3 ms·

Kismet: Destiny Ayip: Shameful There are worse Turkish concepts to choose to translate (the many alterations of Gule Gule that can be added for one, I've neve

by iuguy 16y ago

Kismet: Destiny Ayip: Shameful There are worse Turkish concepts to choose to translate (the many alterations of Gule Gule that can be added for one, I've never been able to get my head around the construct) and the mis suffix (to have experienced something indirectly or via another person is probably the easiest way to put it). Having said that, Turkish can be extremely beautiful as a language, particularly for conveying emotion, beauty or craftiness.

deleted 16y ago
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eru 16y ago
And it has nice grammar. My manager once put together a formal grammar for _all_ the things you can do to verbs. It fit on one sheet of paper.
- iuguy 16y ago
  It is impressive, pretty much everything is regular, you can pick up enough to get started in about an hour. I find Turkish almost like the python of spoken languages.
  - eru 16y ago
    Yes. Though it takes some effort to practice is enough to be fluid. Also the vocabulary demands some rote learning, of course.
Jun8 16y ago
Yep, these are the standard definitions that would be found in a Turkish-English dictionary, but I don't think they cover the nuances of these words. For example, "destiny" is very well represented by "kader", whereas "kismet" seems to have a hint of luck, etc involved. It has a certain pagan feeling to it, I think. That being said, Turkish is a good example of a language that suffers from a relative synonym deficiency. When I was working on linguistic steganography, where a message can be embedded into text by replacing words with their synonyms, I discussed applying same concepts to Turkish with a Turkish professor (Bulent Sankur). They complained that this approach is general does not work because there aren't a multitude of synonyms for may words, as in English. The reason for this is partly the brutal pruning of many Arabic-Farsi synonyms during the Language Revolution and its aftermath that were common at the time (1930s) to create a "pure" Turkish.
- iuguy 16y ago
  That's interesting. To me (being a fairly basic Turkish speaker but nowhere near fluent) the difference between Kader and Kismet is that Kader is stuff that's meant to happen in a strictly secular sense (e.g. a man goes to jail because he committed a murder, this I would view as kader although perhaps incorrectly) whereas kismet is more spectacular, indeed by the will of god for those that believe in such things, such as bumping into a long lost lover on the other side of the world by chance, rekindling a relationship and getting back together - that to me is definitely kismet. I've yet to see a decent romantic story that features kader :) I think the pruning of Ottoman from modern Turkish is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it makes learning basic Turkish incredibly straightforward. It took me two weeks to get to a level of proficiency similar to that of a 7 or 8 year old with my mother in-law. It's almost deceptively easy, because when you start talking to Turks in the real world a lot of the Ottoman loan-terms never really disappeared. Also I've noticed while I can talk to my mother and father in-law, I have real trouble understanding my anane, who almost speaks an entirely different language. The other thing I've noticed (in Istanbul at least), is the anglicisation of Turkish. I remember when computers were 'knowledge desks' (Bilgisayarlar), not 'laptops' or 'pee-sees'. I've noticed this particularly with technology, but even just overhearing conversations in taksim cafes it seems that young Turks are more likely to use English words in general conversation.

by iuguy 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

eru 16y ago

And it has nice grammar. My manager once put together a formal grammar for _all_ the things you can do to verbs. It fit on one sheet of paper.

iuguy 16y ago
It is impressive, pretty much everything is regular, you can pick up enough to get started in about an hour. I find Turkish almost like the python of spoken languages.
- eru 16y ago
  Yes. Though it takes some effort to practice is enough to be fluid. Also the vocabulary demands some rote learning, of course.

Jun8 16y ago

Yep, these are the standard definitions that would be found in a Turkish-English dictionary, but I don't think they cover the nuances of these words. For example, "destiny" is very well represented by "kader", whereas "kismet" seems to have a hint of luck, etc involved. It has a certain pagan feeling to it, I think. That being said, Turkish is a good example of a language that suffers from a relative synonym deficiency. When I was working on linguistic steganography, where a message can be embedded into text by replacing words with their synonyms, I discussed applying same concepts to Turkish with a Turkish professor (Bulent Sankur). They complained that this approach is general does not work because there aren't a multitude of synonyms for may words, as in English. The reason for this is partly the brutal pruning of many Arabic-Farsi synonyms during the Language Revolution and its aftermath that were common at the time (1930s) to create a "pure" Turkish.

iuguy 16y ago
That's interesting. To me (being a fairly basic Turkish speaker but nowhere near fluent) the difference between Kader and Kismet is that Kader is stuff that's meant to happen in a strictly secular sense (e.g. a man goes to jail because he committed a murder, this I would view as kader although perhaps incorrectly) whereas kismet is more spectacular, indeed by the will of god for those that believe in such things, such as bumping into a long lost lover on the other side of the world by chance, rekindling a relationship and getting back together - that to me is definitely kismet. I've yet to see a decent romantic story that features kader :) I think the pruning of Ottoman from modern Turkish is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it makes learning basic Turkish incredibly straightforward. It took me two weeks to get to a level of proficiency similar to that of a 7 or 8 year old with my mother in-law. It's almost deceptively easy, because when you start talking to Turks in the real world a lot of the Ottoman loan-terms never really disappeared. Also I've noticed while I can talk to my mother and father in-law, I have real trouble understanding my anane, who almost speaks an entirely different language. The other thing I've noticed (in Istanbul at least), is the anglicisation of Turkish. I remember when computers were 'knowledge desks' (Bilgisayarlar), not 'laptops' or 'pee-sees'. I've noticed this particularly with technology, but even just overhearing conversations in taksim cafes it seems that young Turks are more likely to use English words in general conversation.