Arabic and Persian elements in Bashkir Turkic dialect

ABSTRACT Arabic and Persian elements began to appear in the Turkic language in the 11th century with the conversion of the Turks to Islam. Arabic words entered the Turkic language indirectly via the Turkic literature. However the Persian words entered the language both directly and by way of literature. The flow of the Arabic and Persian word into the language continued until the 20th century. Some of the Arabic and Persian words entered the Bashkir dialect by the way of European languages, especially Russian and another Kipchak Turkic dialects. Arabic and Persian elements have a big importance also in the modern Turkic dialects as nearly 2500 Arabic and 600 Persian words exist in the Turkic dialect of Bashkir. Today, many of the Arabic and Persian elements in the Turkic dialect of Bashkir are accepted as archaic or out of date words. Nearly all of these elements are common with Turkish, but they went into voice changes in Bashkir, different from Turkish. In this thesis, the Arabic and Persian words will be discussed through common words / words groups and suffixes in the Bashkir dialect, and then will talk about the voice changes within these words.