TURKISH AS THE LANGUAGE MEDIATING ACCEPTANCE OF F A R SI SM S IN BOSNIAN

TURKISH AS THE LANGUAGE MEDIATING ACCEPTANCE OF F A R SI SM S IN BOSNIAN

Haverić, Đenita
Šehović, Amela

Bosnian language lexis is characterised by a number of loanwords, whereby words of eastern origin, i.e. words from Turkish, Arabic or Persian, occupy a prominent place, not only in number but also in terms of language, style and other characteristics. Words of eastern originwere introduced in the Bosnian language mostly through Turkish and are, for that reason, referred to as turcisms. However, a more scientifically approved term is orientalisms since not all of these words belong to the Turkish lexical material, and they involve a great number of Arabic and Farsi phrases. Apart from that, not all the words of eastern origin entered the Bosnian language through Turkish exclusively, as there is a number of words that enteredBosnian directly from Arabic or Persian. The number of turcisms in the Bosnian language is quite impressive. For instance, Škaljić’s Rječnik turcizama (Dictionary of Turcisms) contains 8,742 words (expressions) and 6,878 terms(1979: 23). Compared to Turkish and Arabic, lexis of Persian origin is the least present –in Škaljić’s Dictionary of Turcismsthere were total 1031words of Persian origin, out of which 653 basic words and 378 derivatives (Akopdžanjan, 2010: 180). This proportionately smaller number of words of Persian origin in relation to the other two languages is quite reasonable and logical since there was no direct contact between the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iran, as was the case with Turkey, which ruled in our region for more than five centuries. Although there was no direct contact between the two nations, influences and echoes of Iranian civilization in the Balkans, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina,were visible for centuries before the arrival of the Ottomans and Islam, since the time of settlement of the Slavs in this region. The penetration of Iranian civilization and culture on our soil continued through the expansion of Manichaeism,so the influencesof this civilization were kept in Newly-Manicheism teachings of Bogomil, and later after the arrival of the Ottomans and the acceptance of Islam in this region were restored and preserved through various Sufi and Dervish movements (Džaka, 1991: 398–399). This paper examines the significance and role of the Turkish language as the language mediator in the case of words of Persian origin entering the Bosnian language. Before it was fully adopted by the Bosnian language, a Persian loanword, from the moment it was borrowed from the source (Persian) to the receiver (Bosnian) language, would undergo various stages of adaptation on the phonological, morphological, and semantic plane. The focus of this paper is the analysis of semantic changes to Farsisms words that occurred due to the impact of Turkish language as a mediator.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3407