Nasreddin Hodja Jokes in Late Chagatai Turkish

Abstract

A great number of works have been created as instances of the joke/quip genre of oral tradition in almost all Turkish dialects with the character of Nasreddin Hodja, who is known not only in Western and Eastern Turkic languages but also all over the world. This study evaluates jokes included in the manuscript registered under No. 007 in the manuscript collection of the Chinghiz Aitmatov Institute of Language and Literature of the National Academy of Science of the Kyrgyz Republic, which is missing pages from the beginning and the end. Due to those missing pages, we do not know the date of publication. However, the language of the jokes belongs to Late Chagatai Turkish. In this study, we address the linguistic features of the Nasreddin Hodja jokes in the manuscript. The jokes contain certain sound changes because the language they were written in was experiencing a transition period. It can be said that the text was written during the transition period from Chagatai Turkish to Uzbek Turkish. An example from Uzbek Turkish has also been identified in relation to this situation (plurality 1st person imperative suffix -eylük/ -ylük). In addition, the affix +nI, which we encounter in recent Chagatai Turkish texts, is also found in the text. The conclusion of this work scrutinizes the linguistic material at hand.