ARMENIAN LINGUIST AUTHOR OF FIRST TURKISH ROOT WORD DICTIONARY

Panorama.am
05/05/2010

Armenian-Turki sh/Turkish-Armenian dictionary published by Turkey’s
Linguistic Company (TDK) has been much paid attention. "TDK"
director professor Shyuqru Haluq Aqalyny told "Hurriyet" that
Armenian linguists, particularly, Hakob Martayan (Hakob Dilachar) had
great contribution in Turkish language development. To the question
whether they faced negative observations towards the publishing of
the dictionary, he said:

"Media has largely covered it. But we didn’t face any negative
approach. The dictionary has a large focus of interests."

"Unfortunately, we couldn’t publish any other dictionary except this
one on tourism. To fill that gap we decided to work on another project
– creation of Armenian-Turkish/Turkish-Armenian dictionary. We’ve just
founded Armenian studies in our universities. We have few historians
with knowledge of Armenian language," Turkish professor said. He said
the dictionary is of historic significance.

"Armenians during the Ottoman Empire had active educational and
cultural lives. Armenians who didn’t spare efforts in the development
of Turkish language served to this language. Petros Qerestejyan was one
of the authors of first Turkish Root Word Dictionary. Another Armenian
Petros Zeqi Karapetyan was the author of a series of dictionaries. He
was the author of 50 manuals of Turkish," Turkish professor said.