Typological Comparison Of Turkish And Hungarian Grammers On The Basis Of Teaching Turkish As A Foreign Language

 

ABSTRACT

 

 

Learning Turkish as a foreign language has never been ceased during more than 930 years since Mahmut of Kasgar finished his outstanding Turkish dictionary in 1072. Turks have had serious influences on the neighbouring and remote peoples alike in vast geographies with their military skills, ruling methods, civilizations and lesser-greater transmigrations. Learning Turkish was not only an advantage or necessity, sometimes it was a matter of existence for certain peoples. That’s why most of the teaching materials for Turkish had been written by non-Turkish authors until the last century. However in the 20^th century most of the major countries started to establish academic institutions to teach their language within and outside their country, as they realized that teaching their language was one of the most efficient means of cultural expansion and/or realization.

Although academic researches started rather later than most of advanced countries, substantially big number of research has done in last couple of decades in order to demarcate the field and describe the general principles of teaching Turkish as a foreign language. Nevertheless the number and the quality of the researches aiming at harnessing the possible opportunities provided by comparative grammar seem rather insufficient. This research aims to detect and describe the typological features of Hungarian in order to provide tangible material to develop teaching materials which would help teachers plan their curriculum more effectively.

Hungarian is envisaged as a Finn-Ugric language in Ural-Altaic language family in Nostratic theory. Because Turkish is also assumed in the same language family, there are several common typological features between two languages which eventually help Hungarians learn Turkish more easily. Academic researches and personal experiences clearly demonstrate that this assumption is true if the teaching materials are prepared accordingly and the teachers are also aware of these features. This study comprises there chapters to provide necessary data for the prospective researchers.

Chapter one deals with the relations with Turks and Hungarians on the one hand and with Turkish and Hungarian on the other. Chapter two first provides historical data about teaching Turkish as a foreign language and secondly gives information about the principles of teaching Turkish as s foreign language and about the experience of teaching Turkish to the Hungarians. Chapter three is the main body of the research which compares the phonetic, morphological and syntactic characteristics of two languages and provides teaching materials and methods for each specific topic. A tentative curriculum is also provided for the levels A1, A2, B1 and B2.

Key words: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, Hungarian, comparative grammar, language typology, language families.