# Is it true that the highest concentration of Arabic words in modern Turkish is achieved among the words whose first letter is "m"?



## jbionic2010

Ideally it'd be interesting to see the distribution of Arabic words for each letter of Turkish alphabet  I'm not sure if this info is available anywhere.


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## Torontal

I don't have stats on it, just looking at Turkish and Ottoman dictionaries it could be correct, most of them starts with _m. _The second and the third most common could be those starting with _t_ and _i (_but I'm not sure if _t_ or _i _are the second most common after _m_)_. _It is because Ottoman Turkish mostly adopted derived participles, verbal nouns, nouns of places etc from Arabic, which are produced following certain patterns (evzan), most of them starting with _m_ Arabic verbs - Wikipedia
Appendix:Arabic nominals - Wiktionary


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## bamia

Are you referring to passive participles that are loans from Arabic (i.e. muhabbet, mücahit, maalesef, makbul, meşhur)?

EDIT: Torontal already mentioned the participles, and quite comprehensively so


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## Resneli

Evet, Torontal'in dediği gibi durum Arapçanın kelime türetme kurallarından kaynaklanıyor. Çoğu m ile başlayan kökler değildir, türemiş sözcüklerdir. 
nazım->nizam->intizam-> Muntazam
cihat->Mücahit
kabul -> Makbul
taahhüt -> Müteahhit
gibi... Türkçenin sondan eklemeli bir dil olmasının aksine Arapça sözlerin önüne ve ortasına da çekim ve yapım ekleri alır. Ayrıca bir dilin söz varlığında köken etimolojisini çok da anlamlı bulmuyorum, yapısal olarak Türkçeye girmişse Türkçedir. Önünüze 17. yüzyıldan bir metin gelir örneğin, belki koca paragrafta bir tek Türkçe kökenli söz yoktur ama sondaki bir "dır" eki hepsini Türkçe yapar, Türkçe bilenden başkası anlayamaz o metni. Ve ayrıca Türkçe Arapça köklerle Arapçada olmayan sözler de türetmiştir; cumhuriyet, teşekkür gibi.


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## jbionic2010

Take for instance 2 words: modest - mütevazı and grateful - müteşekkir. It's easy to notice that both have the same prefix -müte. However unless one knows Arabic that's nearly impossible to understand what meaning -müte may have in English, because there seems to be nothing common between modesty and gratefulness


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## analeeh

That's because they're part of participle patterns deriving nouns and adjectives.

As Torontal says, many Arabic derivational patterns include an m- prefix, so a disproportionately large number of Arabic nouns and adjectives begin with _m-_. Since Turkish borrowed almost exclusively adjectives and nouns, m- is very heavily represented.

I also seem to remember that very few or no native Turkic words begin with m-.


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## Cahittinsan

Arapçada sıfatlar ve isimler m ile başlar(?) .


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## jbionic2010

How about the word "Manat"?

It is the name of official currency of such Turkic speaking countries as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

It is also the name of a Arab pagan goddess who had some relation to measurement (this was before Arab embraced Islam).

The online etymological dictionaries seem to somehow disregard the obvious similarity in phonology and semantics..

So I was wondering what Turkish people think about the origin of this word


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## Cagsak

jbionic2010 said:


> Take for instance 2 words: modest - mütevazı and grateful - müteşekkir. It's easy to notice that both have the same prefix -müte. However unless one knows Arabic that's nearly impossible to understand what meaning -müte may have in English, because there seems to be nothing common between modesty and gratefulness


Mütevazı and Müteşşekir are the words that came from the Arabic language. We are not interested in what prefix or suffix these words take before we borrow them from a foreign language.  Müte- is not a prefix nor a suffix and there is no such word like vazı or şekkir in Turkish.


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## Cagsak

jbionic2010 said:


> How about the word "Manat"?
> 
> It is the name of official currency of such Turkic speaking countries as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
> 
> It is also the name of a Arab pagan goddess who had some relation to measurement (this was before Arab embraced Islam).
> 
> The online etymological dictionaries seem to somehow disregard the obvious similarity in phonology and semantics..
> 
> So I was wondering what Turkish people think about the origin of this word


Manat? I have never seen this word in any Turkish phrase.


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## Torontal

Russian moneta


jbionic2010 said:


> How about the word "Manat"?
> 
> It is the name of official currency of such Turkic speaking countries as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
> 
> It is also the name of a Arab pagan goddess who had some relation to measurement (this was before Arab embraced Islam).
> 
> The online etymological dictionaries seem to somehow disregard the obvious similarity in phonology and semantics..
> 
> So I was wondering what Turkish people think about the origin of this word



Manat is from Russian монета (moneta) "coin" which came to Russian from Polish, and the Polish took it from Latin moneta - Wiktionary


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## Cagsak

Torontal said:


> Russian moneta
> 
> 
> Manat is from Russian монета (moneta) "coin" which came to Russian from Polish, and the Polish took it from Latin moneta - Wiktionary


There is still no such word in Turkish


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## LeBro

jbionic2010 said:


> How about the word "Manat"?
> 
> It is the name of official currency of such Turkic speaking countries as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.





Cagsak said:


> There is still no such word in Turkish



I think he's asking about only the currencies of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, not of Turkey. But as he asked the question to the "Turkish people", it normally causes confusion as we do not use this word (manat).


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## Torontal

Cagsak said:


> There is still no such word in Turkish



Yes, true, sorry if I was not clear, _manat_ is not part of the Turkish (Türkiye Türkçesi) vocabulary, only in Azerbaycan Türkçesi where it is a Russian loanword. (But hey, you know, _bir millet, iki devlet_  )


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## Honour

jbionic2010 said:


> Take for instance 2 words: modest - mütevazı and grateful - müteşekkir. It's easy to notice that both have the same prefix -müte. However unless one knows Arabic that's nearly impossible to understand what meaning -müte may have in English, because there seems to be nothing common between modesty and gratefulness


Written Arabic has no vowels. TVZ can be the root for many words and you spread some vowels to alter the meaning . Taviz (concession) , tevazu (modesty, conceding in some sense) , mutevazI  (modest, he who concedes) etc. Mute prefix just modifies the word so that it becomes the subject bearing the sense. 
SKR  Sukur (gratefulness) mutesekkir (he who is grateful), sukran (gratitude), tesekkur (thanks)


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