Rationale

Arabic loanwords in Ottoman and modern Turkish are conspicuous, ubiquitous, collected and discussed in ALOT, and – perhaps for these reasons – taken for granted. But the topic is not closed; various detailed problems, such as several regarding the phonetic adaptation, remain largely unsolved and do not appear to be currently under intense scrutiny.

Some works have been devoted to this issue, e.g. Altun (2012), Korkmaz (2007), Öztekten (2013), or Yavaş (1978), but they tend to focus on modern Turkish for which, I believe, it is too soon. At any point in time, the vocabulary of a language is composed of layers inherited from different periods when different rules were in force; combined with dialectal influences, this creates a mixture that may well prove next to impossible to decompose. By starting with the earliest possible attestations, on the other hand, we give ourselves a much better chance of understanding the state that they ended up blending into. Some research has already been made in this direction, e.g. by Stachowski M. (2012a and b).

The present paper continues this stream by presenting and preliminarily analysing the phonetic adaptation of Arabic loanwords contained in a 1533 manuscript by Filippo Argenti (ed. Rocchi 2007). Section 1 contains an introduction and a slightly more detailed look at the original spelling; section 2 the actual presentation and bits of analysis, and section 3 a brief, intermediate summary. This part is limited to consonats and semivowels; the second part will basically repeat the same scheme for vowels, and will also contain a full list of borrowings.

Introduction

Filippo Argenti was a Florentine diplomat in Constantinople, and the author of one of the largest Ottoman Turkish transcription texts in the Latin alphabet. The vocabulary contained in his work, more than four thousand items, was examined and published as a dictionary by L. Rocchi (2007).

Most conveniently, Rocchi included etymology in his edition. I must state clearly, however, that the etyma he gives are not strictly for Argenti's forms, but for other Ottoman or modern Turkish (literary or dialectal) words which he believes to be somehow related. I take the liberty of positing them as the sources also for Argenti's attestations, and should any of them prove to be incorrect, the fault lies with me alone.