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Taipei | What does Taipei produce? | Taipei produces textiles, apparel, electronics, machinery, printed materials, precision equipment, food, and beverages. | data/set3/a6 | Taipei
Taipei (å°å; literally "Northern Taiwan") is the largest city in Taiwan and has served as the de facto capital (provisional capital) of the Republic of China (commonly known as "Taiwan") since the Chinese Civil War in 1949. It is situated almost at the northern tip of the island, on the Danshui River, and about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean. Another coastal city, Danshui, is about 20 km northwest at the river's mouth on the Taiwan Strait.
Taipei lies in the two relatively narrow valleys of the Keelung (åºéæ²³) and Xindian (æ°åºæºª) Rivers, which join to form the Danshui River along the city's western border. Taipei is the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country.
Taipei City, Taipei County, and Keelung City together form the Taipei metropolitan area but are administered under different local government bodies. "Taipei" sometimes refers to the whole metropolitan area, while "Taipei City" refers to the city proper.
Taipei is part of a major industrial area. Railways, high speed rail, and bus lines connect Taipei with all parts of the island. The city is served by Songshan Airport (for domestic and cross-strait flights) and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (for international flights and some cross-strait flights).
Taipei was founded in the early 18th century and became an important center for overseas trade in the 19th century. The Japanese acquired Taiwan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War and made Taipei the island's capital. The Republic of China took over the island in 1945 after Japan's defeat in World War II. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declared Taipei the provisional capital of the Republic of China in December 1949 after the Kuomintang (KMT) government was defeated by the Communists who took over most of Mainland China during the Chinese Civil War. The KMT retreated to Taiwan and the jurisdiction of the Republic of China was limited to Taiwan and a few offshore islands while the Communist Party founded the People's Republic of China on Mainland China.
The spelling "Taipei" derives from the Wade-Giles romanization T'ai-pei, which is in English.
In Mandarin Chinese, however, the pronunciation is slightly different ( ). Under the official Hanyu Pinyin romanization scheme, as well as the previously used Tongyong Pinyin system, the city's name is romanized as TáibÄi.
In recent years, Taipei City and other government authorities have made efforts to convert signage and other official spellings to conform with Hanyu Pinyin and, previously, also Tongyong Pinyin. However, due to the prevalence and international recognition of the "Taipei" spelling, the City government, as well as other government authorities, have retained the original spelling of "Taipei" as an exception.
The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is a famous monument that was erected in memory of Chiang Kai-shek, former President of the Republic of China. The monument, surrounded by a park and a large square incorporating the National Concert Hall and National Theater, stands within sight of the Republic of China's Presidential Building in Taipei's Zhongzheng District.
The National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is a memorial to one of the most recognizable founding fathers of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen, and was completed on May 16, 1972. From the opening of the hall, majority of the exhibits displayed were revolutionary events of the national founding fathers at the end of the Qing Dynasty. However, recently its function moved toward a multi-purpose social, educational and cultural center for the Taiwanese public.
The National Palace Museum
The National Palace Museum is an art gallery and museum built around a permanent collection centered on ancient Chinese artifacts. It should not be confused with the Palace Museum in Beijing (which it is named after); both institutions trace their origins to the same institution. The collections were divided in the 1940s as a result of the Chinese Civil War. The National Palace Museum in Taipei now boasts a truly international collection while housing one of the world's largest assemblies of artifacts from ancient China.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum was established in December 24, 1983. Located in a building that used to house the city government, is also the first modern art museum. The artworks in the museum are mostly done by Taiwanese artists. There are more than 3,000 artworks in the museum. Most of them are done after 1940 by Taiwanese artist, and are organized into 13 groups. In 2001, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (å°åç¶ä»£èè¡é¤¨;MOCA Taipei) was established in the Taipei City government old building.
The National Taiwan Museum is the oldest museum in Taiwan. It was established as the Taiwan Governor Museum by the colonial government of Japan on October 24, 1908 to commemorate the inauguration of the North-South Railway during the Japanese rule in Taiwan. The museum had a collection of over 10,000 items in its initial stages. In 1915, the new building of the museum in Taipei New Park was inaugurated and became one of the major public buildings during Japanese rule. Since 1999, it has been renamed to the "National Taiwan Museum".
Taipei 101 at night
Taipei 101 is a 101-floor landmark skyscraper that claimed the title of world's tallest building when it opened in 2004. Designed by C.Y. Lee & Partners and constructed by KTRT Joint Venture, Taipei 101 recently lost the title of the tallest completed skyscraper in the world, measuring 449 m (1,474 ft) from ground to roof. (The tallest skyscraper is the 160 level and 2,638 feet tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE). Taipei 101 also set new records for ascending elevator speed which has also recently been beaten out by Burj Khalifa. The landmark has won numerous international awards for its innovations. Its Indoor and Outdoor Observatories draw visitors from all over the world and its New Year's Eve fireworks display is a regular feature of international broadcasts. A large mall is located at the base of the tower.
The National Palace Museum is a leading art gallery and cultural landmark. The museum hosts a number of international exhibits as well as hosting its own historically unique collection (see discussion above).
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum was established in 1983 as Taiwan's first museum of modern art. The collection features over 3,000 works, mainly by Taiwanese artists since the 1940s. The collection is organized into 13 groups. In 2000, there were exhibitions of digital technology arts in the museum.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (å°åç¶ä»£èè¡é¤¨;MOCA Taipei) opened in 2001. Its building originally housed offices for the Taipei City government.
The National Theater and Concert Hall stand at Taipei's Liberty Square and host a non-stop series of events by performers from Taiwan and every region of the world. Other leading concert venues include the historic Zhongshan Hall at Ximen and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall near Taipei 101.
A new cultural landmark, the Taipei Performing Arts Center, is slated to open in 2013. The venue will stand near the Shilin Night Market across from the Jiantan MRT station. The Performing Arts Center will house three theatres for events with multi-week runs. The architectural design will be determined in 2009 as the result of an international competition. Construction is expected to take place from 2010 to 2013. The same design process is also in place for a new Taipei Center for Popular Music and Taipei City Museum. Taipei invites architects | Taipei Times, 2008.07.25
Taipei has many night markets, the most famous of which is the Shilin Night Market in the Shilin District of the city. The surrounding streets by Shilin Night Market are extremely crowded during the evening, usually opening around 4 PM and operating well past midnight. Most night markets feature individual stalls selling a mixture of food, clothing, and consumer goods.
The busy streets of Ximending at night
Ximending has been a famous area for shopping and entertainment since the 1930s. Historic structures include a concert hall and a historic cinema. Modern structures house karaoke businesses, art film cinemas, wide-release movie cinemas, electronic stores, and a wide variety of restaurants and fashion clothing stores. The pedestrian area is especially popular with teens.
The Xinyi District is popular with tourists and locals alike for its many entertainment and shopping venues, as well as being the home of the Taipei 101 building, a prime tourist attraction famous for being one of the world's tallest buildings. Malls in the area include the sprawling Shin Kong Mitsukoshi complex, Taipei 101 mall, Eslite Bookstore's flagship store (which includes a boutique mall), The Living Mall, New York New York shopping mall, and the Vieshow Cinema (formerly known as Warner Village).
The thriving shopping area around Taipei Main Station includes the Taipei Underground Market and the original Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store at Shin Kong Life Tower. Other popular shopping destinations include the Zhongshan Metro Mall, Dihua Street, the Guang Hua Digital Plaza, and the Core Pacific City. The Miramar Entertainment Park is famous for its large ferris wheel and IMAX theater.
Taipei maintains an extensive system of parks, green spaces, and nature preserves. Parks and forestry areas of note in and around the city include Yangmingshan National Park, Taipei Zoo and Da-an Forest Park.
Yangmingshan (only 10 km north of the central city), famous for its cherry blossoms, hot springs, sulfur deposits is the home of famous writer Lin Yutang, the summer residence of Chiang Kai-shek, residences of foreign diplomats, the Chinese Culture University, the meeting place of the now defunct National Assembly of the Republic of China, and the Kuomintang Party Archives. The Taipei Zoo was founded in 1914 and covers an area of 165 hectares for animal sanctuary.
Bitan is known for boating and water sports. Danshui is a popular sea-side resort town. Ocean beaches are accessible in several directions from Taipei.
Inside Longshan Temple
Taipei is rich in beautiful, ornate temples housing Buddhist, Taoist, and Chinese folk religion deities. The Longshan Temple, located in the Wanhua District, demonstrates an example of architecture with southern Chinese influences commonly seen in older buildings in Taiwan.
Xinsheng South Road is known as the road to heaven because of its high concentration of temples as well as shrines (literally called ãPure Truth Templeã in Chinese). Several blocks away from Xinsheng South Road is the beautiful, pristine Daoist Temples.
Besides large temples, small outdoor shrines to local deities are very common, and can be spotted on road sides, parks, and neighborhoods. Many homes and businesses may also set up small shrines of candles, figurines, and offerings. Some restaurants, for example, may set up a small shrine to the Kitchen god for success in a restaurant business.
During the Lantern Festival at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall
Many yearly festivals are held in Taipei, including the Taipei Lantern Festival when thousands of sky lanterns are released in Pingxi, Taipei. Common locations for festival celebrations include Memorial Square, Taipei 101, and the Zhongshan Hall in Ximending. On Double Ten Day, celebrations are held in front of the Presidential Building.
Other annual festivals include Tomb-Sweeping Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Ghost Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival. In recent years some festivals traditionally held in Taipei, such as the Double Ten Day fireworks and concerts, have increasingly been hosted by other cities in Taiwan.
*Te-sheng Wei's Cape No. 7 (drama/comedy)
*Yun Fu's Take Me From Behind (music video)
*Jack Yu's Lollipop Love (music video)
*Edward Yang's (drama)
*Edward Yang's Mahjong (drama)
*Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day (drama)
*Lee Kang-sheng's Help Me Eros (drama)
*Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour (drama)
*Tsai Ming-liang's What Time Is It There? (drama)
*Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn (drama)
*Tsai Ming-liang's Rebels of the Neon God (drama)
*Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times (drama)
*Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman (drama)
*John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (action)
*Kirk Wong's Crime Story (action)
*Chen Yin-jung's Formula 17 (gay/comedy)
*Zero Chou's Spider Lilies (lesbian/drama)
*Sylvia Chang's 20 30 40 (romance)
*Hsiao-ming Hsu's Love of May (romance)
*Yee Chin-yen's Blue Gate Crossing (romance)
*Jay Chou's Secret (romance)
*Chen Kuo-Fu's Double Vision (horror/suspense)
*Chao-Bin Su's Silk (horror/suspense)
*Ye-ming Wang's Tea Fight (drama/comedy)
*Mamoru Oshii's (science fiction/drama)
*Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together (Hong-Kong studio, filmed on three cities : Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Taipei)
*Andrew Lau 's Young and Dangerous 2 (Hong-Kong studio, filmed on location in Taipei)
*Turn Left, Turn Right (Hong-Kong studio, filmed on location in Taipei)
*One Missed Call 2 (Japanese studio, filmed in Taipei and Jinguashi)
*About Love (Japanese studio, filmed on three cities in Asia: Taipei, Tokyo, Shanghai)
*Takashi Miike's Rainy Dog (Japanese studio, filmed on location in Taipei) (drama)
*Takahisa Zeze's Moon Child (Japanese studio, filmed in Taipei, as the futuristic city of Mallepa) (drama)
The city of Taipei, as seen from Maokong.
Tracks of all Pacific typhoons between 1980 and 2005.
Taipei City is located in the Taipei Basin in northern Taiwan. It is bordered by the Xindian River on the south, and the Danshui (Tamsui) River on the west. The generally low-lying terrain of the central areas on the western side of the municipality slopes upward to the south and east and especially to the north, where it reaches at Cising Mountain (ä¸æå±±), which the highest (extinct) volcano in Taiwan in Yangmingshan National Park. The northern districts of Shilin and Beitou extend north of the Keelung River and are bordered by Yangmingshan National Park. The Taipei city limits cover an area ranked sixteenth of twenty-five among all counties and cities in Taiwan.
Two peaks, Cising Mountain and Mt. Datun, rise to the northeast of the city. Cising Mountain is located on the Datun Volcano Group and the tallest mountain at the rim of the Taipei Basin, with its main peak at . Mt. Datun's main peak is . These former volcanoes make up the western section of Yangmingshan National Park, extending from Mt. Datun northward to Mt. Caigongkeng (èå
¬åå±±). Located on a broad saddle between two mountains, the area also contains the marshy Datun Pond.
To the southeast of the city lie the Songshan Hills and the Qingshui Ravine, which form a barrier of lush woods.
Taipei has a humid subtropical climate. The average annual temperature is , with a summer average of and a winter average of . Summers are humid and accompanied by occasional rainstorms and typhoons, while winters are short and mild.
Due to Taiwan's location in the Pacific Ocean, it is affected by the Pacific typhoon season, which occurs between June and October.
Motor vehicle engine exhaust, particularly from motor scooters, is a source of air pollution in Taipei. The levels of fine particulate matter, including PAHs, are consistently more serious in the mornings as there is less air movement; sunlight helps clear up some pollutants, which tend to be trapped close to the ground.
Taipei City is divided up into 12 districts (å qu).
The city is characterized by straight roads and public buildings of grand Western architectural styles. The city is built on a square grid configuration, however these blocks are huge by international standards (500m sides). However there is little uniformed planning within these blocks; therefore lanes (perpendicular to streets) and alleys (parallel to street) spill out from the main throughways. These minor roads are not always perpendicular and sometimes cut through the block diagonally.
Although development began in the western districts of the city from trade, the eastern districts of the city have become the downtown. Many of the western districts, already in decline, have become targets of new urban renewal projects.
Diagram of Old Taipei revealing the original city wall and gates. Important buildings are highlighted.
The region known as the Taipei basin was home to Ketagalan tribes before the eighteenth century. Han Chinese mainly from Fujian province of China began to settle in the Taipei Basin in 1709. In the late 19th century, the Taipei area, where the major Han Chinese settlements in northern Taiwan and one of the designated overseas trade port, Tamsui, were located, gained economic importance due to the booming overseas trade, especially that of tea exportation. In 1875, the northern part of Taiwan was separated from Taiwan Prefecture (èºç£åº) and incorporated into the new Taipei Prefecture as a new administrative entity of the Chinese government (Qing Dynasty). Having been established adjoining the flourishing townships of Bangkah and Twatutia, the new prefectural capital was known as Chengnei (åå
§), "the inner city", and government buildings were erected there. From 1875 (during the Qing Dynasty) until the beginning of Japanese rule in 1895, Taipei was part of Danshui County of Taipei Prefecture and the prefectural capital. In 1886, when Taiwan was proclaimed a province of China, Taipei city was made the provincial capital. Taipei remained a temporary provincial capital before it officially became the capital of Taiwan in 1894. All that remains from the old Qing Dynasty city is the north gate. The west gate and city walls were demolished by the Japanese while the south gate, little south gate and east gate were extensively modified by the Kuomintang (KMT) and have lost much of their original character.
As settlement for losing the First Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895 as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. After the Japanese take-over, Taipei, called Taihoku in Japanese, was retained as the capital and emerged as the political center of the Japanese Colonial Government. During that time the city acquired the characteristics of an administrative center, including many new public buildings and housing for civil servants. Much of the architecture of Taipei dates from the period of Japanese rule, including the Presidential Building which was the Office of the Taiwan Governor-General.
During Japanese rule, Taihoku was incorporated in 1920 as part of Taihoku Prefecture (å°å縣). It included Bangka, Dadaocheng, and Chengnei among other small settlements. The eastern village Matsuyama (æ¾å±±å) was annexed into Taihoku City in 1938. Upon the Japanese defeat in the Pacific War and its consequent surrender in August 1945, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) assumed control of Taiwan. Subsequently, a temporary Office of the Taiwan Province Administrative Governor was established in Taipei City.
On December 7, 1949, the KMT government under Chiang Kai-shek, after being forced to flee mainland China by the Communists at the Chinese Civil War, declared Taipei as the provisional capital of the Republic of China, with the official capital at Nanjing (then romanised as Nanking).
Taipei expanded greatly in the decades after 1949, and as approved on December 30, 1966 by the Executive Yuan, Taipei was declared a special centrally administered municipality on July 1, 1967 and given the administrative status of a province. In the following year, Taipei City expanded again by annexing Shilin, Beitou, Neihu, Nangang, Jingmei, and Muzha. At that time, the city's total area increased fourfold through absorbing several outlying towns and villages and the population increased to 1.56 million people.
The city's population, which had reached one million in the early 1960s, also expanded rapidly after 1967, exceeding two million by the mid-1970s. Although growth within the city itself gradually slowed thereafter â its population had become relatively stable by the mid-1990s â Taipei remained one of the world's most densely populated urban areas, and the population continued to increase in the region surrounding the city, notably along the corridor between Taipei and Keelung. In 1990, 16 districts in Taipei City were consolidated into the current 12 districts.
As the capital of the Republic of China, Taipei has been at the center of rapid economic development in the country and has now become one of the global cities in the production of high technology and its components. This is part of the so called Taiwan Miracle which has seen dramatic growth in the city following foreign direct investment in the 1960s. Taiwan is now a creditor economy, holding one of the world's largest foreign exchange reserves of over US$321 billion in 2009.
Despite the Asian financial crisis, the economy continues to expand at about 5% per year, with virtually full employment and low inflation. , the nominal GDP of the core city of Taipei has accrued to an amount of nearly US$160 billion, while the metro region of Taipei has a GDP (nominal) of around US$260 billion, a record that would rank it 13th among world cities by GDP. The GDP per capita of Taipei is US$48,400, and the second highest in Asia behind Tokyo, which has a GDP per capita of US$65,453. If outskirts, neighboring cities, and townships are taken into account, the GDP per capita would fall to US$25,000.
Taipei and its environs have long been the foremost industrial area of Taiwan, consisting of industries of the secondary and tertiary sectors. Most of the country's important factories producing textiles and apparel are located there; other industries include the manufacture of electronic products and components, electrical machinery and equipment, printed materials, precision equipment, and foods and beverages. Such companies include Shihlin Electric, CipherLab and Insyde Software. Shipbuilding, including yachts and other pleasure craft, is done in the port of Keelung northeast of the city. Services, including those related to commerce, transportation, and banking, have become increasingly important. Tourism is a small but significant component of the local economy.
China Airlines is headquartered in Taipei. " Investor Relations." China Airlines. Retrieved on May 20, 2009.
The Republic of China's Presidential Office Building
Taipei City is administered as a direct-controlled municipality directly under the Executive Yuan, while Taipei County and Keelung City are administered as part of Taiwan Province. The mayor of Taipei City had been an appointed position since Taipei's conversion to a centrally-administered municipality in 1967 until the first public election was held in 1994. The position has a four-year term and is elected by direct popular vote. The first elected mayor was Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. Ma Ying-Jeou took office in 1998 for two terms, before handing it over to Hau Lung-bin who won the 2006 mayoral election on December 9, 2006. Both Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-Jeou went on to become President of Republic of China.
Based on the outcomes of previous elections in the past decade, the vote of the overall constituency of Taipei City shows a slight inclination towards the pro-KMT camp (the Pan-Blue Coalition) ; however, the pro-DPP camp (the Pan-Green Coalition) also has considerable support.
Ketagalan Boulevard, where the Republic of China's Presidential Office Building and other government structures are situated, is often the site of mass gatherings such as inauguration and national holiday parades, receptions for visiting dignitaries, political demonstrations , and public festivals .
Taipei City Hall Station platform of the Taipei Metro
Taipei Main Station serves as the comprehensive hub for bus transportation, the MRT systems, Taiwan Railway, and Taiwan High Speed Rail.
All scheduled international flights are served by Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in nearby Taoyuan County. Songshan Airport at the heart of the city serves mostly domestic flights, with the exception of some cross-strait and charter flights.
Taipei's public transport system, the Taipei Metro (commonly referred to as the MRT), incorporates a metro and light rail system based on advanced VAL and Bombardier technology. In addition to the rapid transit system itself, the Taipei Metro also includes several public facilities such as the Maokong Gondola, underground shopping malls, parks, and public squares. Modifications to existing railway lines to integrate them into the Metro system are underway, as well as a rapid transit line to connect the city with Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Customer satisfaction with the Taipei Metro, at over 94% in 2008, ranks it as possibly the best public transport system worldwide. All Subways Should be Like Taipei's Marvel of Mass Transit, Wired News
Taiwan High Speed Rail 700T trains
The Taiwan High Speed Rail system opened in 2007. The bullet trains connect Taipei with the west coast cities of Banciao, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan and Zuoying (Kaohsiung) at speeds that cut travel times by 60% or more from what they normally are on a bus or conventional train. The Taiwan Railway Administration also runs passenger and freight services throughout the entire island.
An extensive city bus system serves metropolitan areas not covered by the metro, with exclusive bus lanes to facilitate transportation. Riders of the city MRT system are able to use their MRT passes for payment on buses. The pass, known as EasyCard, contain credits that are deducted each time a ride is taken. The EasyCard is read via proximity sensory panels on buses and in MRT stations, and it does not need to be removed from one's wallet or purse.
Motor-scooters are ubiquitous in Taipei (and much of Taiwan). Motor-scooters often weave between cars and occasionally through oncoming traffic. While there is little respect for traffic laws there are increasing numbers of police roadblocks checking riders for alcohol consumption and other offenses.
West Site of National Taiwan University Hospital
20 universities have campuses located in Taipei:
National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) is Taiwan's oldest university. Originally established in Shanghai in 1896, the University was moved to Taiwan by former Chiao Tung University faculty and alumni in 1958. It is a public university with campuses in both Taipei and Hsinchu.
The National Taiwan University was established in 1928 during the period of Japanese colonial rule. NTU has produced many political and social leaders in Taiwan. Both pan-blue and pan-green movements in Taiwan are rooted on the NTU campus. The university has six campuses in the greater Taipei region (including Taipei County) and two additional campuses in Nantou County. The University governs farms, forests, and hospitals for educational and research purposes. The main campus is in Taipei's Da-An district, where most department buildings and all the administrative buildings are located. The College of Law and the College of Medicine are located near the Presidential Building. The National Taiwan University Hospital is a leading international center of medical research.
National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU or Shida) likewise traces its origins to the Japanese colonial period. Originally a teacher training institution, NTNU has developed into a comprehensive international university with demanding entrance requirements. The university boasts especially strong programs in the humanities and international education. Worldwide it is perhaps best known as home of the Mandarin Training Center, a program that offers Mandarin language training each year to over a thousand students from dozens of countries throughout the world. The main campus in Taipei's Gutting district is known for its historic architecture and giving its name to the Shida Night Market, one of the most popular of the many night markets in Taipei.
*International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) (åéè¯èªç ç¿æ) of National Taiwan University
*Mandarin Training Center (MTC) (åèªæå¸ä¸å¿) of National Taiwan Normal University
* Chinese Language Center (CLC) of Cheng Kung University
The former Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium
Due to Taiwan being under American and Japanese influence over the years, the sports of baseball in particular and basketball have become popular in the city. Taipei, like the rest of the country, has featured most prominently in baseball and has often been the venue for the Asian Baseball Championship since the 1960s.
Below is a list of recent sporting events:
*2001 Asian Baseball Championship
*2001 Baseball World Cup
*2001 AFC Women's Championship
*2004 FIFA Futsal World Championship
*2007 Baseball World Cup
*2009 Summer Deaflympics
Taipei Arena
The Taipei Arena is located in the city home to baseball with a capacity of some 15,000. It is located at the site of the former Taipei Municipal Baseball Stadium (built in 1958, opened 1959, demolished 2000). It was designed by Archasia, an architectural firm established in Taipei. The arena was opened on December 1, 2005. It is operated by the Eastern Media Group (æ±æ£®éå), which won the bid to operate the arena for 9 years.
The main arena has an adjustable floor space: its minimum floor space is 60 m x 30 m, and can be extended to 80 m x 40 m.
The Chinese Taipei Ice Hockey League (CTIHL) plays out of the auxiliary arena, which is a 60 m x 30 m ice skating rink.
Since opening in 2005, the arena has held more art and cultural activities (such as live concerts) than sporting events, which it was originally designed and built for.
Taipei has the only football-specific stadium in Taiwan, Zhongshan Soccer Stadium, which hosts the national football team. It hosts qualifiers for the FIFA World and AFC regional cups, and finals of school football tournaments. As there is no professional football league in Taiwan, no other sporting events are held there.
TVBS-G produces programs mainly from their Nangang building in Taipei City.
As the capital, Taipei City is the headquarters for many television and radio stations in Taiwan and the centre of some of the country's largest newspapers.
Television stations centred in Taipei include the CTS Education and Culture, CTS Recreation, CTV MyLife, CTV News Channel, China Television, Chinese Television System, Chung T'ien Television, Dimo TV, Eastern Television, Era Television, FTV News, Follow Me TV, Formosa TV, Gala Television, Public Television Service, SET Metro, SET News, SET Taiwan, Sanlih E-Television, Shuang Xing, TTV Family, TTV Finance, TTV World, TVBS, TVBS-G, TVBS-NEWS, Taiwan Broadcasting System, Videoland Television Network and Taiwan Television.
Newspapers include Apple Daily, Central Daily News, The China Post, China Times, Kinmen Daily News, Liberty Times, Mandarin Daily News, Matsu Daily, Min Sheng Bao, Sharp Daily, Taipei Times, Taiwan Daily, Taiwan News, Taiwan Times
and United Daily News.
Taipei is twinned with: Sister city list (.DOC)
* Anchorage, Alaska, USA (1997)
* Perth, Australia (1999)
* Orange County, California, USA (2000)
File:Taipei night view from Xiangshan.jpg|Taipei City
File:BMAnniversary_ROC_Taipei_101.jpg|Taipei City
File:CKS_Memorial_Hall.jpg|National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
File:EntranceChiangKaiShek.JPG|Entrance of National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
File:101.tall.altonthompson.jpg|Taipei 101
File:101.love-indiana.altonthompson.jpg|Love in Taipei
File:DSCF0365.jpg|Taipei 101 from National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Station
File:ghotel.jpg|Grand Hotel
File:GrandHotelTaipei_v1.jpg|Grand Hotel Taipei
File:DaZhiBridge2_byJaojao.JPG|Dazhi Bridge
File:dansui.jpg|Dadaocheng Wharf, Taipei
File:baoan2.jpg|Baoan Temple
File:æåå®®åé寶殿.jpg|Zhinan Temple
File:101.typhoon.altonthompson.jpg|A typhoon makes landfall in Taipei
File:ChiangKai-shek_MemorialHall_PeripheralParks.jpg|Pond by National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
File:-thumb-250px-Ximending_at_night.jpg|Ximending at Night
*Chinese Taipei
*List of districts of Taipei by area
*List of districts of Taipei by population
*List of districts of Taipei by population density
*List of schools in Taipei
*List of most expensive cities for expatriate employees (#61 in the world)
*Kaohsiung City
*Administrative divisions of the Republic of China
*List of Chinese language schools in Taiwan
*
* Taipei City Government Official Website
* Taipeipedia - a city wiki for foreigners
* Taipei Travel Net
* Taipei Night View
* Taipei Atis Web
* Taipei e-services
* Discovery Taipei
* Healthy Taipei City
* List of Sister Cities from the official site
* Taipei City Council
*
* National Theater and Concert Hall
* Taipei Expat, featuring directory and expat social network
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Trumpet | Is the trumpet the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | Is the trumpet the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is a trumpet played by blowing air through closed lips? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is a trumpet played by blowing air through closed lips? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is the most common type of trumpet the B trumpet? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is the most common type of trumpet the B trumpet? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What is the earliest date of the trumpet? | 1500 BC | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What is the earliest date of the trumpet? | around 1500 BC | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What is a trumpet constructed of? | brass tubing | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What is a trumpet constructed of? | brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | What are the smallest trumpets referred to as? | Piccolo trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What are the smallest trumpets referred to as? | piccolo trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Why do trumpets have a bright, loud sound? | The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Why do trumpets have a bright, loud sound? | Due to the cylindrical bore | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Why does the cornet have a slightly mellower tone than the trumpet? | The cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Why does the cornet have a slightly mellower tone than the trumpet? | because it has conical bores | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What makes a trumpet fully chromatic? | able to play all twelve pitches of Western music | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | Were trumpet players heavily guarded? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Were trumpet players heavily guarded? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Are pocket trumpets compact B trumpets? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Are pocket trumpets compact B trumpets? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Was Dizzy Gillespie a famous trumpeter in 1998? | no | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What shape is a trumpet bent into? | oblong | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What shape is a trumpet bent into? | an oblong shape | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What trumpet was the first to be allowed in the Christian Church? | slide trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What trumpet was the first to be allowed in the Christian Church? | Slide trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | The trumpet can be confused with what close relative? | the cornet | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | The trumpet can be confused with what close relative? | the coronet | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What can be augmented with a fourth valve? | the flugelhorn | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What can be augmented with a fourth valve? | flugelhorn | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What was Maynard Ferguson noted for being able to play accurately? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What was Maynard Ferguson noted for being able to play accurately? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What was built to play in both B and A keys? | piccolo trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What was built to play in both B and A keys? | piccolo trumpets | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | What happened in 1894? | Jean-Baptiste Arban published "Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet." | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
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Trumpet | What happened in nineteen fifty seven? | Maynard Ferguson formed his own band. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is the Breeze Eazy' ' method sometimes used to teach younger students? | Yes. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Do many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Is the trumpet constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Give an example of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. | Miles Davis | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Were Slide trumpets the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church? | Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Are they constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a ``buzzing'' sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet? | Yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Trumpet | Are there several types of trumpet? | yes | data/set2/a3 | Trumpet
The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. /ref> Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments,
dating back to at least 1500 BC. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.
There are several types of trumpet; the most common is a transposing instrument pitched in B . The predecessors to trumpets did not have valves; however, modern trumpets have either three piston valves or three rotary valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch.
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, including classical music and jazz.
Moche Trumpet. 300 AD Larco Museum Collection Lima, Peru.
The earliest trumpets date back to 1500 BC and earlier. The bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamun's grave in Egypt, bronze lurs from Scandinavia, and metal trumpets from China date back to this period. Edward Tarr, The Trumpet (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1988), 20-30. Trumpets from the Oxus civilization (3rd millennium BC) of Central Asia have decorated swellings in the middle, yet are made out of one sheet of metal, which is considered a technical wonder. "Trumpet with a swelling decorated with a human head," Musée du Louvre, The Moche people of ancient Peru depicted trumpets in their art going back to 300 AD Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. The earliest trumpets were signaling instruments used for military or religious purposes, rather than music in the modern sense;
and the modern bugle continues this signaling tradition.
Reproduction Baroque trumpet by Michael Laird
In medieval times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft, its instruction occurring only within highly selective guilds. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army. Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument. The development of the upper, "clarino" register by specialist trumpeters - notably Cesare Bendinelli - would lend itself well to the Baroque era, also known as the "Golden Age of the natural trumpet."
The melody-dominated homophony of the classical and romantic periods relegated the trumpet to a secondary role by most major composers. Berlioz wrote in 1844:
"Notwithstanding the real loftiness and distinguished nature of its quality of tone, there are few instruments that have been more degraded (than the trumpet). Down to Beethoven and Weber, every composer - not excepting Mozart - persisted in confining it to the unworthy function of filling up, or in causing it to sound two or three commonplace rhythmical formulae." Berlioz, Hector (1844). Treatise on modern Instrumentation and Orchestration. Edwin F. Kalmus, NY, 1948.
The trumpet was slow to adopt the modern valves (invented around the mid 1830s), and its cousin the cornet would take the spotlight as solo instrument for the next hundred years. Crooks and shanks (removable tubing of various lengths) as opposed to keys or valves were standard, notably in France, into the first part of the 20th century.
Trumpet valve bypass (depressed)
The trumpet is constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape.
The trumpet and trombone share a roughly cylindrical bore which results in a bright, loud sound. The bore is actually a complex series of tapers, smaller at the mouthpiece receiver and larger just before the flare of the bell begins; careful design of these tapers is critical to the intonation of the instrument. By comparison, the cornet and flugelhorn have conical bores and produce a more mellow tone.
As with all brass instruments, sound is produced by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound into the mouthpiece and starting a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet. The player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or harmonics by changing the lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). Modern trumpets also have three piston valves, each of which increases the length of tubing when engaged, thereby lowering the pitch. The first valve lowers the instrument's pitch by a whole step (2 semitones), the second valve by a half step (1 semitone), and the third valve by one-and-a-half steps (3 semitones). When a fourth valve is present, as with some piccolo trumpets, it lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (5 semitones). Used singly and in combination these valves make the instrument fully chromatic, i.e., able to play all twelve pitches of Western music. The sound is projected outward via the bell.
The trumpet's harmonic series is closely matched to the musical scale, but there are some notes in the series which are a compromise and thus slightly off key; these are known as wolf tones. Some trumpets have a slide mechanism built in to compensate.
The mouthpiece has a circular rim which provides a comfortable environment for the lips' vibration. Directly behind the rim is the cup, which channels the air into a much smaller opening (the back bore or shank) which tapers out slightly to match the diameter of the trumpet's lead pipe. The dimensions of these parts of the mouthpiece affect the timbre or quality of sound, the ease of playability, and player comfort. Generally, the wider and deeper the cup, the darker the sound and timbre.
The most common type is the B trumpet, but C, D, E , E, F, G and A trumpets are also available. The most common use of the C trumpet is in American orchestral playing, where it is used alongside the B trumpet. Its slightly smaller size gives it a brighter, more lively sound. Because music written for early trumpets required the use of a different trumpet for each key â they did not have valves and therefore were not chromatic â and also because a player may choose to play a particular passage on a different trumpet from the one indicated on the written music, orchestra trumpet players are generally adept at transposing music at sight, sometimes playing music written for the B trumpet on the C trumpet, and vice versa.
Piccolo trumpet in B , with swappable leadpipes to tune the instrument to B (shorter) or A (longer)
Each trumpet's range extends from the written F immediately below Middle C up to about three octaves higher. Standard repertoire rarely calls for notes beyond this range, and the fingering tables of most method books peak at the C (high C) two octaves above middle C. Several trumpeters have achieved fame for their proficiency in the extreme high register, among them Lew Soloff, Andrea Tofanelli, Bill Chase, Maynard Ferguson, Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, Anthony Gorruso, Dizzy Gillespie, Jon Faddis, Cat Anderson, James Morrison, Doc Severinsen and Arturo Sandoval. It is also possible to produce pedal tones below the low F , although this technique is more often encountered as a sound-production exercise than as a written trumpet part.
The smallest trumpets are referred to as piccolo trumpets. The most common of these are built to play in both B and A, with separate leadpipes for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B trumpet. Piccolo trumpets in G, F and even C are also manufactured, but are rarer. Many players use a smaller mouthpiece on the piccolo trumpet, which requires a different sound production technique from the B trumpet and can limit endurance. Almost all piccolo trumpets have four valves instead of the usual three â the fourth valve lowers the pitch, usually by a fourth, to facilitate the playing of lower notes. Maurice André, HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, and Wynton Marsalis are some well-known piccolo trumpet players.
trumpet in C with rotary valves
Trumpets pitched in the key of G are also called sopranos, or soprano bugles, after their adaptation from military bugles. Traditionally used in drum and bugle corps, sopranos have featured both rotary valves and piston valves.
The bass trumpet is usually played by a trombone player, being at the same pitch. Bass trumpet is played with a trombone or euphonium mouthpiece, and music for it is written in treble clef.
The modern slide trumpet is a B trumpet that has a slide instead of valves. It is similar to a soprano trombone. The first slide trumpets emerged during the Renaissance, predating the modern trombone, and are the first attempts to increase chromaticism on the instrument. Slide trumpets were the first trumpets allowed in the Christian church. Tarr
The historical slide trumpet was probably first developed in the late fourteenth century for use in alta capella wind bands. Deriving from early straight trumpets, the Renaissance slide trumpet was essentially a natural trumpet with a sliding leadpipe. This single slide was rather awkward, as the entire corpus of the instrument moved, and the range of the slide was probably no more than a major third. Originals were probably pitched in D, to fit with shawms in D and G, probably at a typical pitch standard near A=466. As no instruments from this period are known to survive, the details - and even the existence - of a Renaissance slide trumpet is a matter of some conjecture, and there continues to be some debate among scholars.
Some slide trumpet designs saw use in England in the eighteenth century.
The pocket trumpet is a compact B trumpet. The bell is usually smaller than a standard trumpet and the tubing is more tightly wound to reduce the instrument size without reducing the total tube length. Its design is not standardized, and the quality of various models varies greatly. It can have a tone quality and projection unique in the trumpet world: a warm sound and a voice-like articulation. Unfortunately, since many pocket trumpet models suffer from poor design as well as cheap and sloppy manufacturing, the intonation, tone color and dynamic range of such instruments are severely hindered. Professional-standard instruments are, however, available. While they are not a substitute for the full-sized instrument, they can be useful in certain contexts.
There are also rotary-valve, or German, trumpets, as well as alto and Baroque trumpets.
The trumpet is often confused with its close relative, the cornet, which has a more conical tubing shape compared to the trumpet's more cylindrical tube. This, along with additional bends in the cornet's tubing, gives the cornet a slightly mellower tone, but the instruments are otherwise nearly identical. They have the same length of tubing and, therefore, the same pitch, so music written for cornet and trumpet is interchangeable. Another relative, the flugelhorn, has tubing that is even more conical than that of the cornet, and an even richer tone. It is sometimes augmented with a fourth valve to improve the intonation of some lower notes.
On any trumpet, cornet, or flugelhorn, pressing the valves indicated by the numbers below will produce the written notes shown - "OPEN" means all valves up, "1" means first valve, "1-2" means first and second valve simultaneously and so on. The concert pitch which sounds depends on the transposition of the instrument. Engaging the fourth valve, if present, drops any of these pitches by a perfect fourth as well. Within each overtone series, the different pitches are attained by changing the embouchure, or lip position and "firmness". Standard fingerings above high C are the same as for the notes an octave below (C is 1-2, D is 1, etc.)
A step = a tone; a half step = a semitone
Note that the fundamental of each overtone series does not exist - the series begins with the first overtone. Notes in parentheses are the sixth overtone, representing a pitch with a frequency of seven times that of the fundamental; while this pitch is close to the note shown, it is slightly flat relative to equal temperament, and use of those fingerings is generally avoided.
The fingering schema arises from the length of each valve's tubing (a longer tube produces a lower pitch). Valve "1" increases the tubing length enough to lower the pitch by one whole step, valve "2" by one half step, and valve "3" by one and a half steps. This scheme and the nature of the overtone series create the possibility of alternate fingerings for certain notes. For example, third-space "C" can be produced with no valves engaged (standard fingering) or with valves 2-3. Also, any note produced with 1-2 as its standard fingering can also be produced with valve 3 - each drops the pitch by 1-1/2 steps. Alternate fingerings may be used to improve facility in certain passages. Extending the third valve slide when using the fingerings 1-3 or 1-2-3 further lowers the pitch slightly to improve intonation.
One trumpet method publication of long-standing popularity is Jean-Baptiste Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet (Cornet). Arban, Jean-Baptiste (1894, 1936, 1982). Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for TRUMPET. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0385-3. Other well-known method books include "Technical Studies" by Herbert L. Clarke, Herbert L. Clarke (1984). Technical Studies for the Cornet,C. Carl Fischer, Inc. ISBN 0-8258-0158-3. "Grand Method" by Louis Saint-Jacome, "Daily Drills and Technical Studies" by Max Schlossberg, and methods by Claude Gordon and Charles Colin. Colin, Charles. Advanced Lip Flexibilities. Vassily Brandt's Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes Vassily Brandt Orchestral Etudes and Last Etudes. ISBN 0-7692-9779-X is used in many college and conservatory trumpet studios, containing drills on permutations of standard orchestral trumpet repertoire, transpositions, and other advanced material. A common method book for beginners is the "Walter Beeler Method", and there have been several instruction books written by virtuoso Allen Vizzutti. The Breeze Eazy'' method is sometimes used to teach younger students, as it includes general musical information.
Famous jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1988
The trumpet is used in many forms of music, though the most recognised players have been in the jazz field. Louis Armstrong, for example, was well known for his virtuosity with the trumpet. Armstrong's improvisations on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records were daring and sophisticated while also often subtle and melodic. Miles Davis is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. His trumpet playing was distinctive, with a vocal, clear tone that has been imitated by many. The phrasing and sense of space in his solos have been models for generations of jazz musicians.
Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the style of Roy Eldridge but adding new layers of harmonic complexity. Gillespie had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians. Maynard Ferguson came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register. While he was not the first trumpeter to play in the extreme upper register, he had a unique ability to play high notes with full, rich tone, power, and musicality. While regarded by some as showboating, Ferguson's tone, phrasing and vibrato was instantly recognizable and has been influential on and imitated by generations of amateur and professional trumpet players. A direct connection to Ferguson's style of playing continues in the work of the trumpeters who played with him, notably Roger Ingram, Wayne Bergeron, and Eric Miyashiro. Although some had believed that Ferguson was endowed with exceptional facial musculature, he often shared in interviews that his command of the upper registers was based mostly on breath control, something he had discovered as a youngster in Montreal.
Among the other great modern jazz trumpet players are Clifford Brown, Jon Faddis, Harry James, Wynton Marsalis, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Chet Baker, Arturo Sandoval, Doc Severinsen and Don Cherry.
Notable classical trumpeters include Maurice André, Roger Voisin, Armando Ghitalla, William Vacchiano, Adolph "Bud" Herseth, Charles Schlueter, Malcolm McNab, Sergei Nakariakov, Maurice Murphy, Hakan Hardenberger, Philip Smith, Rafael Méndez and Wynton Marsalis.
A musician who plays the trumpet is called a trumpet player or trumpeter.
The trumpet is used in a wide range of musical styles including ska, ska punk, classical, jazz, Rock, Blues, pop, polka, cuban music, mariachi and funk.
The chromatic trumpet was first made in the late 1700s, but there were several solos written for the natural trumpet that are now played on piccolo trumpet; those old solos were of necessity high because the overtone series available to the natural trumpet only had stepwise notes at the top. Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto was one of the first for a chromatic trumpet, Keith Anderson, liner notes for Naxos CD 8.550243, Famous Trumpet Concertos, "Haydn's concerto, written for Weidinger in 1796, must have startled contemporary audiences by its novelty. At the first performance of the new concerto in Vienna in 1800 a trumpet melody was heard in a lower register than had hitherto been practicable." a fact shown off by some stepwise melodies played low in the instrument's range.
*List of trumpeters
*Muted trumpet
*Piccolo trumpet
*Gu%C4%8Da trumpet festival - The world's largest trumpet festival
*Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, Syracuse University Press, 1973, ISBN 0815621574
*Philip Bate, The Trumpet and Trombone: An Outline of Their History, Development, and Construction, Ernest Benn, 1978, ISBN 0393021297
*Roger Sherman, Trumpeter's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Teaching the Trumpet, Accura Music, 1979, ISBN 0918194024
*Stan Skardinski, You Can't Be Timid With a Trumpet: Notes from the Orchestra, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1980, ISBN 0688419631
*Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker: The Materials, Tools and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg , Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0198162235
*James Arthur Brownlow, The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet, Pendragon Press, 1996, ISBN 0945193815
*Frank Gabriel Campos, Trumpet Technique, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195166922
* International Trumpet Guild international trumpet players' association with online library of scholarly journal back issues, news, jobs and other trumpet resources.
* Jay Lichtmann's trumpet studies Scales and technical trumpet studies.
* Dallas Music â a non-profit musical instrument resource site
*
|
Turkish_language | Was the Ottoman script replaced with a variant of the Latin alphabet? | Yes. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Was the Ottoman script replaced with a variant of the Latin alphabet? | Yes | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
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*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is there a definite article in Turkish language? | No. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
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*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is there a definite article in Turkish language? | No | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is it possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain phrase? | Yes. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is it possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain phrase? | Yes | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What is the official language of Turkey? | Turkish. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What is the official language of Turkey? | Turkish is the official language of Turkey. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | When was the Turkish Language Association founded? | In 1928. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | When was the Turkish Language Association founded? | The Turkish Language Association was founded in 1932. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What are the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary? | Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
*
*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Who were the Orkhon inscriptions built for? | For the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
*
*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Who were the Orkhon inscriptions built for? | The Orkhon inscriptions were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What was one of the results of the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet? | A dramatic increase in literacy from Third World levels. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What was one of the results of the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet? | There was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Why does Lewis use "absolute case" instead of "nominative"? | Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Why does Lewis use "absolute case" instead of "nominative"? | Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | How many people speak Turkish worldwide? | There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | How many people speak Turkish worldwide? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
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*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | In Turkish, which syllable usually has the stress? | Stress is usually on the last syllable | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | In Turkish, which syllable usually has the stress? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is the spelling of Turkish phonetic? | yes, Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Is the spelling of Turkish phonetic? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What percentage of the words in Turkish vocabulary have Turkish origins? | 86% of the Turkish vocabulary have Turkish origins. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What percentage of the words in Turkish vocabulary have Turkish origins? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | After what event was the Turkish Language Association established? | After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | After what event was the Turkish Language Association established? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
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*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What exception to the rules of vowel harmony do compound words have? | In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What exception to the rules of vowel harmony do compound words have? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | Who is working to coin new Turkish word? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
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*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What are the patterns of vowel harmony? | Vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
*
*
*
*
On-line sources
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What are the patterns of vowel harmony? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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On-line sources
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*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What are the ways to join groups of nouns? | Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways: definite or indefinite. | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
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*
*
*
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*
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* (2nd edition 1989)
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*
On-line sources
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*
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*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Turkish_language | What are the ways to join groups of nouns? | null | data/set5/a8 | Turkish_language
Turkish ( IPA ) is spoken as a first language by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishâthe variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empireâspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. Katzner The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets. Ishjatms
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6thâ11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicâthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageâinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk). Soucek
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299â1922) which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic is termed Ottoman Turkish, that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish known as kaba Türkçe or "rough Turkish" spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, which was much purer and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. Glenny, Misha. The Balkans - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, Penguin, New York 2001. p. 99.
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After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. See Lewis (2002): 2â3 for the first two translations. For the third see There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changesâsuch as bölem to replace fırka, "political party"âalso failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (درد "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word aÄrı is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. (Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006)
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words tetkik and cemiyet in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final -i of cemiyeti being a Turkish possessive suffix); kurum is a native Turkish word based on the verb kurmak, "set up, found". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Map of Turkey
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as aÄız or Åive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language. Ãzsoy
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kıbrıs is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
GüneydoÄu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. DoÄu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The HemÅinli dialect, known as HemÅince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named KαÏαμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumuÅak g ("soft g"), Ä in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of Missouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumuÅak g. For example, the word soÄuk ("cold") can be pronounced /soÊk/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, ı, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
* twofold (-e/-a): For the terms twofold and fourfold, as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21â22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18). the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
* fourfold (-i/-ı/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -ın after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in 4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir 4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), In modern Turkish orthography, an apostrophe is used to separate proper names from any suffixes. kapıdır ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or baÅ+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17. There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz 4 "listless", meçhuldür 4 "it is unknown", harfler
* a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"âa place name)
* a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" 4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadüÄü
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Ä°stanbul, Ankara).
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of m, p, r, or s for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ÃekoslovakyalılaÅtıramadıklarımızdanmıÅsınız, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: BayramlaÅamadıklarımız (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings"). This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287. Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (Ä°mlâ Kılavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birliÄin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity"). Ä°mlâ Kilavuzu
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare aÄaç gördük "we saw a tree" with aÄacı gördük "we saw the tree". Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: aÄaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"âas opposed to aÄaçları gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of aÄaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (aÄaçtan, aÄaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (aÄacın, aÄaca, aÄacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz 4 , "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im 4 , "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi 4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", aÄaç mı? "[is it a] tree?".
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
* definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in 4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i 4 .
* indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic Lewis points out that "an indefinite izafet group can be turned into intelligible (though not necessarily normal) English by the use of a hyphen". Lewis (2001): 42. = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i 4 âthe same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. The examples are taken from Lewis (2001): 41-47. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group. The term substantival sentence is Lewis's. Lewis(2001:257).
Turkish adjectives are not declined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g. güzel ("beautiful") â güzeller ("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have", e.g. süt yok ("there is no milk", lit. "(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): GelememiÅti = GelememiÅ idi = GelememiÅ + i- + -di.
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-miŠ4 ), and aorist (-er² or -ir 4 ). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik 4 ), which covers both present and past meanings. See Lewis (2001):163â165, 260â262 for an exhaustive treatment. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause. For the terms personal and relative participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuÄa hikâyeyi anlattı "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuÄa anlattı "she told the story to a child". Lewis (2001): 239â240.
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Origin of the words in Turkish vocabulary, which contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 words, of which about 86% are Turkish and 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sinop. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French L'Illustration magazine)
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelsâlong Ä, Å« and Ä«âand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.
As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels. Coulmas, pp. 243â244
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g. alma agatsdan irak duschamas In modern Turkish spelling: elma aÄaçtan ırak düÅmez. â 'An apple does not fall far from its tree').
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, and represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and âalmost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. Lewis (2001):3-7. Note that in these cases the circumflex conveys information about the preceding consonant rather than the vowel over which it is written. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Ä°stanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın by AÅık Veysel ÅatıroÄlu (1894â1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
* Turkish alphabet
* Turkish folk literature
* Turkish Language Olympics
* Turkish literature
* Turkish Sign Language
* List of English words of Turkic origin
* List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the References section.
Printed sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* (2nd edition 1989)
*
*
*
*
*
*
On-line sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* VikiKaynak, Turkish Wikisource
* Vikisöz, Turkish Wikiquote
* Turkish Phrases with Video
* Turkish Talking Dictionary
* LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary
* BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service
* Sözlerin SoyaÄacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary
* 250.000 Pretranslated English-Turkish Sentences
* A short English-Turkish-Japanese phraselist (renewal) incl. sound file
* Zargan Turkish Dictionary, with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance
*
* Turkish vowels: sound and photos
* Sesli Sözlük, online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
Learning resources
* Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
* Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona
* Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course
* United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course
* LT: LearningTurkish
* LT: Automatic Turkish Verb Declinations
* The Site of Education Turkish Language
* Turkish Language Resources
* Learn Turkish
* Folksongs, tales and epics in Turkish from the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University
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Vietnamese_language | Does Vietnamese have a comparatively large number of vowels? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
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* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is Vietnamese the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people? | Yes | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is Vietnamese the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is Vietnamese the official administrative language of Vietnam? | Yes | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is Vietnamese the official administrative language of Vietnam? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Was Vietnamese influenced by Chinese? | Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Was Vietnamese influenced by Chinese? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
:
Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
:
This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
:
:
:
The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
:
The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | When did written Vietnamese become the official administrative language? | the 20th century | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
Icon of loudspeaker
The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
Icon of loudspeaker
Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | When did written Vietnamese become the official administrative language? | Vietnamese became the official administrative language by the 20th century. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
:
The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Have consonant clusters been lost? | Yes | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
|
Vietnamese_language | Have consonant clusters been lost? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is the Red River Delta traditionally poor? | Not compared to Nghe An, Ha Tinh, or Quang Binh | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
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* Nguyá»
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*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
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n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
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* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is the Red River Delta traditionally poor? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | What kind of words have been borrowed from Chinese? | Words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow form Latin and Greek. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | What kind of words have been borrowed from Chinese? | Vietnamese adopts words from Chinese which express abstract ideas. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Is Vietnam independent from France? | Yes. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Was Vietnamese formally written using the Chinese writing system? | Yes, Vietnamese was *formerly* written using the Chinese writing system. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Was Vietnamese formally written using the Chinese writing system? | null | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
:
Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
:
This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
:
:
:
The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
:
The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Does Vietnamese have a large number of vowels? | Yes, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese · (info)
Icon of loudspeaker
The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
Icon of loudspeaker
Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
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In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
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Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
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The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
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This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Does Vietnamese have a large number of vowels? | null | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | Does Vietnamese have dipthongs? | null | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
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Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
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Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
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The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
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Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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Vietnamese_language | What are the three dialect regions of Vietnamese? | The three regions are North, Central, and South. | data/set5/a10 | Vietnamese_language
Vietnamese (tiếng Viá»t, or less commonly Viá»t ngữ Another variant, tiếng Viá»t Nam, is rarely used by native speakers and is likely a neologism from translating literally from a foreign language. It is most often used by non-native speakers and mostly found in documents translated from another language. ), formerly known under French colonization as Annamese (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (ngÆ°á»i Viá»t or ngÆ°á»i Kinh), who constitute 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (several times larger than the other Austroasiatic languages put together).
Much vocabulary has been borrowed from Chinese, especially words that denote abstract ideas in the same way European languages borrow from Latin and Greek, and it was formerly written using the Chinese writing system, albeit in a modified format and was given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, with additional diacritics for tones and certain letters.
As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people, as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language (it is 3rd in Texas, 4th in Arkansas and Louisiana, and 5th in California ). In Australia, it is the sixth most-spoken language.
According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken by substantial numbers of people in Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, the Philippines, Senegal, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. /ref>
Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago to be part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family (a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda and Khasi languages spoken in eastern India, and others in southern China). Later, MÆ°á»ng was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng sub-grouping was established. As data on more Mon-Khmer languages were acquired, other minority languages (such as ThavÆ°ng, Chứt languages, Hung, etc.) were found to share Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng characteristics, and the Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng term was renamed to Vietic. The older term Viá»t-MÆ°á»ng now refers to a lower sub-grouping (within an eastern Vietic branch) consisting of Vietnamese dialects, MÆ°á»ng dialects, and Nguá»n (of Quảng Bình Province). Even though this is supported by etymological comparison, some linguists still believe that Viet-Muong is a separate family, genealogically unrelated to Mon-Khmer languages.)
While spoken by the Vietnamese people for millennia, written Vietnamese did not become the official administrative language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used written classical Chinese for governing purposes, whereas written Vietnamese in the form of Chữ nôm was used for poetry and literature. It was also used for administrative purposes during the brief Ho and Tay Son Dynasties. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It was not until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official business.
It seems likely that in the distant past, Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund, with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the phylogenetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia; for example, Thai (one of the Kradai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal.
Presently, Vietnamese has similarities with both Chinese and French due to the influence of the French invasion.
The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in the vicinity of present-day Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), characteristic tonal variations have emerged.
Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Chinese, which came to predominate politically in the 2nd century B.C.
With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary written language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Viá»t (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (using both the original Chinese characters, called Hán tá»±, as well as a system of newly created and modified characters called Chữ nôm) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (kanji), Korea (hanja), and other countries in the Sinosphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyá»
n Du and HỠXuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry").
As contact with the West grew, the Quá»c Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as Äầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), sÆ¡ mi (shirt, from chemise), and búp bê (doll, from poupée). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.
The orange colour words belong to the Vietnamese native vocabulary while the green ones belong to the Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.As a result of a thousand years of Chinese occupation, much of the Vietnamese lexicon relating to science and politics is derived from Chinese. As much as 60%-70% of the vocabulary has Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with Chinese borrowings. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has words borrowed from the French language, for example cà phê (from French café). Nowadays, many new words are being added to the language's lexicon; these are usually borrowed from English, for example TV (though usually seen in the written form as tivi). Sometimes these borrowings are calques literally translated into Vietnamese for example, 'software' is calqued into phần má»m, which literally means "soft part".
Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels. Below is a vowel diagram of Hanoi Vietnamese.
:
Front, central, and low vowels (i, ê, e, Æ°, â, Æ¡, Ä, a) are unrounded, whereas the back vowels (u, ô, o) are rounded. The vowels â and Ä are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Thus, Æ¡ and â are basically pronounced the same except that Æ¡ The symbol Ë represents long vowel length. is long while â is short â the same applies to the low vowels long a and short Ä . There are different descriptions of Hanoi vowels. Another common description is that of Thompson (1965):
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This description distinguishes four degrees of vowel height and a rounding contrast (rounded vs. unrounded) between back vowels. The relative shortness of Ä and â would, then, be a secondary feature. Thompson describes the vowel Ä as being slightly higher (upper low) than a .
In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs In Vietnamese, diphthongs are âm Äôi. and triphthongs. The diphthongs consist of a main vowel component followed by a shorter semivowel offglide to a high front position , a high back position , or a central position . The diphthongs and triphthongs as described by Thompson can be compared with the description above:
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:
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The centering diphthongs are formed with only the three high vowels (i, ư, u) as the main vowel. They are generally spelled as ia, ưa, ua when they end a word and are spelled iê, ươ, uô, respectively, when they are followed by a consonant. There are also restrictions on the high offglides: the high front offglide cannot occur after a front vowel (i, ê, e) nucleus and the high back offglide cannot occur after a back vowel (u, ô, o) nucleus The lack of diphthong consisting of a ơ + back offglide (i.e., ) is an apparent gap. .
The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is complicated. For example, the offglide is usually written as i however, it may also be represented with y. In addition, in the diphthongs and the letters y and i also indicate the pronunciation of the main vowel: ay = Ä + , ai = a + . Thus, tay "hand" is while tai "ear" is . Similarly, u and o indicate different pronunciations of the main vowel: au = Ä + , ao = a + . Thus, thau "brass" is while thao "raw silk" is .
The four triphthongs are formed by adding front and back offglides to the centering diphthongs. Similarly to the restrictions involving diphthongs, a triphthong with front nucleus cannot have a front offglide (after the centering glide) and a triphthong with a back nucleus cannot have a back offglide.
With regards to the front and back offglides , many phonological descriptions analyze these as consonant glides . Thus, a word such as Äâu "where", phonetically , would be phonemicized as .
Pitch contours and duration of the six Northern Vietnamese tones as uttered by a male speaker (not from Hanoi). Fundamental frequency is plotted over time. From Nguyá»
n & Edmondson (1998).
Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone. Called thanh Äiá»u in Vietnamese Tones differ in:
* length (duration)
* pitch contour (i.e. pitch melody)
* pitch height
* phonation
Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel; however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). Note that the name of each tone has the corresponding tonal diacritic on the vowel. The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:
Other dialects of Vietnamese have fewer tones (typically only five). See the language variation section for a brief survey of tonal differences among dialects.
In Vietnamese poetry, tones are classed into two groups:
Words with tones belonging to particular tone group must occur in certain positions with the poetic verse.
The consonants that occur in Vietnamese are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography with the phonetic pronunciation to the right.
:
Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q").
Not all dialects of Vietnamese have the same consonant in a given word (although all dialects use the same spelling in the written language). See the language variation section for further elaboration.
The analysis of syllable-final orthographic ch and nh in Hanoi Vietnamese has had different analyses. One analysis has final ch, nh as being phonemes contrasting with syllable-final t, c and n, ng and identifies final ch with the syllable-initial ch . The other analysis has final ch and nh as predictable allophonic variants of the velar phonemes and that occur before upper front vowels i and ê . (See Vietnamese phonology: Analysis of final ch, nh for further details.)
There are various mutually intelligible regional varieties (or dialects), the main four being: Sources on Vietnamese variation include: Alves (forthcoming), Alves & Nguyá»
n (2007), Emeneau (1947), Hoà ng (1989), Honda (2006), Nguyá»
n, Ä.-H. (1995), Pham (2005), Thompson (1991[1965]), VÅ© (1982), VÆ°Æ¡ng (1981).
:
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The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spoken by Nghiem Mai Phuong, native speaker of a northern variety. (audio help)
Listen to this audio clip of Vietnamese
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Ho Chi Minh reading his Declaration of Independence. Ho Chi Minh is from Nghe An Province, speaking a northern-central variety. (audio help)
Vietnamese has traditionally been divided into three dialect regions: North, Central, and South. However, Michel Fergus and Nguyá»
n Tà i Cẩn offer evidence for considering a North-Central region separate from Central. The term Haut-Annam refers to dialects spoken from northern NghỠAn Province to southern (former) Thừa Thiên Province that preserve archaic features (like consonant clusters and undiphthongized vowels) that have been lost in other modern dialects.
These dialect regions differ mostly in their sound systems (see below), but also in vocabulary (including basic vocabulary, non-basic vocabulary, and grammatical words) and grammar. Some differences in grammatical words are noted in Vietnamese grammar: Demonstratives, Vietnamese grammar: Pronouns. The North-central and Central regional varieties, which have a significant amount of vocabulary differences, are generally less mutually intelligible to Northern and Southern speakers. There is less internal variation within the Southern region than the other regions due to its relatively late settlement by Vietnamese speakers (in around the end of the 15th century). The North-central region is particularly conservative. Along the coastal areas, regional variation has been neutralized to a certain extent while more mountainous regions preserve more variation. As for sociolinguistic attitudes, the North-central varieties are often felt to be "peculiar" or "difficult to understand" by speakers of other dialects.
It should be noted that the large movements of people between North and South beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to this day have resulted in a significant number of Southern residents speaking in the Northern accent/dialect and to a lesser extent, Northern residents speaking in the Southern accent/dialect. Following the Geneva Accords of 1954 that called for the "temporary" division of the country, almost a million Northern speakers (mainly from Hanoi and the surrounding Red River Delta areas) moved South (mainly to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and the surrounding areas.) About a third of that number of people made the move in the reverse direction.
Following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975-76, Northern and North-Central speakers from the densely populated Red River Delta and the traditionally poorer provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh have continued to move South to look for better economic opportunities. Additionally, government and military personnel are posted to various locations throughout the country, often away from their home regions. More recently, the growth of the free market system have resulted in business people and tourists traveling to distant parts of Vietnam. These movements have resulted in some small blending of the dialects but more significantly, have made the Northern dialect more easily understood in the South and vice versa. It is also interesting to note that most Southerners, when singing modern/popular Vietnamese songs, would do so in the Northern accent. This is true in Vietnam as well as in the overseas Vietnamese communities.
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The syllable-initial ch and tr digraphs are pronounced distinctly in North-central, Central, and Southern varieties, but are merged in Northern varieties (i.e. they are both pronounced the same way). The North-central varieties preserve three distinct pronunciations for d, gi, and r whereas the North has a three-way merger and the Central and South have a merger of d and gi while keeping r distinct. At the end of syllables, palatals ch and nh have merged with alveolars t and n, which, in turn, have also partially merged with velars c and ng in Central and Southern varieties.
:
In addition to the regional variation described above, there is also a merger of l and n in certain rural varieties:
:
Variation between l and n can be found even in mainstream Vietnamese in certain words. For example, the numeral "five" appears as nÄm by itself and in compound numerals like nÄm mÆ°Æ¡i "fifty" but appears as lÄm in mÆ°á»i lÄm "fifteen". (See Vietnamese syntax: Cardinal numerals.) In some northern varieties, this numeral appears with an initial nh instead of l: hai mÆ°Æ¡i nhÄm "twenty-five" vs. mainstream hai mÆ°Æ¡i lÄm. Gregerson (1981) notes that this variation was present in de Rhodes's time in some initial consonant clusters: mlẽ ~ mnhẽ "reason" (cf. modern Vietnamese lẽ "reason").
The consonant clusters that were originally present in Middle Vietnamese (of the 17th century) have been lost in almost all modern Vietnamese varieties (but retained in other closely related Vietic languages). However, some speech communities have preserved some of these archaic clusters: "sky" is blá»i with a cluster in Hảo Nho (Yên Mô prefecture, Ninh Binh Province) but trá»i in Southern Vietnamese and giá»i in Hanoi Vietnamese (initial single consonants , respectively).
Generally, the Northern varieties have six tones while those in other regions have five tones. The há»i and ngã tones are distinct in North and some North-central varieties (although often with different pitch contours) but have merged in Central, Southern, and some North-central varieties (also with different pitch contours). Some North-central varieties (such as Hà TÄ©nh Vietnamese) have a merger of the ngã and nặng tones while keeping the há»i tone distinct. Still other North-central varieties have a three-way merger of há»i, ngã, and nặng resulting in a four-tone system. In addition, there are several phonetic differences (mostly in pitch contour and phonation type) in the tones among dialects.
:
The table above shows the pitch contour of each tone using Chao tone number notation (where 1 = lowest pitch, 5 = highest pitch); glottalization (creaky, stiff, harsh) is indicated with the symbol; breathy voice with ; glottal stop with ; sub-dialectal variants are separated with commas. (See also the tone section below.)
Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (or isolating) language. Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender, number or tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
Comparison note: As such its grammar relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (in which word changes through inflection). Whereas European languages tend to use morphology to express tense, Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Also like other languages in the region, Vietnamese syntax conforms to Subject Verb Object word order, is head-initial (displaying modified-modifier ordering), and has a noun classifier system. Additionally, it is pro-drop, wh-in-situ, and allows verb serialization.
Some Vietnamese sentences with English word glosses and translations are provided below.
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
Currently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quá»c ngữ or "national script", literally "national language"), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591 1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do Amaral and António Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public.
Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the end of first half 20th century virtually all writings were done in quá»c ngữ.
Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators and by conferences held after independence during 1954 1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect that has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects (Nguyá»
n 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. (This is not unlike how English orthography is based on the Chancery Standard of late Middle English, with many spellings retained even after significant phonetic change.)
Before French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
* the standard Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 𡨸 å): used to write Literary Chinese
* a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 𡨸 å) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese
The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and almost all citizens are unable to read chữ nôm in more recent years.
Chữ nho was still in use on early North Vietnamese and late French Indochinese banknotes issued after WWII but fell out of official use shortly thereafter.
The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and the Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese code pages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention, though this is largely unnecessary nowadays, with the increasing ubiquity of Unicode. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards, such as WinVNKey and Unikey on Windows, or MacVNKey on Macintosh.
* ethnography of communication
* politeness (see Sophana (2004, 2005))
* pragmatics
* sociolinguistics
* speech acts
A language game known as nói lái is used by Vietnamese speakers and is often considered clever . Nói lái involves switching the tones in a pair of words and also the order of the two words or the first consonant and rime of each word; the resulting nói lái pair preserves the original sequence of tones. Some examples:
:
The resulting transformed phrase often has a different meaning but sometimes may just be a nonsensical word pair. Nói lái can be used to obscure the original meaning and thus soften the discussion of a socially sensitive issue, as with dấm Äà i and hoảng chÆ°a (above) or, when implied (and not overtly spoken), to deliver a hidden subtextual message, as with bá»i tây Nguyá»
n Ä.-H. (1997: 29) gives the following context: "... a collaborator under the French administration was presented with a congratulatory panel featuring the two Chinese characters quần thần. This Sino-Vietnamese expression could be defined as bầy tôi meaning âall the king's subjectsâ. But those two syllables, when undergoing commutation of rhyme and tone, would generate bá»i tây meaning âservant in a French householdâ. . Naturally, nói lái can be used for a humorous effect. See www.users.bigpond.com/doanviettrung/noilai.html, Language Log's itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001788.html, and tphcm.blogspot.com/2005/01/ni-li.html for more examples.
Another word game somewhat reminiscent of pig latin is played by children. Here a nonsense syllable (chosen by the child) is prefixed onto a target word's syllables, then their initial consonants and rimes are switched with the tone of the original word remaining on the new switched rime.
:
This language game is often used as a "secret" or "coded" language useful for obscuring messages from adult comprehension.
See "The Tale of Kieu" for an extract of the first six lines of Truyá»n Kiá»u, an epic narrative poem by the celebrated poet Nguyá»
n Du, é®æ¸), which is often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled Äoạn TrÆ°á»ng Tân Thanh æ·è
¸æ°è²) and is widely taught in Vietnam today.
* Chữ nho
* Chữ nôm
* Sino-Tibetan languages
* Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
* Vietic languages
* Vietnamese alphabet
* Vietnamese literature
* Vietnamese morphology
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese syntax
* DÆ°Æ¡ng, Quảng-Hà m. (1941). Viá»t-nam vÄn-há»c sá»-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bá» Quá»c gia Giáo dục.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1995). NTC's Vietnamese-English dictionary (updated ed.). NTC language dictionaries. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Press. ISBN; ISBN
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1997). Vietnamese: Tiếng Viá»t không son phấn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Rhodes, Alexandre de. (1991). Từ Äiá»n Annam-Lusitan-Latinh [original: Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum]. (L. Thanh, X. V. Hoà ng, & Q. C. Äá», Trans.). Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i. (Original work published 1651).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). A Vietnamese reference grammar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965). (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/THOMPSONLaurenceC.htm.)
* Uá»· ban Khoa há»c Xã há»i Viá»t Nam. (1983). Ngữ-pháp tiếng Viá»t [Vietnamese grammar]. Hanoi: Khoa há»c Xã há»i.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, 37(1), 79-96.
*Brunelle, Marc. (2009) Northern and Southern Vietnamese Tone Coarticulation: A Comparative Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, 1, 49-62.
* Michaud, Alexis. (2004). Final consonants and glottalization: New perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese. Phonetica 61) pp. 119-146. Preprint version
* Nguyá»
n, VÄn Lợi; & Edmondson, Jerold A. (1998). Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies. Mon-Khmer Studies, 28, 1-18. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/NGUYNVnLoi.htm).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1959). Saigon phonemics. Language, 35 (3), 454-476.
* Alves, Mark J. (forthcoming). A look at North-Central Vietnamese. In Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Arizona State University Press. Pre-publication electronic version: * Alves, Mark J.; & Nguyá»
n, Duy HÆ°Æ¡ng. (2007). Notes on Thanh-ChÆ°Æ¡ng Vietnamese in Nghá»-An province. In M. Alves, M. Sidwell, & D. Gil (Eds.), SEALS VIII: Papers from the 8th annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 1998 (pp. 1-9). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Electronic version: * Hoà ng, Thá» Châu. (1989). Tiếng Viá»t trên các miá»n Äất nÆ°á»c: PhÆ°Æ¡ng ngữ há»c [Vietnamese in different areas of the country: Dialectology]. Hà Ná»i: Khoa há»c xã há»i.
* Honda, Koichi. (2006). F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones. In P. Warren & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 454-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Luong, Hy Van. (1987). Plural markers and personal pronouns in Vietnamese person reference: An analysis of pragmatic ambiguity and negative models. Anthropological Linguistics, 29 (1), 49-70.
* Pham, Andrea Hoa. (2005). Vietnamese tonal system in Nghi Loc: A preliminary report. In C. Frigeni, M. Hirayama, & S. Mackenzie (Eds.), Toronto working papers in linguistics: Special issue on similarity in phonology (Vol. 24, pp. 183-459). Auckland, New Zealand: University of Auckland. Electronic version: * Sophana, Srichampa. (2004). Politeness strategies in Hanoi Vietnamese speech. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 137-157. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* Sophana, Srichampa. (2005). Comparison of greetings in the Vietnamese dialects of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. Mon-Khmer Studies, 35, 83-99. (Online version: www.sealang.net/archives/mks/SOPHANASrichampa.htm).
* VÅ©, Thang PhÆ°Æ¡ng. (1982). Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in Southeast Asian linguistics: Tonation (Vol. 8, pp. 55-75). Sydney: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.
* VÆ°Æ¡ng, Hữu Lá»
. (1981). Vái nháºn xét vá» Äặc diá»m của vần trong thỠâm Quảng Nam á» Há»i An [Some notes on special qualities of the rhyme in local Quang Nam speech in Hoi An]. In Má»t Sá» Vấn Ãá» Ngôn Ngữ Há»c Viá»t Nam [Some linguistics issues in Vietnam] (pp. 311-320). Hà Ná»i: Nhà Xuất Bản Ãại Há»c và Trung Há»c Chuyên Nghiá»p.
* Alves, Mark. (1999). "What's so Chinese about Vietnamese?", in Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. University of California, Berkeley. PDF
* Cooke, Joseph R. (1968). Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California publications in linguistics (No. 52). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193. (Reprinted in 1981).
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1986). Alexandre de Rhodes' dictionary. Papers in Linguistics, 19, 1-18.
* Shorto, Harry L. edited by Sidwell, Paul, Cooper, Doug and Bauer, Christian (2006). A Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary. Canberra: Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1967). The history of Vietnamese finals. Language, 43 (1), 362-371.
* Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Viá»t-Nam, 3, 61-68.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1955). Quá»c-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1990). Graphemic borrowing from Chinese: The case of chữ nôm, Vietnam's demotic script. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 61'', 383-432.
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1996). Vietnamese. In P. T. Daniels, & W. Bright (Eds.), The world's writing systems, (pp. 691-699). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN.
* Nguyen, Bich Thuan. (1997). Contemporary Vietnamese: An intermediate text. Southeast Asian language series. Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
* Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
* Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN
* Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN; ISBN (w/ CD); ISBN (w/ cassettes);
* Nguyá»
n, Äình-Hoà . (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.
* Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
* Nguyá»
n, Äang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN -X
* The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project
* VDict (online dictionary)
* Vietnamese Phrasebook
* Nôm look-up from the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation
* Online Vietnamese lessons from Northern Illinois University
* The right place of the Vietnamese accent a simple rule for learners, on where to put the tonal accent
* The Vietnamese keyboard its layout is compared with US, UK, Canada, France, and Germany's keyboards.
* Lexicon of Vietnamese words borrowed from French by Jubinell
* Vietnamese text to speech engine An SAPI5-compliant Vietnamese TTS engine.
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