Talk:Sun Language Theory

Sumerians as "Turks"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer does not corroborate what this article's NY Times quote asserts. The people who inhabited modern-day Iraq predated the Chinese word "Turk" by a long time. The Sumerian civilisation in Mesopotamia, if it came from Central Asia/Mongolia, needs to have its origins added. This should all be referenced and indicated in the article. COYW (talk) 20:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Joke?

Ha ha ha!!! it is like a joke!

Is there any problem in labelling this pseudo-science?--Chris 13:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

No, the Sun Language Theory was clearly pseudoscience. The people who proposed it were not historical-comparative linguists, and it has never had any credibility at all in the wider world of historical linguistics, not even among Turkish linguists. It was put forward for rather obvious political reasons. The evidence offered for it was not the sort of evidence accepted as valid in historical linguistics. The only people who don't consider it a joke are Turkish nationalists who know nothing about historical linguistics.Bill 00:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

How can you know all Turkish nationalists are don't know anything about historical linguistics? It is nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.140.128.36 (talk) 11:23, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, although the Sun Language Theory is fell into oblivion today, it was regarded as an important attempt for many linguists that day. Bill is mentioning the "history" of linguistics but forgeting that this was more than 60 years ago. The sun language theory is a history now, but this does not necessitates to shame these linguists as pseudo-scientists or nationalists. One of them is Agop Dilacar well known Armenian linguist (DİLÂÇAR, A.; Les bases Bio-Psychologiques de la Theorie Güneş Dil, İstanbul 1936). There are many others such as Anagnastapulos, Bartalini, Denison Ross, Hilaire de Barenton, Jean Deny, Mescaninof, Nemeth Guyula, Samoilovic, Zayanckovski, ... For this reason, i'm totally against calling it as a pseudo-science or nationalist movement. It's just a hypothesis turned out to be incorrect. Especially, shaming these linguists as "Turkish nationalists who know nothing about historical linguistics" or pseudo-scientists is rather simplistic POV. e104421 13:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It is simply not true that the Sun Language Theory had any real credibility among historical linguists, not even sixty years ago. Yes, there were people here and there who supported it, but they were a tiny minority. Furthermore, the "evidence" presented in support of this theory was not the kind of evidence considered credible by the mainstream of historical linguistics since the latter part of the 19th century. You will not find any of the major figures of historical linguistics of the time who considered it a serious hypothesis. It is all too common for people who are not historical linguists to pursue crazy ideas, not realizing that they don't know what they are doing. Agop Dilacar is a good example of the problem. While he certainly knew a lot about Turkish, he was not expert in comparative historical linguistics. Even in its own time, the Sun Language Theory was not well motivated in terms of the evidence regarded as relevant at the time and was not taken seriously by the mainstream of the field. It was indeed pseudoscience. Bill 04:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

What is this joke of a theory? Once again, turkish patriotic propagandists try to sneak in disinformation. This has no basis whatsoever, and the layers of stupidity are just too many for me to even bother with. Geo, June 2014 -- 14:57, 25 June 2014‎ 31.45.119.62

merging versions by E104421 and Khosrow II

So one source tells that the origin was one guy and the other source says that it was the other? Lets just mention both of them. Correct me if I am wrong. 1936 NYT is an important document but still journalists tend to mix things up and the Turkey of 1936 was a reasonably exotic place (I guess the NYT author read French better than Turkish). Unless there are study showing that one info is wrong lets keep them both Alex Bakharev 00:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

TURKS TEACH NEW THEORIES

Source:The New York Times

Date:Feb. 9, 1936

ISTANBUL Feb. 7-In the presence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and members of the Cabinet the new school of history, geography and literature recently was opened at Angora. Its immediate purpose is to make the capital the cultural center of the republic and, combined with the law school, it will be the nucleus of a complete university, sister of the one at Istanbul.

The significance of the new foundation, however, is much wider and more ambitious, for its object is to expound new theories on Turkish history and language for which no less a person than Mr. Ataturk is responsible.

The President of the Turkish Republic, besides being a statesman and soldier of remarkable abilities, has considerable knowledge about history and linguistic matters. As the result of many years of labor in these directions, he has propounded certain theories which will be taught in the new school at Angora. They are somewhat difficult to explain, but their broad outlines are as follows:

Work done by various scientists during the last fifty years goes to show that the Turkish race has been grossly maligned by older historians biased by racial or religous prejudices. The Turks are far form being a predatory race of barbarians. The Turks reached, in remote ages, a high state of culture which, during migrations into China, India, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, they spread among the less enlightened peoples.

They should threfore really be considered the fathers of civilization and possessors of one of the greatest and most glorious histories in the world. As regards language, the new theory is called the "sun language."

Starting with the conclusion reached by the French scientist Hilaire de Baranton in his book "L'Origine des Langues, des Religions et des Peuples," published in Paris three years ago, that all languages originated from hieroglyphs and cuneiforms used by Sumerians, the Turkish theory claims that the Sumerians, being Turks, originating in Central Asia, all languages also consequently originated there and first used by the Turks.

the first language, in fact, came into being in this wise: Prehistoric man, i.e., Turks in the most primitive stage, was so struck by the effects of the sun on life that he made of it a deity whence sprang all good and evil. Thence came to him light, darkness, warmth and fire, with it were associated all ideas of time: height, distance, movement, size, &c., and give expression to his feelings the sun was thus the first hing to which a name was given. It was "ag" [pronounced agh], and from this syllable all words in use today are derived.

This, briefly, is the theory about the "sun language," and with the new conception of Turkish history it will be taught in the new Angora school. Specialists will also teach Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hittite, Chinese, French, English, German, Russian and Hungarian

This article does not evaluate the topic effectively

This sounds like nonsense, and the article implies it is nonsense by mentioning that it "fell into oblivion", but it really needs to say why it is nonsense, eg state the basic flaws of the proposition and give (very brief) details on accepted origin of language theories. RegRCN 10:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Quotation

The following information seems to be a fringe statement, since it just reflects the personal opinion of Atay:

"As Atay (1965) suggests, Atatürk did not mind the Turkish Language Society leaving foreign words in the language, so long as it could demonstrate that they were in fact Turkish". According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "it is possible that the Sun Language Theory was adopted by Atatürk precisely in order to legitimize the Arabic and Persian words which the Turkish language authorities did not manage to uproot. This move compensated for the failure to provide a neologism for every foreignism/loanword."

In adddition, it adds no value to the current status of the article. So, i'm removing it. E104421 (talk) 20:22, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

You can't just remove valid sources. Actually the fact that such a theory is not followed anymore shows scientific progress and shows Turkish society has developed to put scientific theories above nationalistic theories. Actually this is good progress. But those quotes are very related as it shows the theory was used to justify non-Altaic words in Turkish (since all languages according to the theory derive from Turkish). Also the theory was influenced by other ideas, but no where did the French or German scholar came up with the theory. Their theories were simply transformed and morphed into something else as NY times state:

Also the article from NY times does not say a French person started the theory. Rather it says:

"TURKS TEACH NEW THEORIES Source:The New York Times Date:Feb. 9, 1936 ISTANBUL Feb. 7-

“ In the presence of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and members of the Cabinet the new school of history, geography and literature recently was opened at Angora. Its immediate purpose is to make the capital the cultural center of the republic and, combined with the law school, it will be the nucleus of a complete university, sister of the one at Istanbul. The significance of the new foundation, however, is much wider and more ambitious, for its object is to expound new theories on Turkish history and language for which no less a person than Mr. Ataturk is responsible. The President of the Turkish Republic, besides being a statesman and soldier of remarkable abilities, has considerable knowledge about history and linguistic matters. As the result of many years of labor in these directions, he has propounded certain theories which will be taught in the new school at Angora. They are somewhat difficult to explain, but their broad outlines are as follows: Work done by various scientists during the last fifty years goes to show that the Turkish race has been grossly maligned by older historians biased by racial or religious prejudices. The Turks are far form being a predatory race of barbarians. The Turks reached, in remote ages, a high state of culture which, during migrations into China, India, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, they spread among the less enlightened peoples. They should therefore really be considered the fathers of civilization and possessors of one of the greatest and most glorious histories in the world. As regards language, the new theory is called the "sun language." Starting with the conclusion reached by the French scientist Hilaire de Baranton in his book "L'Origine des Langues, des Religions et des Peuples," published in Paris three years ago, that all languages originated from hieroglyphs and cuneiforms used by Sumerians, the Turkish theory claims that the Sumerians, being Turks, originating in Central Asia, all languages also consequently originated there and first used by the Turks. the first language, in fact, came into being in this wise: Prehistoric man, i.e., Turks in the most primitive stage, was so struck by the effects of the sun on life that he made of it a deity whence sprang all good and evil. Thence came to him light, darkness, warmth and fire, with it were associated all ideas of time: height, distance, movement, size, and give expression to his feelings the sun was thus the first thing to which a name was given. It was "ag" [pronounced agh], and from this syllable all words in use today are derived. This, briefly, is the theory about the "sun language," and with the new conception of Turkish history it will be taught in the new Angora school. Specialists will also teach Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hittite, Chinese, French, English, German, Russian and Hungarian." ”

Regards.--Nepaheshgar (talk) 01:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not talking about the NYT article, but the one related with Atay. The link does not say anything about the reference, in addition, personal opinion of an unknown author is not credible. Regards. E104421 (talk) 01:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

One more thing: this statement "Atatürk did not mind the Turkish Language Society leaving foreign words in the language, so long as it could demonstrate that they were in fact Turkish" is misleading. The correct thing is "Atatürk could not find himslef happy with the "turkish replacement" proposed by TDK in 30's for many Persian and Arabic words. (it was impossible to do so), therefore based on the draft of Kvergic he found a way to cheat: claim non-replacable words to be Turkic by simply claiming that everything was developed out of a Turkish origin." Xashaiar (talk) 12:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

References

accuracy of quote from the times

I recently commented that the quote from the NYT article of 1936 wasn't even written in proper English. User Lambian then made corrections to the quote's grammar. Given that Lambian says "unverified" in his (?)edit summary, I have to assume that the corrections are interpolations, and not from the source. But we can't just guess, no matter how plausible and easier on the eyes Lambian's guesses are. So I am reverting the edit. If I am wrong and the corrections are based on reading the actual article, my apologies, and please restore them.μηδείς (talk) 01:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

They were compiled from various versions, none of which is verifiably an accurate copy of the Times article. The article is available if you are a Home Delivery or Times Reader subscriber – which I am not – or willing to fork over $3.95 – which I am not. In particular the "&c." (see here, p. 23) seems authentic to me, as this way of abbreviating etcetera has fallen in disuse. I have no reason to think that the version that was added to the article and to which you have reverted is a better approximation of the quote from the actual article than my conjecturally reconstructed version; on the contrary: also in 1936 the NYT employed copy editors, who surely wouldn't have let that many grammar errors (all cases of a missing word) slip through in just one or two paragraphs from what is a short article anyway. There is also MOS:QUOTE, which states that trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected – I've stretched that a bit to include some other trivial errors that are probably not in the original text but were introduced in copying the text from the Times article.  --Lambiam 05:23, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Dingir

Dingir (in Sumerian) = Tengri (Old Turkic) > Tanrı (in Turkish)= "God" so the theory was not so wrong! Böri (talk) 11:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Not only Dingir, but more than two hundred words have been proven to exist in both Turkic and Sumerian by Dr. Osman Nedim Tuna. These findings are defined as "impeccable" by scientific authorities. http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0308&L=language&P=2828626&E=2&B=--------------050000000408020202070501&N=Sumerian-Tuna.pdf&T=application%2Fpdf This means Sumerian and Turkish are two languages that have more similar words than any other language in the world. While Dr. Osman Nedim Tuna didn't have any goal (as far as I know) of supporting Sun Language Theory, the results of his work unintentionally supported the theory. http://www.tdkdergi.gov.tr/TDA/1989/1989_7_Tuna.pdf Ancalimonungol (talk) 12:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Please see comparative philology to see why "people say that this word looks like that word" is not a reason for relationship between languages.Xashaiar (talk) 14:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ancalimonungol -- I really don't think that a Sumerian-Turkic connection is commonly accepted by mainstream scholars. Before about 500 A.D., Turkic-speakers seem to have been in the southwest Siberia and/or northern Xinjiang and/or western Mongolia and/or eastern Kazakhstan areas, quite remote from lower Mesopotamia... AnonMoos (talk) 19:39, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

AnonMoos: I guess it's not impossible that Turks were also living in Anatolia back then. Most probably conquered and their culture usurped.Ancalimonungol (talk) 16:27, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the first known incursion westwards from the steppes by non-Indo-European-speakers was by the Huns, who may not have spoken a Turkic language, and in any case did not go anywhere near either Sumeria or Anatolia. The Turks are not known to have moved into Central Asia (south or west of Lake Balkhash) until ca. 500 AD, and took another 500 years to get to Anatolia... AnonMoos (talk) 17:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The similar words found in Sumerian and Turkic are not just similar words. Osman Nedim Tuna created laws using comparative method (regular sound correspondences) He detected 32 regular sound correspondences between Sumerian and Turkic and 16 of them were tested. You can also reach the rest of them but they are not peer reviewed. For example when A Turkic word starting with K entered Sumerian, the "K" changed into "m". Only the irregular words in Sumerian were chosen for this research. So Turkic language actually is the oldest surviving language with written records on stone tablets. Turkic and Sumerian were in contact when there was no mention of an Indo European word in Anatolia. The kurgans (before being labeled as Indo-European) are enough proof of Turkic presence in Europe and Anatolia before Indo-European presence. These 16 laws are other supporting evidence.

You can find the laws here starting from page 9: https://www.scribd.com/doc/64297815/Osman-Nedim-Tuna-Sumer-ve-Turk-Dillerinin-Tarihi-%C4%B0lgisi

Here are the other regular sound correspondences that were not peer reviewed and published: http://sumeryan.blogspot.com.tr/2010/06/turkic-sumerian-cognates-from-dr-osman.html Ancalimonungol (talk) 19:28, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

In 1569, doctor Johannes Goropius Becanus proved, by the same means as stated above, that the Dutch language was similar to the Hebrew language. Scaliger criticized this theory by saying "never did I read greater nonsense". Since then, scores of crackpots have tried to prove that language X resembles language Y by comparing words, with some tweaking (though as crude as the rule above "K" changed into "m" I've never seen): Chinese is like Egyptian, Bantu languages are like Latin, Basque like Etruscan, Mohawk like Swedish, Maori is an Aryan language, Wolof is like Egyptian... I strongly advise to read the hilarious section Pseudolinguistic comparisons in the Wikipedia lemma on Comparative linguistics. Riyadi (talk) 08:12, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

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Still incomplete

After 10 years (see #This article does not evaluate the topic effectively), this article still does not assess debunking the theory. 165.91.12.190 (talk) 10:18, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I think the problem is that this falls into the category of not even wrong. There isn't really a way for us to say anything meaningful about the first human language or anything like that, so there isn't a way to show that these claims are wrong or evaluate them as a coherent theory. Cyllel (talk) 11:37, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

These two phrases have been included since the IP started the discussion: During the same congress the vast majority of the international non-Turkish scholars including Friedrich Giese [de] opposed the theory. One of the few non-Turkish linguists who supported the theory was Kvergić. Both are sourced.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:06, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I was assuming that the original poster wanted to delve deep into what the actual theory entailed and why it's wrong rather than just a statement that people think it's wrong. --Cyllel (talk) 17:34, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Racist and ultranationalist

This article is very biased and wrong. The Sun Language theory isn’t hostile to any other race. It is pseudoscientific and pseudo-linguistic, but it’s not racist just because some scholars describe it as such. It is anti-Turkish propaganda to call the theory racist and ultranationalist as a fact. LeonChrisfield (talk) 08:20, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The Sun language theory is Turkish nationalist, but it wasn’t promoted to discriminate against other races. LeonChrisfield (talk) 08:21, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

No, it is fundamentally racist. It posits that the Turkish language is the original and primary language from which all other languages derive AND that the Turkish people are the purest and most advanced race on Earth. Racism doesn't require active discrimination; when you get into 'master race' territory, by inference, other 'races' are not 'master races'. And the only part of the political spectrum of any country that pushes racist theories like this are far-right ultranationalists. And the connection to ultranationalism is sourced. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:11, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

That’s frankly ridiculous. My country, as part of the western world, literally had racial laws and policies that parties across the political spectrum supported. The 1930s was an era of fascism, and racial nationalism was rampant, including all western liberal democracies. Turkey never had this kind of racial laws, and they classify every Turkish citizen who identifies themselves as a Turk as Turkish. Classifying the Sun Language theory as racist and ultranationalist means every western country’s education back then had a much more extreme form of ultranationalisn. I found Wikipedia pages always have strong anti-Turkish biases like this when intentionally ignoring the racist policies of countries that opposed Turkey. LeonChrisfield (talk) 06:44, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

We are not talking about the 1930s; we are talking about today and today's standards. And by modern standards, this 'theory' is ultranationalist content of the highest order, which is why, in a modern encyclopedia, we refer to it as as such. That other countries in that time period may have held racist policies towards Turkey is irrelevant and does not make Sun Language nonsense any less racist. Two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, there was a lot of racist crap flying around in every direction in the 1930s. And in modern times we condemn it all unequivocally. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:24, 12 February 2023 (UTC)