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Article published In:
Literacies in Contact
Edited by Manuela Böhm and Constanze Weth
[Written Language & Literacy 23:2] 2020
► pp. 251–271

The advanced acquisition of orthography in heritage Turkish in Germany

 | University of Potsdam
The paper investigates Turkish texts from heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany in a pseudo-longitudinal setting, looking at pupils’ texts from the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th grades. Two types of dynamics are identified in the advanced acquisition
of Turkish orthography in the heritage context. One is the dynamic of language contact, where in certain areas of the orthography, we find a re-interpretation of Turkish principles according to the German model. However, this changes as the pupils grow up. The second dynamic is the heritage situation. The heritage situation on one side leads to the establishment of new practices, and it also leads to a higher degree of variability of spelling solutions in those areas, where the orthographic system of Turkish poses challenges to every writer, whether monolingual and growing up in Turkey or heritage speaker.
Keywords: Turkish, heritage language, orthography, orthographic word, advanced acquisition of, orthography, language contact Turkish-German
Article outline
  • 1.1Acquisition of literacy in a heritage language
  • 1.2Turkish in Germany
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Phenomena under investigation
    • 3.1Challenges
      • 3.1.1Morphological constancy
      • 3.1.2The representation of glides and long vowels
      • 3.1.3The spelling of the orthographic word
    • 3.2Contrasts and dynamics of contact between the orthographic systems
  • 4.Error analysis
    • 4.1Error categories
      • 4.1.1Errors related to the phonographic level of orthography (P)
      • 4.1.2Errors related to the logographic level of orthography (L)
      • 4.1.3Graphemic errors (G)
  • 5.Quantitative description of error relations
    • 5.1Overall error assessment
    • 5.2A closer look at the phonographic and the logographic levels
      • 5.2.1Phonographic level
      • 5.2.2Logographic level
    • 5.3Intermediate results and first discussions
  • 6.The spelling of the orthographic word
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00043.sch
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