Lost words of the language revolution

This study examines the words proposed during the Language Reform period between 1928 and 1938 that appeared in periodicals of the time but have since fallen out of use in modern Turkish. Following the Alphabet Reform of 1928, the Language Reform aimed to purify and enrich Turkish by eliminating foreign elements. Within this framework, the newspapers Cumhuriyet, Ulus, Vakit, and Türk Dili published between 1928 and 1938 were analyzed, and obsolete words found in these publications were identified and evaluated structurally. The research is limited to digital archives of the periodicals published between 1928 and 1938. The identified words were categorized, and the purely Turkish ones were examined in terms of morphology and semantics. Throughout this process, several etymological sources and dictionaries were utilized, including the TDK Contemporary Turkish Dictionary, Derleme Sözlüğü, Tarama Sözlüğü, Andreas Tietze's Historical and Etymological Dictionary of Turkish, Gülensoy's Dictionary of Turkish Word Origins in Turkey Turkish, Paçacıoğlu's Vocabulary Between the 8th and 16th Centuries, Nişanyan Dictionary, and Kubbealtı Dictionary. The collected data were classified according to newspaper and word origin. The findings of this study present concrete examples of the linguistic transformation that occurred during the reform period, making visible the forgotten elements of the Turkish language's historical development. The main purpose of the study is to rediscover the words proposed but not preserved in modern Turkish, thereby offering a historical perspective on the Turkish lexicon. Ultimately, the results contribute to understanding how language evolves under social and political change and shed light on the long-term evolution of Turkish from past to present.