Bilingualism in Turkey and Turkish Language Education

Keywords: Bilingualism in Turkey, Turkish education, second language acquisition, vocabulary
Introduction

In studies related to spoken languages in the world, UNESCO has identified 840 languages in China, 832 in Papua New Guinea, 387 in India, 279 in Cameroon, 250 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 20 in France, more than ten in Germany and England (Şener, 2006, 265).This result clearly shows that politic borders don’t overlap with language borders and plenty of languages could be found in a political unity. This situation is not different in Turkey. Turkey is located in a place where three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe) merge. This naturally forms a basin of languages where nations encounter, meet, merge and socialize one another in terms of sociological and cultural aspects. According to the data of Ethnologue Languages of the World¹; the languages of Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Albanian (Gheg), Albanian (Tosk), Arabic (Mesopotamian Spoken), Arabic (North Mesopotamian Spoken), Armenian, Azerbaijani (South), Balkan (Gagauz Turkish), Bulgarian, Crimean Tatar, Domari, Georgian, Greek, Hértevin, Kabardian, Kazakh, Kumyk, Kurdish (Northern), Kyrgyz, Ladino, Laz, Pontic, Romani (Balkan), Serbian, Syriac, Tatar, Turkish, Turkish Sign Language, Turkmen, Turoyo, Ubykh, Uyghur, Uzbek (Southern), Zaza, Zazaki (Northern), Zazaki (Southern) are spoken in this language basin. When these languages are carefully examined, it could be clearly seen that some of them are Turkish dialects (Turkoman, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tatar etc.), some part of them (Arabic-Mesopotamian Spoken and Arabic-North Mesopotamian Spoken or Zazaki-Northern and Zazaki-Southern etc.) have been needlessly detailed for exaggerating the number. Therefore, it is necessary that these languages be described and termed again with a scientific classification. In fact, this issue has become a current issue in recent studies conducted on ethnicity and languages in Turkey and new classifications have been made (Şener 2006; Önder 2007; Türkdoğan 2008; Buran and Çak 2012). In the study conducted by Burak and Çak (2012), It was documented that “Arabs, Albanians, Bosnians, Circassians (Abkhazians and Adygheas/Kabardey), Armenians, Georgians, Hamshenis, Kurds, Lazcas, Pomaks, Syriac Christians, Jews and Zazas” (Buran and Çak 2012, 38-89) live in Turkey besides Turkish people. These ethnicities use their own languages easily in their daily lives. Hence, it is possible to say that communication could be established with plenty of the languages in Turkey as it is in the world (Şener 2006, 265).

The most common language in Turkey is Turkish. Turkish is also the official language of the Republic of Turkey and “is the language of mainly Turkey Turks with Oghuz-origin and also in broad sense, it is the mother language of Turkish-origin communities living in Turkey such as Azeri, Kirghiz, Kazak, Uyghur, Tatar, Noghai, Kumuk, Karachay-Balkar, etc.” (Buran and Çak 2012, 174). In the study “Who are we? –Social Structure Study” conducted by Konda Study and Counselling Company in 2006, it is detected that the ratio of those whose mother tongue is Turkish is 84,82% (Turkey Turkish 84,54% and other Turkish dialects 0,28%). In addition, the ratio of those whose mother language is Kurdish is 11,97% and the ratio of those whose mother language is Arabic is 1,38%.These three languages are the most common languages in Turkey. Then, Zaza ((1,01%) ,Balkan Languages (0,23%), Laz (0,07%), Romaic (0,06%) languages come respectively. As it could be seen, this study clearly shows that nearly 15% of people living in Turkey do not speak Turkish. This rate is above 50% in some cities. For example, 86,21% of people in Hakkari, 67.60% of people in Siirt, 66.68% of people in Mardin, 63.27% of people in Ağrı, 59,92% of people in Bitlis, 55,35% of people in Van speak Kurdish as mother tongue (Buran and Çak 2012, 277). Although the density of Arabic is not very much; 26,19% of the people in Hatay, 20,02% of the people in Mardin, 14,45% of the people in Siirt and 11,39% of the people in Şanlıurfa speak Arabic as mother tongue (Burak and Çak 2012, 253). This situation shows that the bilingual people in Turkey have not scattered homogeneously; but rather, they have concentrated at some regions. Although bilingualism is clearly known to exist intensely in some parts of Turkey, there is not any satisfying study that could define Turkish teaching of bilingual individuals. These issues have even been seen as taboo and for this reason, they could not be discussed. However, Kurds (in terms of history, literature, state of education, culture etc.) are one of the groups that have been studied mostly on whom many articles have been written. The studies that have not been approached by Turkish people have usually been conducted by Russians and Europeans (Şener 2006, 104).

Since bilingualism has not sufficiently been studied and has been ignored most of the time in Turkey, mainly the Ministry of National Education and other institutions have not been able to develop policies for the bilingual individuals. For example, the Ministry of National Education does not apply a different Turkish language education curriculum for the bilingual individuals. With same curriculum and same lesson materials (ministry does not allow any source and material usage in classes except for those sent from the headquarters²)² the result of language education is not known. Also, the parameters such as the first Turkish words that should be learnt while acquiring second language and the language structures necessary to be used, the words and languages structures learnt in an easy or difficult way and the most important arguments in terms of language education have not been explained on the basis of fieldwork so far. However; while teaching their official languages, schools want individuals (Breton 2007, 47) “to have right usage in written and verbal terms in any case”. It is easy to provide this right usage for those whose mother tongue is Turkish; but, this is difficult for bilingual individuals, because they have “two to one” formula in relation between entity and its name in the first stage. This means that individual has two statements and two rules for single information. Therefore, statement or rule mixing is always seen until bilingualism is completely realized (Karaağaç 2013, 482). The reason for this mixing is related to development of second language. Bilingual individuals have “statements belonging to both languages with a grammar system. Then, they start to understand that two different grammars are different systems; but, statements are still from both languages. Finally, these two languages show up in the child’s world with both language rules and statements as two different languages. From now on, both language rules and statements start to be used in correct way. In this period revealing bilingualism (Karaağaç 2013, 482), second language acquisition should be fast and productive as much as possible. This is going to be possible with the data collected from schools.