Common Loanwords With Different Meanings Between The Iraq Turkmens Dialect And The Turkish Language

Abstract

Iraqi Turkmen Turkic has historically developed through intense contact with Arabic and Persian, a process that has left noticeable traces in its lexicon, particularly with regard to loanwords. Although it shares common historical roots with Turkey Turkic, the persistence of these two Turkic varieties in different geographical and sociocultural environments has resulted in divergence within the semantic domains of certain shared lexical items. This study examines such divergence through nominal loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin.

The data of the study are drawn from local Turkmen dictionaries, Persian–English dictionaries, Arabic monolingual dictionaries, and standard lexicographical sources of Turkey Turkic. The lexical items analyzed were first evaluated with reference to their core meanings in Arabic and Persian, and subsequently examined comparatively in both Turkic varieties using a semantic-comparative approach. In addition, data from old Turkic and Middle Turkic texts were utilized to shed light on the historical background of the observed semantic changes.

The findings demonstrate that Arabic and Persian loanwords shared by Iraqi Turkmen Turkic and Turkey Turkic have undergone processes such as semantic narrowing, broadening, and shift over time. These semantic differences are closely associated with regional language contact, divergent linguistic environments, and distinct paths of dialectal development.