Kitāb al-İdrāk li-Lisān al-Atrāk in Terms of Basic Vocabulary of Turkish

Abstract

In vocabulary teaching, which is one of the main areas of language teaching, the question “Which words should be taught first?” has an important place. This issue is as valid in foreign language teaching as it is in mother tongue teaching, even more so in foreign language teaching. Therefore, the books prepared for teaching a language as a foreign language have been claiming to contain the most important words of the target language from past to present. Kitāb al-Idrāk li-Lisān al-Atrāk, one of the first qualified works written for teaching Turkish as a foreign language, has such a claim as far as it is understood from the information given by the author in the preface. Based on this claim, this study aims to determine how the vocabulary of the work in question looks like, considering today’s studies on the most frequently used Turkish words. The qualitative and quantitative data obtained in the study, which was conducted based on document analysis, one of the qualitative research methods, were subjected to content analysis and described. According to the data obtained in the study, Kitāb al-Idrāk li-Lisān al-Atrāk has a superior quality in terms of reflecting the basic vocabulary and richness of the standard Turkish of its period. The study is expected to contribute to the studies to be carried out for the creation of the basic word list of Turkish in synchronous and diachronic form.