EXAMPLES OF PHONETIC ADAPTATIONS OF FARSISMS AND ARABISMS FROM 16TH CENTURY TRANSCRIPTION TEXTS

Abstract

The Turkish material in the so-called transcription texts presents a unique feature for the studies on historical phonetics of Turkish, as they were compiled by the authors who wrote down the words as they heard, instead of using the standard Ottoman orthography. Comparative studies on those texts make possible to detect the phonetic variantsin the spoken Turkish of the relevant period. The examples found in the two dictionaries which were scribed with Latin alphabet in the 16th century, represent different stages and forms of adaptation of Arabic and Persian borrowings to Turkish. Italian-Turkish Dictionary which was written by Pietro Lupis Valentiano around 1520 is one of the oldest transcription texts from Italy, along with Filippo Argenti’s dictionary. The second compilation I examine within the scope of this study is the Turkish part of the 6-language phrasebook found at the end of the travel notes of Jean Palerne who travelled in the Ottoman lands between 1581-1583. In this article, the phonetic changes, such as a > i, -a- > -o-, -u- > -o-, -Vy- > -V-, -g- > -h-/-Ø-, -ḫ- > -ḳ- changes and consonant assimilation, which borrowings in aforementioned two dictionaries underwent, are discussed with the attestations from dialects of Turkish as well as other transcription texts.