TNT History Archives: Ottoman Government Cipher System (1907)/Part III

//Ed. note: Here the Ottoman government's cipher system
instructions tackle verb conjugations and how to make 
them passive and negative in an enciphered message.

But first, a warning about security.//

(At top) Miftahın eydi-i ağyara geçmemesindeki ehemmiyet-i fevkalâde 
beyandan azade bulunduğundan bunun bizzat hıfzına ihtimam elzemdir.
(It goes without saying that the utmost care must be taken to personally
ensure that this key does not fall into the hands of others.)

(Note at bottom) 'eydi’ ve ‘fevkalâde’ kelimeleri miftahda mevcud olmadığı 
cihetle huruftan tertib edilmiştir.)
(Since the words 'eydi' (hands) and 'fevkalâde' (utmost) are not in the 
key, they have been constructed with letters.)



Organizing and Joining Verbs

It would be quite an inconvenience to write all of the verb forms of
Turkish infinitives and in this key there is not even enough space for
three or four of them.  So a shortcut was sought and a basis was
arrived at, as follows: only a particular element of the infinitives of the
majority of the Turkish verbs to be used has been collected (in the
key)  and these elements are then conjugated by joining them to  the
verb 'olmak' (to be).

 When a particular tense and derivation are to be expressed, both of
these sections (in the key) need to be referred to. For example, to
write the verb 'yazdım' (I wrote) one must first take the number for
'yazmak''s infinitive and then the number for 'oldum' (I was) from
the section where the 'olmak' infinitive is located. This combination
then becomes 'yazmak, oldum', in order to express 'yazdım' in the
message.

Similarly, to express 'edeceğinden' (because he, she, it will do it) one
would construct a combination from 'etmek, olacağından' and for
'okuyacağız' (we will read) the combination would be 'okumak,
olacağız'.  If two verbs come alongside each other in a sentence, such
as 'yazmak istıyor' (he wants to write), after the first infinitive the
second infinitive will be given its tense by 'olmak': 'yazmak, istemek,
oluyor'.


Manner of useage for 'edat' (particles, prepositions, conjunctions,
interjections):

Among the infinitives collected in the key there are no passive
infinitives.  So in order to make a verb passive a passive particle
number must be used.  For example, since there is no passive
infinitive in the key for 'yemek' (to eat), when one wants to write
'yenmek' (to be eaten) the combination is 'yemek' plus a passive
particle number.  This can be understood from the cipher examples
below.

Nor are there 'nefiy' (negative) infinitives in the key so an 'edat -ı
nefiy' particle number must be combined with an infinitive to
make it negative, similar to the procees described for making a
verb passive.  In other words, to write 'etmemek' (to not do) the
the infinitive 'etmek' (to do) is combined with a negative particle
number. Again, this can be understood from the example below:

Yanlışlığa mahal kalmamak üzere if’alın suret-i terkibine ve miftahda 

mevcud kelimatın huruf-i hica ile yazılmamasına i’tina edilmelidir.

(In order to avoid mistakes, when constructing a verb care must be 

taken for the words in the key not to be written with consonants.)

So, in order to write the verb 'yazılmamasına' (not to be

written), in the second-to-last row the two boxes on the 

left contain an 'edat-ı meçhuliyet' number for the passive 

element and an 'edat-ı nefiy' for the negative element, 

with the 5-group numbers 76249 and 76349, respectively.