A Word from Turkish Cuisine: Güllaç

Abstract

Güllaç which is an important representative of Turkish culinary culture, draws attention linguistically as much as it does from the point of cultural history. In many Turkish grammar books, one of the phonetic changes studied under phonetics is contraction. Some examples for this phonetic change include words such as “niçin”, “ayol”, “cumartesi”, “sütlaç”. Besides these words, one of the examples given for contraction is the word “güllaç”. In the aforementioned sources it is undestood that the word “güllaç” has been used among the examples as an analogy for “sütlaç” and it is disassembled incorrectly as “gül+lü aş”. However, rstly in Turkish dictionaries, and also in Ottoman Turkish dictionaries, Persian dictionaries as well as in etyimology dictionaries it is indicated that the origin of this word is Persian and it is “gulāc”. In this study, the origin and morphology of the word güllaç are discussed and it is argued that the word can not be related with the root word “gül”, and this word is not a suitable example for this phonetic change, contraction. With the obtained results, it has been proved that the word “güllaç” should not be given as an example for contraction in grammar books and scientic publications.

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