On Ahmed Hâdi Maksûdi and His Work Entitled Turkî Nahvi

Abstract

Ahmed Hâdi Maksûdi was a Turkologist who lived in Kazan between 1868 and 1941. The author wrote numerous works on topics such as the alphabet, language and grammar teaching, and especially on the phonetics, syntax, and vocabulary of the Tatar Turkish. Each of the author’s works should be examined in terms of terminology, and methodology, and his works on linguistics, in particular, should be examined in terms of their contribution to the teaching of Turkish. One of Maksudi’s important works is his book entitled Türkî Nahvi, which deals with the syntax of the Turkish language. The work was published in 1910 in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. The purpose of the work was to teach Turkish syntax to students in the fourth grade of elementary schools. The purpose of this study is to introduce Maksûdi and his works, and to examine his Turkish syntax book titled as Türkî Nahvi in terms of terminology, and teaching method. Our study, first focuses on the author’s life and works. In the second section, a scanning method was applied to the text, which had previously been transcribed into the Latin-Turkish alphabet, and the terms and definitions identified as used in the work titled as Türkî Nahvi were included. In the third section, the teaching strategy, methods, and techniques adopted in the work were identified. The analysis revealed that the author generally used formal narration in teaching grammar and frequently resorted to modern teaching techniques such as analysis, question-and-answer, deduction, and comparison.