LANGUAGE REFORM

Hokitika Guardian, 23 August 1930, Page 6

LANGUAGE REFORM

BABEL IN TURKEY,

MANY DIFFICULTIES FACED. One more step forward has just been made in the Turkish language refoim. It is the last. Henceforth Arabic writing and reading will only be private hobbies. Up to this month Arabic writing was the official shorthand for talcing down all debates in the National Assembly, the law courts, and other gatherings. The Turkish hand, trained in the old writing, had speed, whereas the new writing, is still a difficulty; and you see educated men leaning heavy elbows on their desks and’ painfully joining letter to letter. This made it necessary to keep the Arabic as shorthand for all verbatim reports.

THE NEW WRITING. But now that two years have passed it is officially considered that this neccessity is gone. The entrace into force of the veto on its continuance is another example of the way in which the law deliberately outruns . the capacity of 'the people. They are not allowed to delay it by being slow in the uptake. Nevertheless, the first, days’ experience proved quite cleaily that the new writing, even when stenographically abbreviated, cannot yet be % handled rapidly enough for ver-. batim reports. It was found that the law-court writers could not keep up with the pleadings and the taking' of evidence. So the advocates asked to put in their pleas in writing. Objec- ' tion was taxen to this proposal by the Government prosecutors on the ground that it was the courts’ duty to hear cases orally, even if hey had to sit all night. Spoken pleadings, too, were said to have a different effect from written ones. Nevertheless, it was finally ruled that the speeches for defence and prosecution should be tendered to the magistrates in writing. This curious deadlock will once more import delays into the Turkish judical system, just at the moment when it had lost its too famed dilatoriness and had been brought by Angora up to civilised speed. Meanwhile a special shorthand for new Turkish is being taught as fast as possible. The Turks themselves are beginning to admit that all is yet by no means well with their new language. First of. all, there is, says the Minister off Education, a complete chaos of spelling. This however, is considered to be unavoidable till the official grammar is out. At present many writers differ as to grammatical forms, and as the spelling is phonetic, it naturally varies with the forms. A great part of the phonetic dictionary is already published, but this, is .found to help very little to right spelling as long as grammatical rules ;.are undetermined. The Language Commission ■at Angora is working hard on .thergrainmar. in order to eliminate these disagreeable variations of spelling’, which meet one everywhere, even in the newsapers.

A PEASANTS’ NEWSPAPER BY AIR;’ '

Another handicap which felt more and more is that there are so very few books and reviews in the new writing There, is no reading-matter, to keep the recently-taught alphabet in practice and before the eye and mind. The newspapers are town products and they are not sufficient. So one sees many Turks, even of the younger generations reading books in the Arabic writing, a little .shamefacedly, and school stm dents conning their Arabic-written notes. Nevertheless, the Government is going ahead and is making efforts to supply the lack of material. It has opened 1275 reading rooms, throughout the country in two months, and lias furnished some 11,000 books and reviews to start them. In the eastern provinces the authorities have even begun distributing by air a weekly official newspaper called' the “Peasants’ Newspaper.” It is dropped over the most distant villages; where postal services do not yet reach; " I

Such is the position of the language reform at present. The authorities are not altogether satisfied 'with it. They admit that out of the population ofi 13,000,000 6,200,000 are still to be classed' as illiterates. Of these 500,000 caii read a little and write just a little. The reading and writing schools for the nation work six months every ye'ar, but it seems likely that they will have to continue in existence for another ten years or more to complete the reform.