مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - An Exploration of a Word Map: The Words “Tomato, Cat and Potato” in the Turkey Turkish Dialects

Abstract :

The reasons that retarded the preparing of the language atlases in Turkey are; that dialect studies in a modern sense began nearly sixty years later than in Europe, and the existing material was not compiled, recorded and worked upon at the correct time. The first study, covering the years 1932-1934 and the second, covering the years 1952-1959 by the Turkish Language Association (TDK) are the most extensive studies conducted in Turkey on Turkish, but subsequently, these studies could not be enlarged upon, and, most importantly, a language atlas of this material could not be prepared. The reason why this field of study has been neglected for a long time was because not much importance was given to language atlases. In this study the three words “domates” (tomato), “patates” (potato) and “kedi” (cat) are investigated, which occur in different forms in Turkish dialects. These words are shown with their places of use on a map of Turkey, in the attempt undertaken at a study to form a word map. The material employed was based upon the, Türkiye’de Halk Ağzından Derleme Sözlüğü, 12 Volumes (TDK Publishing, Ankara 1993). It was seen that data related to the used words in this study has been insufficiently collected from some regions. An attempt has been made to complete this missing data through consulting the local people still living in those regions and those who used to live in those regions.