mediocre turkish
I was reading in a book recently about Ottoman Turkish -- the official government language of the Ottoman Empire.
Here were the 3 levels of Turkish, from the wikipedia article about Ottoman Turkish:
- Fasih Türkçe (Eloquent Turkish): Language of poetry and administration.
- Orta Türkçe (Mediocre Turkish): Language of higher classes and trade.
- Kaba Türkçe (Vulgar Turkish): Language of lower classes.
Haha.. mediocre. Anyways, the high government level of Turkish also incorporated a large Arabic and Persian element--so that someone would have to be fluent in all 3 languages to really speak Ottoman, since the grammatical forms/cases were expected to be correct in all borrowed words.
If Canada were a more insane/enlightened country, perhaps all government workers would not only be required to be bilingual, but fluent in a mega-language that used the grammatical forms of both English and French.. Still, I wish linguists were so harsh these days as to say people in Canada speak "Eloquent French" (French CBC radio hosts), "Mediocre french" (French Yuppies and Politicians) and "Vulgar French" (Old men in Vanier).
Forget learning languages, it's vowels that I crave, inject me some hearty Turkish vowels straight into my veins:
a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü.
Here were the 3 levels of Turkish, from the wikipedia article about Ottoman Turkish:
- Fasih Türkçe (Eloquent Turkish): Language of poetry and administration.
- Orta Türkçe (Mediocre Turkish): Language of higher classes and trade.
- Kaba Türkçe (Vulgar Turkish): Language of lower classes.
Haha.. mediocre. Anyways, the high government level of Turkish also incorporated a large Arabic and Persian element--so that someone would have to be fluent in all 3 languages to really speak Ottoman, since the grammatical forms/cases were expected to be correct in all borrowed words.
If Canada were a more insane/enlightened country, perhaps all government workers would not only be required to be bilingual, but fluent in a mega-language that used the grammatical forms of both English and French.. Still, I wish linguists were so harsh these days as to say people in Canada speak "Eloquent French" (French CBC radio hosts), "Mediocre french" (French Yuppies and Politicians) and "Vulgar French" (Old men in Vanier).
Forget learning languages, it's vowels that I crave, inject me some hearty Turkish vowels straight into my veins:
a, e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü.