A NEW A.B.C.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 January 1929, Page 16

A NEW A.B.C.

TURKEY AT SCHOOL AGAIN. For centuries regarded by Europe as a strange and isolated people, the Turks, we are told, are being drawn • more closely to the nations or the nations of the West by what is called the greatest of the many national reiorms or President Mustaia Kemal. The intricacies of the Arabic script, by his edict and all the force that compels it, are being abandoned for the Latin alphabet, which is taught now in all places from the offices of government officials and clerks to schools, homes, and places of resort. As Angora press dispatches inform us, to th© traditional equipment of hubble-bubbles, coffee cups, packs of cards and dice in all Turkisn coffee-houses and casinos, must now be added blackboards and plentiful supplies of chalk, by order of the Minister of Education, who is not minded to- have those that idle in these social centres Rom morn to night escape liis taskmasters in the new art of A li (J. To IUOO government and municipal employees, it seems, warning of two months was given that they prove their proficiency in the Latin characters or lose their jobs. According to Gonstantinpole uispatches tiie plan of the Minister of Education provides’that ail Turks who have passed the age at which they can be called for service, that is, all men and women above the age of forty-six, must learn the new letters. A staff of 12,000 teachers has been recruited, and it is noted also that by December 1 all newspapers must abandon the Arabic for tne Latin script. A glance at the original method- of the Turkish President in enforcing alphabetical reform is provided by the .London “Times,” which relates:

“On the famous Palace of Dolma Eaghtche, over two hundred Turkish Deputies, officials, officers, and journalists took a five hours’ lesson in the Latin alphabet, which will come into general use on January 1, 1931, and is already competing with doomed Arabic letters. Their teacher was Ibrahim Nedumi Bey, -but he taught and they learned under the stern and watchful eyes of one wlio has Albanian blood on the distaff side, of no less a headmaster than Ghazi Mustafa Kemal himself. The lesson over, there came what schoolboys irreverently term ‘the pijaw from the Head.’ But the Ghazi’s method of correcting unwilling or troublesome pupils was marked by a humor and originality which are not always discovered among professional pedagogs. Casting his eyes about the assembly he descried certain temerarious members of Parliament, who during his absence from Constantinople had attacked the works and ways of the commission which drew up the new alphabet. He now invited them to mount the .platform and explain their criticisms. The deputies, our correspondent relates, were at first ‘loath to recede from the position which they had taken up,’ but they seem nevertheless to have ’ eaten their words against the commission and were doubtless relieved to escape with no more than an official rebuke. We are unlikely to hear more criticisms of. the change, in Constantinople, at any rate. Even the most stalwart provincial defenders of the old alphabet will think twice before they -raise their voices against a reform which the Ghazi encourages.” The advantages of the change of letters in Turkey can scarcely be appreciated,' adds “The Times,” by those who have, not -struggled with the difficulties presented to the student of Turkish by the Arabic letters. They are admirably adapted, we are told, to the Arabic language, which has a most formidable array of consonants, a limited number of vowel sounds, _ and a grammatical system which relieves the writer from the necessity of writting any but the three long vowels which it possesses. But—“No alphabet is less fitted to express the melodious Turkish speech, which has ' relatively few consonants and an astonishing wealth of vowels and dipththongs. To take a single instance, the Turkish word composed of three Arabic characters which can be transcribed as A, W, and K may be pronounced ‘on’ or ‘eun’ or ‘evin,’ and in several other ways- besides. It is not surprising, therefore, that years of study wer© needed for the mastery of written Turkish, or that the written language should have been overcrowded with Arabic words, many of which were not used in colloquial speech. Conversation, the religious associations of Arabic which gave sanctity to the lettens in which the Koran was written, and the Oriental delusion that writing should not be made too intelligible in content or in form, explain the long domination of the Arabic letters over the Turks.”