mr on 5/22/2017 in
Post by mris there any truth to the claim that pharsi and turkish has 40 % arabic ?
Arabic entered Persian and Turkish overwhelmingly through bookish
learning rather than through contact with native speakers and Turks
were introduced to Islam and Arabic through Persian speakers. The
amount of Arabic loanwords is highly dependependent on register,
especially so in Turkish.
Persian has a considerable number of Arabic loanwords, many quite
commonly used.
The Modern Persian of Iran, called Farsi, underwent a moderate reform
reform under the Shah, replacing many Arabic loanwords with native
Persian equivalents and preffering new coinages based on native Persian
vocabulary.
The Modern Persian of Afghanistan, called Dari by the government, did
not participate in this reform. OTOH Dari had naturally preserved many
words from Middle Persian that were lost in the Persian of Iran and had
been replaced by Arabic loanwords.
Turkish underwent a very radical language reform purging numerous
Arabic and Persian loanwords but this reform was not universally
accepted in its enterity and the number of these in text or in speech
varies greatly with the writer or the speaker. Basically based his or
her stance on this issue and his or her education, political opinions
etc.
Even during the Ottoman period there was great variation in the use of
loanwords, formulaic texts for the elite were very elaborate, making
lavish use of Persian and Arabic, but when the goal was to be
informative and in casual speech, much less was used.
For reading on this issue, read Geoffrey Lewis "The Turkish Language
Refrom: A Catastrophic Success"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231960788_GEOFFREY_LEWIS_The_Turkish_language_reform_a_catastrophic_success_New_York_Oxford_University_Press_1999_Pp_190_HB_6500