# Turkish 'hizmet'



## eskandar

The Turkish word _hizmet_ is clearly derived from Arabic خدمة _khidma_ by way of Persian خدمت _khidmat_ . But why did the [d] of the original become a [z]? It's puzzling as I can't even think of another example where an Arabic or Persian د becomes [z] in Turkish.


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## arn00b

Perhaps not in Persian, but maybe there are more examples in Turkish.  I'll try to search if I have some time.

I don't know the answer, but my best guess is that Turkish did not get this word from Persian, but from a particular Arabic dialect that applies hypercorrection when it comes to d and ð.  Many Arabic dialects feature the loss of ð (and often have issues with ḍ and ẓ), but some dialects hypercorrect d's to ð.   Searching google for word "مخذرات" has brought 17,000 results, and this is not a common word.  Another search for "خذامة" brought results like "عندج خذامة فلبينية" but this is more of a spoken phenomenon than a written one.   A hypercorrected xiðme(t) would result in hizmet even though Persian has the correct form. 

Having said that, I don't know the geography of this phenomenon or of its timeline.  Its existence in the UAE and Bahrain today does not mean it existed farther north where it could have influenced the Ottoman Turkish.

Experts on the history of Arabic dialects could chime in and tell us more about d>ð hypercorrection.


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## apmoy70

Another example is رمضان Ramadan > Turkish Ramazan


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## Dib

I don't know the answer, but in early new persian all postvocalic d's turned ð if I remember correctly. Can this be a holdover from then?


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## eskandar

arn00b said:


> Perhaps not in Persian, but maybe there are more examples in Turkish.


I don't know of any other examples in Turkish. I'd be very interested if you could provide some.



> I don't know the answer, but my best guess is that Turkish did not get this word from Persian, but from a particular Arabic dialect that applies hypercorrection when it comes to d and ð.


The problem with this hypothesis is that (1) if it were the case we'd expect to see at least a few other such examples, (2) 'service' doesn't really belong to the category of words likely to have been borrowed from colloquial rather than classical Arabic; such loanwords are far fewer and, if I'm not mistaken, tend to be restricted to things like names of local flora/fauna, toponyms, etc., (3) if it were borrowed directly from Arabic, bypassing Persian, wouldn't we expect to see *_hizme _instead of _hizmet_ ?



apmoy70 said:


> Another example is رمضان Ramadan > Turkish Ramazan


Actually this is not an example because we are talking about Arabic د [d] in خدمة not Arabic ض [dˤ]. All instances of ض in Arabic have been rendered as [z] in Turkish, as far as I know, but are there any other examples of Arabic د becoming [z]?



Dib said:


> I don't know the answer, but in early new persian all postvocalic d's turned ð if I remember correctly. Can this be a holdover from then?


But then why would just this one word retain the archaic Persian pronunciation, and not other words? Turkish has _edep_ for ادب where, if early NP pronunciation were a factor, we'd expect _ezep_, wouldn't we? Another counterexample is Turkish _kâğıt _for کاغذ , where the [ð] of NP [kaɣað] became a [d] (devoiced word-finally to [t]) in Turkish even in spite of the orthographical ذ .


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## fdb

Dib said:


> I don't know the answer, but in early new persian all postvocalic d's turned ð if I remember correctly.



Only in Persian words, not in Arabic words.


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## fdb

eskandar said:


> Another counterexample is Turkish _kâğıt _for کاغذ , where the [ð] of NP [kaɣað] became a [d] (devoiced word-finally to [t]) in Turkish even in spite of the orthographical ذ .



The etymology of these words is still debated. It seems, however, likely that the Turkish word was borrowed already from Sogdian into Old Turkish, and does not derive from the Persian.


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## Ihsiin

arn00b said:


> (and often have issues with ḍ and ẓ)



These are simply variant reflexes of /ðˤ/.


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## arn00b

A quick look showed that there are some inconsistencies in Ottoman Turkish loanwords:

Arabic to Ottoman Turkish:
 فائد > faiz 
فايدة > fâydah (Modern Turkish fayda)
غذاء > gıda 

These inconsistencies are very rare, but they're there and are present in both Ottoman and Modern Turkish.


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## Treaty

In some non-Turkish accents and colloquial forms of Persian, خدمت is pronounced with [z] not [d].


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## fdb

arn00b said:


> فائد > faiz



Nişanyan derives faiz from فائض.


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## Muttaki

eskandar said:


> The Turkish word _hizmet_ is clearly derived from Arabic خدمة _khidma_ by way of Persian خدمت _khidmat_ . But why did the [d] of the original become a [z]? It's puzzling as I can't even think of another example where an Arabic or Persian د becomes [z] in Turkish.


It is not derived, it is the word خدمة and is written as خدمت in Turkish. I don't know why the [d] became [z] but for the other versions of the word like خدمه / hademe, مخدم / mahdum we pronounce it with [d]. Important to notice however is that before 1928 when Latin letters came to Turkey the word had always been written as خدمت even though it might have been pronounced with a [z] at the time. But actually we don't know if everyone pronounced it thay way before 1928 because by 1928 it was the accent in Istanbul (where many people were Greek, Armenian or Jewish) which was taken as basis to write the words with Latin letters. So the [z] might also be coming from the pronunciation of the word by non-Turks for whom Turkish was a 2nd language.


eskandar said:


> All instances of ض in Arabic have been rendered as [z] in Turkish, as far as I know, but are there any other examples of Arabic د becoming [z]?


That's not true. We have ضرب / darp, ضربه / darbe, ضلالت / dalalet, افضل / efdal which are all pronounced with [d] and I am sure there are more examples.


arn00b said:


> A quick look showed that there are some inconsistencies in Ottoman Turkish loanwords:
> 
> Arabic to Ottoman Turkish:
> فائد > faiz
> فايدة > fâydah (Modern Turkish fayda)
> غذاء > gıda
> 
> These inconsistencies are very rare, but they're there and are present in both Ottoman and Modern Turkish.


Faiz > فائض
Fayda/faide > فائده (it is also written as "faide" in dictionaries or other places)
Gıda > غدا

I haven't seen "gıda" written as you wrote, are you sure that's correct?

And for these there seems not to be any inconsistencies like hizmet.


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## arn00b

Is it gıda that you have not seen in written form?    I did a google search and it has 44m results.  Google image search for gıda shows a lot of food.  And the top results were Turkish government agencies "İstanbul Gıda Kontrol Laboratuvar Müdürlüğü" (Istanbul Food control laboratory directorate)  and others with a .gov.tr URL.


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## Muttaki

arn00b said:


> Is it gıda that you have not seen in written form?    I did a google search and it has 44m results.  Google image search for gıda shows a lot of food.  And the top results were Turkish government agencies "İstanbul Gıda Kontrol Laboratuvar Müdürlüğü" (Istanbul Food control laboratory directorate)  and others with a .gov.tr URL.


Of course not. I'm a native Turkish Turk.  

As you said the Latin form is "gıda". What I mean is غذا as you wrote it. Because I know it as غدا.


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## arn00b

I wrote "غذاء" which is the Arabic form with the glottal stop at the end and voiced dental fricative.   The ones on the left were the Arabic roots, not the Ottoman forms.


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## Muttaki

My confusion was rather the letter ذ not the ء. But anyway I see that you are right now.


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## fdb

Arabic has both غذاء“food” and غداء“morning meal” (they are from different roots). Turkish gıda is from the former, but presumably borrowed from an Arabic dialect (Syrian or Egyptian) where /δ/ becomes /d/.

None of this explains hizmet, which remains a mystery.


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## Muttaki

We don't know for sure but as I said it may originally be a wrong pronunciation of the non-Turks in Istanbul. Because its written form is always خدمت (unlike "gıda" which is written as "غدا" or "غداء" in the Turkish dictionaries), there had to be and probably still there are people who pronounce it with [d].


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## Muttaki

eskandar said:


> It's puzzling as I can't even think of another example where an Arabic or Persian د becomes [z] in Turkish.


There is another example to "د" being pronounced as [z] in Turkish and that is "جمادی الاول" which is the 5th month in Muslim calendar. My reasoning now as to explain it is that actually those sounds are quite close to each other; both "د" and "ذ" is coming from the same positioning of the tongue. Now that we have examples both for "د" becoming [z] and "ذ" becoming [d] in Turkish maybe it is plausible to think that the transition between these two letters is normal.


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## Derakhshan

There are Iranian dialects, like Bakhtiari, which also have [z] rather than [d] in this word and this word alone:






Yeah. It's quite a mystery.


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## elroy

fdb said:


> Arabic has both غذاء“food” and غداء“morning meal” (they are from different roots). Turkish gıda is from the former, but presumably borrowed from an Arabic dialect (Syrian or Egyptian) where /δ/ becomes /d/.


 1. غداء is “lunch” not “breakfast.”
2. غذاء is not used in Palestinian Arabic (or, I would surmise, in Syrian or Egyptian either) except as an MSA borrowing, in which case it’s pronounced either with [ð] or [z], but not [d].
3. غداء _is_ pronounced with [d] in dialects, but the preceding vowel is [æ] and not [i] as in MSA. 
4. I’m not sure where that leaves us as far as the etymological history of “gıda.”


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## Membre

Derakhshan said:


> There are Iranian dialects, like Bakhtiari, which also have [z] rather than [d] in this word and this word alone:
> 
> View attachment 36163
> 
> Yeah. It's quite a mystery.


Could you give me the reference of that book / paper?


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