he present study investigates the phenomenon of language contact between Arabic and Turkish in Saudi Arabia, particularly Aseer region. In fact, Arabic and Turkish came into contact in Aseer, which was occupied by the Ottoman Caliphate before 114 years. Actually, sociolinguistics analysis of loanwords has served as a useful tool in studying the nature and reasons of word borrowing resulting from the Ottoman rule. This study is an evidence of the effect of the Ottomans on the regional Arabic dialect in Aseer. Finally, the Turkish loanwords that were used or known in Aseer are presented. It is suggested to analyze these Turkish loanwords linguistically in another study.
Keywords: Asiri regional dialect, language contact, Turkish loanwords.
1. Introduction
Language contact is a well-known phenomenon in sociolinguistics, which is an important field in applied linguistics. Wardhaugh (2010) states that sociolinguistics is “the study of language in relation to society,” (as cited in Hudson, 1996, p. 4). So, sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and society. It is known that language contact causes a linguistic change among speakers of different languages who are in contact with each other. For instance, the Turkish language and the Arabic one came into contact in Saudi Arabia, particularly in Aseer region. As a result, the Asiri regional dialect had been clearly affected by this contact.
However, the linguistic contact has a number of features. One of the most important features is the borrowing of lexical materials. Because of the language contact between Arabic and Turkish, lexical borrowing already happened in Aseer region. Therefore, the Turkish loanwords in Aseer had significantly influenced the Asiri vocabulary.
Sociolinguistics analysis of loanwords serves as a useful tool in studying the nature and the reasons of word borrowing resulting from the Ottoman rule. This study intends to clarify the language contact between Arabic and Turkish. Furthermore, it investigates the uses of this lunguistic contact, its existence and its reasons in the Southern region of Saudi Arabia, Aseer. A structured interview will be the main tool to understand the language contact between Arabic and Turkish. After that, some participants will present examples of the Turkish loanwords which they used or knew.
Finally, it is hoped that this study will be interesting for the readers and helpful for other researchers who are interested in the Arabic language, and particularly the Asiri Arabic dialect, with regards to the phenomenon of language contact. Moreover, it will be a useful study for Saudi Arabic speakers and colloquial Arabic speakers in general to be aware of the loanwords that exist in their dialect.
2. Historical Background
2.1 Aseer region
Aseer is a large and an important region in the south of Saudi Arabia. It is an administrative centre. As it is shown in the map in figure 1, it extends from Hijaz in the north and Yemen in the south, the Red Sea in the west and Najd in the east. Indeed, Islam is their religion and Arabic is their language.
Figure 1. Aseer region
Aseer became under the Ottoman Caliphate from 1818 until 1822. Abha was the center for their management. So, the Ottomans were there and they spent in Aseer forty-seven years. Actually, their control was unstable. Later on, they left Aseer and let the rule for the local princes until King Abdulaziz Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud came in 1919 and joined Aseer to his country to become a part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, (Jrais, 1994).
2.2 The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Caliphate was an Islamic rule which was established in 1881. It was a Sunni Country which prevented the spreading of Shiism. It was a powerful multinational, multilingual empire which controlled large parts of Europe, Asia and Africa at the height of its power as the red color indicates in the map (figure 2). An important reason for the Ottoman Caliphate conquest was to protect Arabs and Muslims from the schemes of crusade and Portuguese. According to Oztona (1988), protecting Islam and the Arabic language was one of the Ottomans’ aims. So, Islam and Arabic were the links between Arabs and the Ottoman Empire. Actually, Arabs have worked in their wars against the Crusaders, so they considered the Ottoman rule as an Islamic Caliphate, not as a colonization or a foreign state.
Figure 2: The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire has occupied Aseer region. It has reached Al-Hijaz and Aseer for both unifying an Islamic country and protecting the Muslims and the Holy places (the Holy Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah) from Portuguese. In fact, Aseer had a large importance for the Empire because of its distance from the center of the Empire. From the beginning of the thirteenth century until 1972, forty-six pashas have governed Aseer region like: Ibrahim Pasha, Ahmad Mokhtar Pasha, Hosain Pasha, and others, (Asiri, 1983).
Actually, the conquest of the Ottoman Empire affected the people’s speech in Aseer. So, it had some linguistic impacts especially in their vocabulary. For instance, people in Aseer have used some of the Turkish words because of the necessary contact between the government (who speak the Turkish language) and the citizens (who speak the Arabic language) in the same society. However, the process of borrowing happened naturally between the two languages, Arabic and Turkish. Although using Arabic language was one of the policies of the Ottoman Caliphate, but the later pashas used Turkish instead of Arabic; this was one of the causes of the Ottoman Caliphate’s failure and of course one of the causes of the Turkish loanwords in the Asiri Arabic dialect. Actually, the linguistic effect of Turkish persons on people’s speech in Aseer remained, even after the end of the Ottoman Caliphate.
3. Literature Review
Arabic and Turkish are two important languages. On one hand, Arabic is one of the most important languages in the world because of the religion of its speakers and their great number and expansion. As Ball (2010) says:
“Arabic is one of the major language bundles of the world, in terms of native speakers (estimated between 250 to 350 millions), geographical expansion, and role as language of religion (Islam).” (p. 238).
On the other hand, “Turkey is a geopolitically important region located between Asia and Europe” (Ball, 2010, p. 117) and Turkish is its official language. The dialect which was used and influenced other languages was the Anatolian dialect which is the purest form of Turkish, that means free from the influence of Persian and Arabic (Ball, 2010). Also, Saban & Haqi (2005) said that the dialect of the Ottomans was used in the concquested areas.
Arabic and Turkish languages have some similarity and dissimilarity. They are similar in their orthography, but Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the founder of the modern Turkish state who abolished the Islamic caliphate and replace it by secularism) changed the orthography of Turkish into Latin symbols. All of them contain different dialects related to the same language. Actually, the Turkish loanwords which were used in Aseer in the past are from the ancient Turkish Ottoman language and even the Turkish people themselvies nowadays do not understand a lot of them because they speak a modern Turkish language.
However, language contact is an important issue that happens in many societies in the world. Thomason (1988) defined language contact simply as “the use of more than one language in the same place at the same time.” (2001, p. 1). Moreover, Gumperz (1982, P. 66) showed that:
“The introduction of the single words or short, frozen, idiomatic phrases from one variety into the other items in question are incorporated into the grammatical system of the borrowing language. They are treated as part of its lexicon, take of its morphological characteristics and enter into its syntactic structures” (as cited in Benyelles, L. C., 2011, p. 19).
There are a number of studies which examined the linguistic contact between Turkish and Arabic, mainly the influence of Turkish on Arabic. For instance, in 2000, Al-Qinai stated that Arabic borrowed the Turkish words zendan which means prison cell, boza which means ice cream, sac which means bread tin, kazik which means pole or direty trick, trabzan which means railing or banisters, kopru which means bridge, piselli which means peas, zemerek which means spring, and musandira which means loft. In his study, he analyzed the borrowed words and revealed two main types of loan word modifications:
“The first type concerns those modifications sanctioned by Arabic phonotactics and morphologica paradigms. despite some anomalies, most of the morohophonemic adaptations are fairly regular and consistent. yet there are other examples of loanwords that were changed for no reason other than to give a flavour of Arabic sounds and morphological patterns.” (pp. 22, 23).
In a study by KuÅŸ, B. (2012), it is proved that the Arabic dialects in Cairo, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen have used Turkish suffixes. Hence, this study demonstrates the influence of Turkish on the Arabic language. It has been shown that the Turkish suffix, ‘-ci’ meaning one who does [x], has been borrowed by Arab speakers (Shahada, 2010). Furthermore, the study presented some Turkish loanwords in Arabic like dolap which means tallboy, kelepce which means handcuff, and koisk which means small shop.
It is known that the lexicon is the most part of language that go through change. Nagy, N. (2010) asserts that “the lexicon is the most volatile part of language and most likely to undergo change due to superstrate influence in a language contact situation” (as cited in Thomason & Kaufman, 1988). According to Khrisat, A. A. & Mohamad, M. S. (2014), the borrowed words from other languages to Arabic become part of the vocabulary. Also, they stated that:
“Borrowed words depend on two factors. First, change of letters by deleting or adding some letters, for example, ‘bernameh’ (program) becomes ‘bernamej’, and ‘banafsheh’ becomes ‘banafsaj’ (purple). Second, replacement of the foregin letter by an Arabic one, for example, ‘ferdasa’ becomes ‘ferdous’ (paradise), or change of the ‘wazen’ in order to comply with Arabic rules and standards of pronunciation and writing.” (p. 138).
They mentioned that Arabic borrows words from many languages like Greek, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish. Therefore, they stated two Turkish loanwords which are boyagh which means paint and bassmag which means finger print. Indeed, Suçin (2010) studied Turkish and Arabic from a linguistic perspective. The researcher compared Turkish and Arabic reduplications. In addition, the study of Kaymaz (2006) advocated that Turkish has affected Arabic.
In fact, there are many studies conducted of language contact between many different languages all over the world. For instance, French had changed English because of the contact between their speakers, (Poplack, S., Walker, J. S., & Malcolmson, R., 2006). Also, the Jordanian Arabic borrowed English words as shown in the study of Al-Saidat (2011). Haspelmath (2009) demonstrated that the borrowed words from French, Latin, German and English have influenced Dutch.
Undoubtedly, Turkish is one of the oldest languages which has affected Arabic and its dialects. So, it is clear from the background that Arabic and Turkish came into contact in Aseer. In this paper, the researcher will clarify this linguistic contact and investigates its impact, its uses, its reasons and its continuation of use. In addition, it will investigate the awareness of people in Asser regarding the Turkish loanwords.
4. Methodology
4. 1 The Participants
To conduct the study, more than 100 old ladies and gentlemen were selected. From among this number, 82 participants’ responses were found to be fully informative. The age of participants (f=36, m=46) ranges from 40 to 80. All of the participants are from Aseer or at least have spent their childhood in Aseer. Thus, selection of the sample was not random. The following table represents the number of the participants, their ages, and their gender.
Table 1. The Participants of the Study
Age Female Male Total
+40 14 11 25
+50 14 17 31
+60 8 18 26
Total 36 46 82
4. 2The Procedure
This study adopted structured interview as a data collection technique. The interview was conducted in three weeks in spring 2015. Surely, taking the participants’ permission to conduct the interview was necessary. After that, the participants were informed about the topic of the study. Then, the interview began by collecting the demographic information of the participants like age, gender, and tribe. Then, the interviewer asked the participants about their answers and opinions on different issues regarding language contact between Arabic and Turkish. Finally, the interviewees were requested for examples of the Turkish loanwords which were used or known in Aseer. Afterthat, they were thanked for their cooperation and contribution to this study..
More than 100 men and women who are aged between 40 and 80 and who live in Aseer have been interviewed. Firstly, the interviews were conducted firstly at Souq Atholatha’a, a traditional market in Abha where all trade come on Tusdays to offer their goods, but the participants were busy and they did not cooperate with the researcher. Therefore, the researcher conducted the interview through cell phone to save her time and effort. In this way, she could conduct more interviews with men especially, because it is hard to conduct an interview with men due to cultural factors. The questions were translated into Arabic because most of them prefer speaking with their native language, Arabic even if they can speak Englih. Actually, the interviews took up from 10 to 30 minutes. The interview sheets were numbered and coded M and F to separate the male participants from the female ones. After data collection phase was over, the obtained data were analyzed and categorized by the researcher.
4. 3 Data collection
A structured interview is the main tool to investigate the Turkish loanwords and language contact between Turkish and Arabic in Asser region. It discussed seven important issues related to the study. These issues are in appendix A. The researcher also uses the observation of the everyday talk of the aged and young Asiri people because she lives among them. However, the interview is a suitable tool to investigate the impact of the Turkish loanwords on the Asiri dialect because it helps the participants talk freely and therefore the researcher will get more benefits from their answers. However, a number of the interview sheets are used to write the interviews and the conversations of the participants in Aseer. Then, the interviews are analyzed by the researcher.
Actually, a Turkish native speaker, an Arabic linguist, and four gentlemen from Asser were shared as informants to help the researcher check the origins of the obtained words. Indeed, five dictionaries were used to check out the origins of the obtained words. The dictionaries are an Arabic-Arabic dictionary, an English-Turkish dictionary, Arabic-Turkish dictionary, an Arabic-Persian dictionary, and an Ottoman-Arabic -Turkish dictionary.
4. 4 Data Analysis
In order to discuss all the seven issues of the interview, the researcher revised all the interview sheets and eliminated some of them which were not informative. Then, the answers were analyzed and categorized based on their total answers.
After that, the researcher used the dictionaries to check the origins of the obtained words. They were more than 200 words, but they became 67 words after checking their origins.
5. Results
The interviews are based on certain topics about the Turkish loanwords in the Asiri regional dialect. These topics turn around the participants’ usage of the Turkish loanwords, the situation of using them, its continuation of using the Turkish words, the awareness of Asiri people towards Turkish loanwords, the reasons of using Turkish words instead of the Arabic ones, the effect of the Ottomans on the Asiri dialect, and more examples of the Turkish loanwords used in Aseer. All the questions asked during the interviews focus on these topics. The following themes present the analysis of the interviews’ answers about the seven issues in the interview. see Appendices A and B for complete proofs. For more detailed information, see appendices from B to I.
5.1 The usage of the Turkish loanwords
The first question in the interview was “Have you ever used words like /kutrah/, /bakhshah/, and /khÄshuqah/?”. The majority of the participants agreed that they have used the Turkish loanwords. Only few persons said that they did not use these words in their life. In fact, they may use other Turkish loanwords but without their awareness that they used Turkish words. So, the answers of this issue prove that contact language happened between Arabic and Turkish since the majority of the participants have used Turkish words, even if they are not aware that they have used them.
5.2 The situation of using Turkish words
The second question in the interview was “If you have used these words, in which situation do you use them? With whom do you use them and where?”. Most of the interviewees said that they used the Turkish loanwords only at home with their families. A few of the interviewees used these words only with older people in villages. Some of them used the Turkish loanwords in all situations with all people because, in their declaration, all the society in the past knew the meaning of these words and they used them. Hence, the Turkish loanwords had three situations: at home with families, in villages with aged people, or with all society in all situations. However, most of the participants used the Turkish words at home with their families.
5.3 The continuation of using the Turkish loanwords
The third question of the interview was “If you have used these words, do you still use them?”. Actually, the interviewees’ answers to this question are convergent. They revealed that some of them do not still use the Turkish loanwords, but the other interviewees still use them. People who do not still use the Turkish words are more than those who still use them. Most of those who still use the Turkish words use them with their sons and friends just as a joke. So, the actual use of Turkish words decreased.
5.4 The awareness of Asiri people towards Turkish loanwords
The fourth question in the interview was “Can you tell me how the Turkish words came to our dialect?”. The majority declared that the Turkish loanwords which were used in Aseer came from the days of the Ottoman Caliphate, while few participants do not know from where these Turkish loanwords came. Only one of the participants said that maybe those Turkish loanwords came from pilgrimage (Al-Hajj) where many non-Arabic speaking Muslims met to perform Al-Hajj. So, the majority know that the Ottoman Caliphate or the Turks are the reason of the existence of the Turkish words into the Asiri regional dialect. Actually, the Asiri gentlemen have revealed more awareness than the Asiri ladies regarding the Turkish loanwords.
5.6 The reasons of using Turkish words instead of Arabic ones
The fifth question in the interview was “Why did you use these Turkish words instead of Arabic ones?”. The interviewees’ answers revealed five reasons of using Turkish words instead of Arabic ones. Some of the interviewees said that the reason of using Turkish words instead of Arabic ones is the strong effect of Turks who lived with Asiri people in Aseer. They declared that they used Turkish words to show their loyalty to the Ottoman rule. Other interviewees said that they used the Turkish words because they are related to solids which were new to their society like khÄshuqah which means spoon which was not exited in Asser before the Ottoman rule. Because they were new materials in their society, so they used them as the Turks pronounced them. However, some interviewees said that they were used to hear these Turkish words from their parents and grandparents, so they used them without knowing their source. Few interviewees said that their illiteracy of Arabic in the past is the reason of using the Turkish words instead of Arabic ones. While one of the interviewees said that our Arab scholars and writers are the cause behind this phenomenon because they disregarded Arabic. In contrast, some of the interviewees do not know the reason of using Turkish words in Aseer instead of Arabic ones because they do not know about the Turkish loanwords. So, the participants revealed many reasons of using Turkish words instead of Arabic ones, but the strong effect of the Ottomans was the reason for most of them.
5.7 The effect of the Turkish loanwords on the Asiri regional dialect
The sixth question of the interview was “Do you think that the Turkish loanwords affected or changed the Asiri regional dialect?”. Most of the interviewees rejected firmly that the Turks affected or changed the Asiri dialect. While some of the interviewees agreed that their dialect had been changed and affected by the Turks. On the other hand, few interviewees do not have an opinion towards the Turkish words because of their unawareness regarding this issue. Therefore, most participants rejected firmly that the Turks have affected or changed their Asiri dialect while those who agree said that the effect was limited and restricted only to some solids which were new to them.
5.8 Examples of the Turkish loanwords
The seventh question of the interview was “Could you please give me examples of the Turkish words that you used or knew”. Approximately, half of the interviewees have examples of the Turkish loanwords which were used in Aseer. While, the other half of the interviewees do not have an example of the Turkish loanwords. Most of those who did not mention an example of a Turkish word have awareness of them but they forget them.
The Turkish words which the participants used or knew are presented in table 2. They were 200 words but they became 67 words after cheking their origins. The dropped words are from Arabic and Persian origins and some of them are dialectal words. The rest of the words are Turkish and Ottomans. However, they are written alphabetically based on the Arabic pronunciation of the Turkish words. The transcription of the Turkish words and their Arabic pronunciation are shown near each word. Also, the meaning in Arabic and in English of each Turkish loanword is shown for each word in the same table besides their part of speech.