any need to learn the language, and the number of people studying branches of history which recquires Persian is dropping year by year.

Oh I forgot to mention a friend of mine who studies Persian language in the Ýstanbul University. When I asked him which version of Persian they are learning, he told me they learn both Classical and Modern Persian, and sticking to the original pronunciations instead of the Turkish version.

If you give me a poem by Rûmî, I would transcript it to the Latin alphabet both in the Classical and Modern way, without using the Turkish version of pronunciation. Scholars who know and use Persian during their studies, such as Salim Koca, tend to stick to the original version, but there are instances when scholars use the Turkish pronunciation when writing Arabic and Persian names.

[ceonni]

are there lots of poems in the Ottoman language which contain whole sentenses written in Persian?

This is called "code-switching" in linguistics. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

In the case of code switching, how should the poems be pronounced?

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

I haven't read many Ottoman poems; those I read were all in Ottoman Turkish, i.e. single languaged.