Abstract
Arabic is the largest donor language to Turkish and is also one of the primary donor languages to Malay. This study conducted a vocabulary survey of 30 Arabic-origin Turkish words to help Malay-speaking students learn Turkish. It examined the benefits of presenting Turkish words and those same words but with slightly modified spellings closer to the original pronunciation in Arabic. The participants were 40 Malay-speaking students at a major Malaysian university. Participants had an average of 26.10 correct answers out of 30 questions. They learned 13.05 new words on an average. At a 5% confidence level, a statistically significant difference was found between the participants’ scores before and after the demonstration of the rearranged spellings (p = 0.000). The study concluded that presenting Turkish words of Arabic origin with modified spellings closer to the original pronunciation could assist Malay-speaking students in learning Turkish vocabulary.
