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WonderWord origin

The word 'yogurt' comes from Turkish. English borrowed it from Ottoman Turkish in the early 1600s, and the gh in 'yoghurt' is an old way of spelling the Turkish ğ sound.

Etymology

LanguageFood

The story behind the card

Turkish yoğurt is usually traced to an old root meaning to thicken or condense, from the same family as the verb yoğurmak, 'to knead'. Turkic peoples of Central Asia were eating it long before the word reached Europe: in the 11th century, Mahmud of Kashgar's dictionary of the Turkic languages and Yusuf Has Hajib's poem Kutadgu Bilig both mention it. English first recorded the word in 1625, from travellers' accounts of the Ottoman lands. Yogurt became an everyday food in Western Europe only in the 20th century; in 1919 Isaac Carasso began making it commercially in Barcelona under the name Danone. Today most European languages use the Turkish word, with small changes of spelling.

Türkçe oku
“Yoğurt” sözcüğü dünyaya Türkçeden yayıldı. İngilizce onu 1600'lerin başında Osmanlı Türkçesinden aldı; “yoghurt” yazımındaki gh, Türkçedeki ğ sesini karşılamak için kullanılan eski bir yazımdır.

Yoğurt sözcüğü genellikle “koyulaşmak, yoğunlaşmak” anlamındaki eski bir köke bağlanır; “yoğurmak” fiili de aynı ailedendir. Orta Asya'daki Türk boyları yoğurdu, adı Avrupa'ya ulaşmadan yüzyıllar önce yiyordu: 11. yüzyılda hem Kâşgarlı Mahmud'un Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk'ü hem de Yusuf Has Hâcib'in Kutadgu Bilig'i yoğurttan söz eder. Sözcüğün İngilizcedeki ilk kaydı, Osmanlı topraklarını gezen yolcuların anlatılarına dayanan 1625 tarihli bir metindir. Batı Avrupa'da gündelik bir yiyecek hâline gelmesi ise 20. yüzyılı buldu: Isaac Carasso 1919'da Barselona'da yoğurdu Danone adıyla üretmeye başladı. Bugün Avrupa dillerinin çoğu, yazımı biraz değişse de bu Türkçe sözcüğü kullanır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Yogurt
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