EVLİYA ÇELEBİ AS LINGUIST

Abstract

This article has been located among the articles published for the sixtieth birthday of Omeljan Pritsak. These articles had been written by his colleagues and students. This translated article was written by Tibor Halasi-Hun and was published in this book. Halasi Kun has pointed out one of the literary works as Seyahatnâme, which is an enlightener about Turkish history, language and Ottoman geography in his article. Besides, Evliyâ Çelebi can reflect phonetic features just like a linguist. As known, Evliyâ Çelebi wandered the territories of the Ottoman Empire for more than fifty years and compiled his experiences in his work. Therefore, Evliyâ Çelebi has been one of the most prominent figures of Ottoman Literature and the 17th century for both local and foreign scholars. This period, which is attributed to Evliyâ Çelebi, stems from his work, Seyahatnâme, which he penned patiently and determinedly while travelling around the Ottoman territories. Evliyâ Çelebi not only transferred the geographical properties of the places he travelled but also gave information about many other things including the histories, people, plants, foods, clothes, traditions and customs, narratives, and local dialects of these places. This fact made the content of the work come into prominence, thereby the content of the work has been examined in many academic researches. Because the content of Seyahatnâme came into prominence, the work has been ignored in terms of linguistic features. Beyond any doubt, one of the most striking features of Seyahatnâme in terms of Turkish language is its language and wording. Seyahatnâme was written in a language which does not share any parallelism with the other texts, written in Ottoman Turkish language. Although each writer had his/her own wording, generally a syntactical pattern was used as a convention in the texts, written in Ottoman Turkish language. Considering this notion, Evliyâ Çelebi is definitely a writer, who is far from being a stereotype especially in terms of language. It is observed that Evliyâ Çelebi specified the features of the language he used while informing about the traits of the places he visited, did not acquiesce in the general tendency, in short, he made up his own rules. Though a variety of researches about history, art, folklore, and geography has been done by referencing to Seyahatnâme by both local and foreign scientists, the studies about its value as well as its qualifications in terms of language are not sufficient in amount, as aforementioned. Taking the historical development of Turkish language into account, the properties of all the periods, which are assorted through different methods, are manifested clearly. However, researchers, surveying on Turkish language, have constantly ignored the period between the 16th and 19th centuries, which they named as Ottoman Turkish language. Therefore, language features of this period, particularly the vocal and consonant systems, are evaluated within a large corpus and are specified clearly. Beside his diversity and richness of expression in Turkish language, Evliyâ Çelebi formed an authentic language for himself by coercing foreign items in language in terms of both morph and lexicon as well as grammatical rules. This authentic language also stems from his struggle for penning everything he experienced while travelling around the places very carefully, for Evliyâ Çelebi was highly meticulous in order not to distort the authenticity of the events he was transferring. In this sense, he wanted to transfer and transcribe a stutterer’s speech, a cat’s voice, or someone’s call for a pigeon. This case makes the work stand as a profound one in the specification of phonetic features of Turkish language and other languages. The fact that Evliyâ Çelebi had a sufficient education in order to reflect the standard Turkish language of the period makes it rather important to research the words he used in his work. In order to write a comprehensive grammar of Turkish language, historical periods should be studied separately. While surveying those periods, grammars of some basic works belonging to those periods should be prepared. As long as the works are studied in this way, it will be easier to identify the linguistic features of the periods. Following this fact, it is important to do a research about Seyahatnâme, which is one of the most significant works of this period, and the 17th century Turkish language, which is one of the historical periods of Turkish language. In addition, Seyahatnâme provides a considerable amount of materials about the dictation of the period. Evliyâ Çelebi is known to have written the Turkish and foreign words by changing their conventional dictations in that period. Nevertheless, the words at hand actually reflect the spoken language, in other words, the pronunciation. Regarding this, it is better to avoid naming Evliyâ Çelebi’s words as misspelling; on the contrary, they should be considered as words reflecting the dialectic properties of the period, for Evliyâ Çelebi actually wanted to reflect the spoken language. Halasi-Kun dwelled on Evliyâ Çelebi’s words (especially the Hungarian), which mirror the local properties, in his work. Halasi-Kun reckoned that the researchers did not study Evliyâ Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme and the texts written with Arabic letters in terms of their significance in reflecting the period’s dictations. Halasi-Kun’s main purpose was to draw attention to Çelebi as linguist, for he was rather talented in using the words very accurately with reference to the Hungarian examples. In this article, Halasi Kun has considered Evliyâ Çelebi as a linguist with reference to Çelebi’s manuscript. Halasi Kun indicates that scholars cared about the scribes with the latin letters for specifying the vocal and consonant characteristics of Turkish. Moreover, Halasi Kun indicates that Ottoman defters and some texts with Arabic letters were neglected. Halasi-kun also thinks the importance

Özet

Bu çalışma Omeljan Pritsak'ın altmışıncı doğum günü nedeniyle çıkarılan makaleler arasında yer almaktadır. Bu makaleler Pritsak'ın meslektaşları ve öğrencileri tarafından yazılmıştır. Çevirisi yapılan bu çalışma ise Tibor Halasi-Kun tarafından yazılmış ve bu kitapta yayınlanmıştır. Halasi-Kun bu çalışmasında Türk tarihi, Türk dili, Osmanlı coğrafyası gibi birçok konuda önemli eserlerden olan Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi üzerine dikkatleri çekmek istemektedir. Halasi-Kun bu çalışmada Evliyâ Çelebi'nin yazmalarından hareketle ona bir dilbilimci gibi bakmaktadır. Türkçenin ünlü ve ünsüzler ile ilgili özelliklerini belirlemek için Latin harfli metinlere araştırmacılar tarafından önem verildiğini belirten Halasi-Kun, Osmanlı defterlerinin ve Arap harfli bazı metinlerin ise bu anlamda göz ardı edildiğini belirtmektedir. Türkçenin sesleri ile ilgili özellikleri belirlemede defterlerin ve çeşitli Osmanlıca metinlerin önemli olduğunu düşünen Halasi-Kun, Evliyâ Çelebi'nin bu açıdan incelenmesi gerektiğini belirtmektedir. Kendisi Seyahatnâme'nin Topkapı Sarayı'nda bulunan yazmalarından hareketle altıncı ciltteki Evliyâ Çelebi'nin yazdığı Macarca kelimeleri incelemektedir. Macarca kelimelerde bazı seslerin Türkçeye aşina kulaklar tarafından duyulamayacağını ve yazılamayacağını belirten Halasi-Kun, Evliyâ Çelebi'nin adeta bir dilbilimci gibi Macarca kelimeleri seslerin aslına uygun bir biçimde yazdığını belirtmektedir. Yetmiş sekiz adet Macarca kelimenin sesletim karşılıklarını ve onların İngilizcelerini veren Halasi-Kun, Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi'nin hazırlanması gerektiğini belirtmektedir. Yazara göre Evliyâ Çelebi Seyahatnamesi dönemin Türkçe ünlü ve ünsüzleri hakkında önemli bilgiler vermektedir