"And swedish is still official language here, though most of us cannot even speak that, like me." Marka Ragnos.
We had faced the same problem, Anda. You could imagine, as first guess, that the oppressor language was Arab, but not ...
Our ancestors -Turcomans- had stayed a very long time in Northern Iran from the beginning of the 11th century, when we had begun to invade Iran (especially my tribe, the 21st on 24 -çepni- was one of the last to come in Anatolia) our people unfortunately had adopted the language of that ugly indo-european people; persian.
Historians say: " Turks didn't like to marry Iranians, they disliked them and considered as inferior racially; though they didn't think the same for the language and culture of that nation".
The loss was so terrible that after we defeated Byzantions and invaded Anatolia, the elite clan of our Society used to go on to speak persian, even more than Arabic. Fortunately, a Turcoman prince of Central Anatolia (his offspring lost the territories against the Ottomans -unfortunately) forbad other languages and told "from now on, we'll all speak Turkish, everywhere".
During 1930's, you had only 30% of real Turkish words in Turkish, we have sanitized our language from foreign oppression. Today the Turkish percentage has increased to more than 85%!
So, as you can see, the language imperialism and assimilation is a big threat for a Nation, when you want to rehabilitate your people's culture so that to get a pure Culture, this may take quite a long time; be patient and never succumb.
TTK
