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Ottoman Turkish ( or , Ottoman Turkish: ) is the variety of the Turkish language
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
 that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 and Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script. As a result of this process, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated members of society .

n most other Turkic languages of Islamic communities, the Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 borrowings were not the result of direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of the words of Arabic origin.






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Ottoman Turkish ( or , Ottoman Turkish: ) is the variety of the Turkish language
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
 that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
. It contains extensive borrowings from Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 and Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 languages and was written in a variant of the Arabic script. As a result of this process, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated members of society .

Structure

As in most other Turkic languages of Islamic communities, the Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 borrowings were not the result of direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of the words of Arabic origin. The conservation of archaic phonological features of the Arabic borrowings furthermore suggests that Arabic-enriched Persian was absorbed into pre-Ottoman Turkic
Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to Siberia and Western China, and are sometimes considered to be part of the proposed Altaic languages....
 at an early stage, when the speakers were still located to the northeast of Persia, prior to the westward migration of the Islamic Turkic tribes. An additional argument for this is that Ottoman Turkish shares the Persian character of its Arabic borrowings with other Turkic languages that had even less interaction with Arabic, such as Tatar
Tatar language

The Tatar language is a Turkic languages language spoken by the Tatars....
 and Uygur
Uyghur language

Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a Central Asian region administered by People's Republic of China....
.

In a social and pragmatic sense, there were (at least) three variants of Ottoman Turkish:

  • Fasih Türkçe (Eloquent Turkish): the language of poetry and administration, Ottoman Turkish in its strict sense;
  • Orta Türkçe (Middle Turkish): the language of higher classes and trade;
  • Kaba Türkçe (Rough Turkish): the language of lower classes.


A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic asel to refer to honey
Honey

Honey is a sweet fluid produced by honey bees , and derived from the nectar of flowers. According to the United States National Honey Board and various international food regulations, "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance?this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners...
 when writing a document, but would use the native Turkish word bal when buying it.

History


Historically, Ottoman Turkish was transformed in three eras:

  • Eski Osmanli Türkçesi (Old Ottoman Turkish): The version of Ottoman Turkish used until 16th century. It was almost identical with the Turkish used by Seljuks and Anatolian Turkish Beyliks
    Anatolian Turkish Beyliks

    Image:Anadolu Beylikleri.pngAnatolian Beyliks or Turkmen Beyliks were small Turkey emirates or Muslim principalities governed by Beys, which were founded across Anatolia at the end of the 11th century in a first period, and more extensively during the decline of the Seljuk Sultanate of R?m during the second half of the 13th century....
    , thus often regarded as part of Eski Anadolu Türkçesi (Ancient Anatolian Turkish).


  • Orta Osmanli Türkçesi (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or Klasik Osmanlica (Classical Ottoman Turkish): Language of poetry and administration from 16th century until Tanzimat
    Tanzimat

    The Tanzimat , meaning reorganization of the Ottoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876....
    . This is the version of Ottoman Turkish that comes to most people's minds.


  • Yeni Osmanli Türkçesi (New Ottoman Turkish): Shaped from 1850s to 20th century under influence of journalism and Western-oriented literature.


Language reform


In 1928, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire
Fall of the Ottoman Empire

Some scholars argue the power of the Caliphate began waning by 1683, and without the acquisition of significant new wealth the Empire went into a fast decline....
 after World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
 and the establishment of Republic of Turkey, widespread language reforms (a part in the greater framework of Atatürk's Reforms
Atatürk's Reforms

Atat?rk's Reforms were a series of political, legal, cultural, social and economic reform movement that were implemented to transform the young Republic of Turkey into a modern, Politics of Turkey and secularism in Turkey nation-state....
) instituted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Mustafa Kemal Atat?rk was a Turkish people army officer, revolutionary statesman, and Father of the Nation Turkey as well as its List of Presidents of Turkey....
 saw the replacement of many Persian and Arabic origin loanwords in the language with their Turkish equivalents. It also saw the replacement of the Perso-Arabic script with the extended Latin alphabet
Turkish alphabet

The Turkish alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, a certain number of which have been adapted or modified for the phonetic requirements of the language....
. The changes were meant to encourage the growth of a new variety of written Turkish that more closely reflected the spoken vernacular, as well as to foster a new variety of spoken Turkish that more explicitly reflected Turkey's new national identity
Nation

A nation is a cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community....
 as being a post-Ottoman state
State

A state is a political Social contract with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, State or multinational states....
.

Please see the list of replaced loanwords in Turkish for more examples on Ottoman Turkish words and their modern Turkish counterparts. Two examples of Arabic and two of Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
 loanwords are found below.

English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 		 Ottoman
Ottoman

A term used to refer to the citizens of the Ottoman Empire after 1839, when the Tanzimat edict starting a period of reforms was declared . The term was started to be used more commonly especially after the empire officially became a constitutional monarchy in 1876....
 		 Modern Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
obligatory ???? vâcib zorunlu
hardship ???? müskül güçlük, zorluk
city ??? sehir kent/sehir
war ??? cenk savas


Legacy


Historically speaking, Ottoman Turkish is not the predecessor of modern Turkish, but rather the standard Turkish of today is essentially Yeni Osmanli Türkçesi as written in the Latin alphabet and with an abundance of neologism
Neologism

A neologism is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language . Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event....
s added. One major difference between modern Turkish and Ottoman Turkish is the former's abandonment of compound word formation according to Arabic and Persian grammar rules. The usage of such phrases still exists in modern Turkish, but only to a very limited extent and usually in specialist contexts
Jargon

Jargon is terminology which has been especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. In other words, the term covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest....
; for example, the Persian genitive construction
Genitive case

In grammar, the genitive case or possessive case is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession; certain verbs may take argument in the genitive case; and it may have adverbial uses ....
 takdîr-i ilâhî (which reads literally as "the preordaining of the divine", and translates as "divine dispensation" or "destiny") is used, as opposed to the normative modern Turkish construction, ilâhî takdîr (literally, "divine preordaining").

Alphabet

Ottoman Turkish was primarily written in the Ottoman Turkish script (????? elifbâ), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. It was not, however, unknown for Ottoman Turkish to also be written using the Armenian script
Armenian alphabet

The Armenian alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Armenian language since the year 405 or 406. Up to the 19th century, Classical Armenian had been the literary language; since then, the Armenian alphabet has been used to write the two modern dialects of Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian....
: for instance, the first novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 to be written in the Ottoman Empire was 1851's Akabi, written in the Armenian script by Vartan Pasha
Vartan Pasha

Vartan Pasha was an Armenians in the Ottoman Empire statesman, author and journalist of the 19th century, promoted to the rank of "Pasha" after three decades in the service of the state....
. Similarly, when the Armenian Düzoglu family managed the Ottoman mint during the reign of Sultan
Sultan

Sultan is an Islamic honorifics, with several historical meanings. Originally it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", or "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ???? sulah, meaning "authority" or "power"....
 Abdülmecid, they kept records in Ottoman Turkish, but used the Armenian script. Other scripts, too—such as the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
 and the Rashi script
Rashi script

Rashi script is a semi-Hebrew cursive typeface for the Hebrew alphabet, in which Rashi#Works are printed both in the Talmud and Tanakh . This does not mean that Rashi himself used such a script: the typeface is based on a 15th century Sephardi Jews semi-cursive hand and was called by the Ashkenazic Rishonim - the Hachmei Provence script....
 of Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. Five of these letters have a different form when appearing as the last letter in a word....
—were used by non-Muslim groups to write the language, since the Arabic alphabet was identified with Islam. On the other hand, for example, Greek-speaking Muslims
Greek Muslims

Greek Muslims, also known as Greek-speaking Muslims, are Muslims of Greeks ethnic origin, and are found primarily in Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece, although migrations to Lebanon and Syria have been reported....
 would write Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 using the Ottoman Turkish script.

Isolated Final Middle Initial Name ALA-LC
ALA-LC Romanization

ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association-Library of Congress....
 Transliteration		 Modern Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
??— elif a, â a, e
?— hemze ', a, e, i, u, ü
???? be b, p b
???? pe p p
???? te t t
???? se s s
???? cim c, ç c
???? çim ç ç
???? ha h
???? hi h
??— dal d d
??— zel z z
??— re r r
??— ze z z
??— je j j
???? sin s s
???? sin s s
???? sad s
???? dad d, z
???? ti t
???? zi z
???? ayin ', h
???? gayin g g, g
???? fe f f
???? kaf k
???? kef k, g, ñ k, g, g, n
???? gefı g g, g
???? nef, sagir (deaf) kef ñ n
???? lam l l
???? mim m m
???? nun n n
??— vav v, o, ô, ö, u, û, ü v, o, ö, u, ü
???? he h, e, a h, e, a
??— lamelif lâ la
???? ye y, i, i, î y, i, i


1A correct Ottoman variant of gef will have the "mini-kaf" of ? and the doubled upper stroke of ?. This feature is surely rare in current fonts.

Educational opportunities in Ottoman Turkish


Educational opportunities for Ottoman Turkish (Osmanli Turki) are too numerous to provide an exhaustive list. Suffice it to say that thousands of courses in Ottoman Turkish Literature are offered around the world. In Turkey alone it is estimated that more than thirty thousand students are learning Ottoman Turkish,.

See also

  • Culture of the Ottoman Empire
    Culture of the Ottoman Empire

    File:Mirror writing2.jpgThe culture of the Ottoman Empire evolved over several centuries as the ruling administration of the Turkic peoples absorbed, adapted and modified the cultures of conquered lands and their peoples....


Further reading


  • Lewis, Geoffrey. The Jarring Lecture 2002. "".


External links


  • Has a great resource of Ottoman Turkish texts as well as Ottoman Divan Poetry


Tertiary-level studies in Ottoman Turkish language (outside Turkey)


  • -Introductory and Advanced courses for elaborate high style of classical Ottoman period (15th to 19th century).

  • -

  • -2007-2008 ACADEMIC YEAR GRANT PROGRAM

  • -Course Guide

  • -Courses in Modern Turkish and Ottoman Turkish

  • -Course in Classical Turkish Poetry (Reading and analysis of Turkish poetry of the 13th through 18th centuries; Turkish metrics and literary theory.)


Courses in Turkish universities


  • -Beginning and Intermediate Ottoman

  • -A study of various texts from the early period up to the 19th century

  • - Ottoman Language Course details

  • -Ottoman Language and Script

  • - Ottoman Language and Ottoman Divan Literature.
  • Faculty of Turkish Language and Literature.
  • History (tarih)
  • Turkish Teacher (Türkçe ögretmenligi)
  • Turkish Literature (Türk Dili ve EDebiyati)
  • Art History (Sanat Tarihi)
  • Librarianship (kütüphanecilik)
  • History (Tarih)
  • History


Courses on state-run colleges :
  • , Ottoman language courses.


Online courses



Online Ottoman Turkish resources



Ottoman dictionaries and tools

  • (Open Project)
  • , online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms