A Paleontologist’s Point of View for the Standardization of the Taxonomic Nomenclature in Turkish
Volkan SarıgülTaxonomy, a common practice of paleontology and biology among natural sciences, has a distinguished place with few other fields because of the current wide use of Latin terminology. While Latin was once the medium of instruction in the Western world, which has become superior in science and technology since the sixteenth century, it was succeeded by the Western European languages a century later, which had adopted the Latin alphabet. These national languages had also achieved to adopt many Latin words into their structures, occasionally with slightly different spelling and pronunciation. Turkey’s first large-scale contact with the modern science, including the natural sciences, took place in the eighteenth century through French, the global language of the time, and the current efforts to follow scientific and technical developments continue through English. Even though the followed foreign language changes, the Turkish tradition of adopting foreign words and terms according to the pronunciation in the foreign language from which the word or term is taken remains. This is one of the main hindrances to the formation of an established scientific terminology in Turkish, which also manifests itself in taxonomic studies. There are several inconsistencies between the adopted Western pronunciations, mostly from French, and the instructions of Latin pronunciation for Turkish which is required to read taxonomic terms. Finding the Turkish equivalents of taxonomic terms, on the other hand, demands serious consideration. Here, in order to eliminate these difficulties, suggestions on pronunciation, transcription and translation for the Latin names in taxonomy are presented, based on etymological and grammatical facts.
Bir Fosil Bilimcinin Gözünden Taksonomide Kullanılan İsimlerin Türkçeye Kazandırılması Hakkında Bir Deneme
Volkan SarıgülPaleontoloji ve biyoloji gibi doğa bilimi dallarının ortak konularından biri olan taksonomi, Latince terimlerin halen yaygın kullanılması bakımından diğer birkaç çalışma alanıyla birlikte öne çıkmaktadır. On altıncı yüzyıldan itibaren bilimsel üstünlüğü ele geçirmeye başlayan Batı dünyasında birincil eğitim dili Latince iken, kısa süre sonra bilimsel çalışmalar Latin alfabesini benimsemiş olan Batı Avrupa’nın ulusal dillerinde yapılmaya başlanmıştır. Bu ulusal diller, Latinceden geçen kelimeleri kimi zaman farklı yazılış ve okunuşlarla kendi dillerine uydurmayı da başarmışlardır. Türkiye’nin, doğa bilimleri de dahil olmak üzere, modern bilim ile ilk büyük çaplı teması o zamanın küresel dili olan Fransızca üzerinden on sekizinci yüzyılda gerçekleşmiştir. Günümüzde ise ülkemizin bilimsel gelişmeleri yakalama çabası İngilizce üzerinden devam etmektedir. Takip edilen yabancı diller zaman içinde değişmiş fakat yabancı kelimeleri ve terimleri geldikleri Batı dilindeki okunuşları esas alarak Türkçeye kazandırma geleneği aynı kalmıştır. Bu durum Türkçede bilimsel bir dilin oluşmasını engelleyen en büyük etkenlerden biridir. Oturmuş bir bilimsel dilin eksikliği taksonomi ile ilgili terimlerin okunuş ve çeviri çalışmalarında da kendini göstermektedir. Dilimize çoğunlukla Fransızcadan gelip yerleşmiş olan yabancı okunuşlar ile taksonomi terimlerini okumak için gereken Latince okuma kuralları pek çok noktada çelişmektedir. Yabancı terimlerin Türkçe karşılıklarını bulabilmek ise üzerinde ciddi biçimde durulması gereken bir konudur. Burada bu sorunların giderilebilmesi adına, köken ve dil bilgisi hakkında bir tartışmanın üzerine taksonomide kullanılan Latince isimler için okunuş ve çeviri önerileri sunulmaktadır.
Natural philosophy, which was progressively neglected in the education system of Ottoman Turkey, established a basis for the formation of modern sciences in the Western world. As Western Europe has begun to forge ahead since the sixteenth century, they have not only developed human knowledge through discoveries, observations and experiments, but also created a solid scientific terminology based on Latin. The Latin alphabet, among other cultural elements, was inherited by the barbarian kingdoms, which contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transformed themselves into the modern Western European nations. Spelling of the vernacular Western European languages were modified based on the Latin script, but pronunciation of the words locally differed. Finally, the position of Latin as the preeminent academic language over the centuries gradually replaced by the national languages starting in the seventeenth century. Although the usage of Latin has been considerably diminished in academic studies, taxonomy, one of the common grounds of biology and paleontology, represents one of the exceptional fields in which the Latin nomenclature still prevails. In the Western world, spelling of the taxonomic nomenclature (i.e., the names representing species, genera, and other groups of organisms belonging to higher taxonomic ranks) is uniformly done according to the Latin grammar, but pronunciation of those may vary in different languages.
The Turks, on the other hand, became the permanent settlers of Anatolia towards the end of the eleventh century and built political and cultural relationships with their western rivals, the Eastern Roman Empire. The selection of Greek as the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire created a lack of familiarity with Latin for the Turks. During the period of modernization in Ottoman Turkey, which began in the eighteenth century, numerous terms were subsumed from French, the world language at the time, and most of these terms have been transcribed by following the French pronunciation. English replaced French as the new lingua franca after the Second World War, from which the new terms have been introduced into Turkish.
A striking resemblance between Latin and Turkish is that the words are pronounced as they are spelled in both languages. This situation became more apparent after the Alphabet Reform in 1928 when the Latin script was adopted for Turkish. Considering that Turkish was formerly typed with the Arabic script, the new alphabet also eliminated the problem of transliteration and eased the transcription process. In Turkish taxonomic terminology, however, pronunciations imitate either those in French or English, whereas no transcription has been applied to the incorporated Western terms that originated from Latin.
To resolve this controversy, a regulatory list with seven clauses is proposed here to establish a standardization of the taxonomic nomenclature in Turkish. The proposed solutions for pronunciation and transcription follow the instructions for the Latin pronunciation as much as possible. For a proper translation, it is strictly advised to have enough knowledge on the subject. The clauses are as briefly follows:
1. No translation or transcription should apply to genus and species names, and these names should be typed by using a distinguishably different font/style from the rest of the text. Pronunciations of the genus and species names in Latin may be provided in square brackets if necessary.
2. The original Latin names for the groups of organisms representing taxonomic ranks higher than the genus level (in both hierarchical taxonomy and cladistics) should not be transcribed. Transcription can be applied to the names which are derived from the original Latin name in another language using the Latin alphabet (e.g., transcription is not allowed for the Latin group name “Theropoda” but allowed for “theropods,” which is the derivative in English). The original Latin name may be provided in brackets next to the transcribed name if necessary.
3. Applications for the pronunciation of the taxonomic names and the transcription of the names representing taxonomic ranks higher than the genus level, containing C, Y, H (in forms of CH, PH, RH, TH), I (in forms of IA, IE, IO, IU), diphthongs (AE, AU, OE, EU), and the letters which are not present in the Turkish alphabet (Q, X, W) are provided, in accordance with the instructions for Latin pronunciation and some particular cases in Turkish. All the silent letters that exist in the Western European languages are nullified, as all the letters must be pronounced in Latin and Turkish.
4. Genus and species names should remain intact in the text (i.e., no suffixes or punctuation marks should be placed).
5. There are special applications for the taxonomic names derived from foreign proper nouns. Basically, the foreign proper nouns which have already been incorporated into Turkish should be in use. Those that have not been officially subsumed into Turkish should be pronounced as similar as possible to what it has been done in the original language and should be transcribed according to the provided method.
6. Translation of the names of the groups of organisms should only be applied to those belonging to the ranks higher than the genus level. It is crucial to obtain accurate information about the origin and meaning of the name and the general characteristics of that group to make a decent translation. If this kind of data is not available, it should be contented with the transcription.
7. Transcribed and translated versions may exist separately for the name of a particular group of organisms, but transcription and translation should not be applied together to form a name.
