User:TenCatsInATrenchcoat/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

The article on Ottoman Turkish words replaced (or an attempt was made to replace them) in Modern Turkish. The Article is titled "Replacement of Loan Words in Turkish"

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because I'm interested in linguistics, but I wanted an article I could evaluate without tons of research. I speak Turkish fluently. I was raised by my grandparents, who speak a village dialect of Turkish which contains more Ottoman words or different pronunciations than what would be taught in schools in Istanbul. The article matters because it gives historical context for a major language shift, and a record of what changes were made.

My initial impression was that the article had a lot of information, but necessary information. The right-hand side of the table especially had important clarifications for why two forms of a word are still used.

Evaluate the article

(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

Everything is relevant. That's one of the strengths.

The fact that "Mosque" isn't capitalized distracted me. Neither is "western", though I'm not as sure that one is supposed to be.

Also, the words compared (Ottoman vs Modern) aren't always in the same case. I'm not sure why, maybe it's going off of dictionary entries, but I don't see why the formal changes wouldn't keep the same case. For example

حیات hayat*, عمر ömr*

hayat, ömür

yaşam, dirim**

life

From the root yaşa– "to live."

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

For the entry:

ﺧﻄﻮﺍﺕ hatavat

hatavat

adımlar

steps

"steps" could be clarified as being the motion of steps, not stairs.

The beginning of the article mentions that "Many new words have taken up somewhat different meanings, and cannot necessarily be used interchangeably with their old counterpart". Which words these are could be indicated, as the distinction is often important. This is done for some words, like

ی maddi*	maddi	özdeksel**	material, materialistic	The Turkish word is exclusively used in the context of philosophy.
مفصل mafsal	mafsal	eklem	ligament	The old word is used for "hinge" (non-anatomical).

But not for:

مکروه mekrıh*

mekruh

iğrenç

disgusting

There's the* because mekruh is still used, but it's mostly in a religious and more serious context. Mekruh religiously means something inappropriate or forbidden. Even if used non-religiously, mekruh has a much more serious tone, whereas iğrenç can be used for anything gross, depending on how you say it.

موضع mevzi'*

mevzi

bölge

location

From the root böl– "to divide."

Mevzi means place as in position, and can be used rhetorically like the position a politician holds. Bölge means region or zone. So the former is location as in the place something is located, the latter means location as in "a location", a place, some defined area.

Can you identify any notable equity gaps? Does the article underrepresent or misrepresent historically marginalized populations?

Not really. It's a narrow enough topic that it doesn't mention any populations or people. The main article on Turkish has the historical context. More context here could distract from the primary topic.

The Section "Connotations and implications of word choice" could be expanded though. Everything it says is true, but I feel like the information there doesn't convey how significant things like implying you're modern vs religious has to do with the word changes in Turkish. The whole language was reconstructed because of nationalism and politics. The "purification" of the language which drove the word replacements is the same set of changes which outlawed non-Turkish languages being taught. At least, examples of the "expression of nationalism" through refusing word replacements could be included.

What else could be improved?

There's a lot of information in this article. It's well presented, but there's several big tables and then just lists of words. It could be improved by reformatting the tables to break them down by subject, rather than one list by alphabet. Though that would be subjective and difficult. One easy change to break up the information: Instead of distinguishing between words where the Ottoman counterpart is still used more often* vs the new counterpart used more often**, there could be three charts based on whether replacement words were entirely, equally, or not at all successful in replacing the old word.

The furthest right hand column has information on the roots of the replacement words, which is helpful context. But not all the words, even ones that are clearly compound words, have this note. The notes could be added so the information available about each word is more equal.