EurasianStudies_0110..

January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1.
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Another word that was used in the mouth of Rosella, was nisyan “oblivion”, in the sentence
“...yavaş yavaş nisyan da başladı” (oblivion starts little by little) which, in Portuguese I translated
by the literary “olvido” (cognate with the common Spanish word for “to forget” olvidarse).
Nisyan is an ottomanism that comes from the common Arabic word for “forget” (< root nsy)
“forgetfulness”. Pelin’s reaction to the word is very revealing, for she retorts “Pardon, ne
basladı?” (“Sorry, what starts?”), indicating that she does not have a clue of what that word
means. Rosella’s answers, unutuş, being promptly understood by Pelin, also tells us that that
word, from an original Turkic root unut-, is the common one in modern Turkish.
In chapter 3 occurs another difficult case of translation involving 3 words that basically mean
the same thing: tecessüs, merak and the French curiosité, all meaning “curiosity”. The context is as
follows: after using the word tecessüs (from the Arabic tajassus “espionage”), Pelin again does
not understand and asks “Ne uyandırmakta?” (Awakens what?) and Rosella, who speaks
German and French as well, answers using the French word (a common second language, by
the way, in Turkey at the beginning of the 20 th century) curiosité. Pelin, in turn, uses the current
Turkish word for “curiosity” merak, which is, ironically, an Arabic derived word as well. The
solution devised by me was to use the French word curiosité in the place of the ottoman tecessüs,
for her reaction was just as if she had heard a foreign word. Obviously, mutati mutandis, there is
much less of an impact in hearing (or reading) the word curiosité as compared to its Portuguese
cognate “curiosidade” than when hearing tecessüs as compared to curiosité.
The fluctuation of acceptance is well illustrated by the use of the pair talebe vs öğrenci, both
meaning “student”. The etymon of the first, however, an ottomanism, is the Arabic ṭalabat,
plural of ṭālib. The second is derived from the Turkic root öğren- “to learn” and was coined in
1935. It is interesting to note that in chapter 4 of Dualar Kalıcıdır to similar questions are asked,
one by each woman, and each using one of the words mentioned above: Pelin asks about Aldo,
Rosella’s late husband “o da öğrenci miydi?” (Was he a student as well?), while in the following
chapter Rosella asks about Dimitri, one of Pelin’s “suitors”: talebe mi o da? (Was he a student
too?). Such use, perfectly understood by both women, corroborates Çelik’s finding (p. 8,16) in
which there does not seem to have occurred any substantial semantic differentiation between
the two variants and is indicative of Tuna’s sharp linguistic perception.
Another curious pair is mektep x okul. The first, a genuinely Arabic word and enjoying a long
tradition in Osmanlıca (Ottoman Turkish), was, without a doubt, one of the first words to be
thought of being replaced, due to the centuries of association of school and Islamic studies that
often went together in the Ottoman Empire. Its substitute okul, however, was harshly criticized
by some sticklers to the rules of Turkish morphology, for it bear a striking resemblance with the
French word école. But the point is that it coincides perfectly with the Turkic root oku- meaning
“study, read” + a supposed suffix –l, which does not exist in Turkish, according to those
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