Standardized register of Turkish in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Turkish
لسان عثمانی Lisân-ı Osmânî
Ottoman Turkish written in Nastaliq style (لسان عثمانی)
Region
Ottoman Empire
Ethnicity
Ottoman Turks
Era
c. 15th century; developed into modern Turkish in 1928[1]
Language family
Turkic
Common Turkic
Oghuz
Western Oghuz
Ottoman Turkish
Early form
Old Anatolian Turkish
Writing system
Ottoman Turkish alphabet
Official status
Official language in
This article contains Ottoman Turkish text, written from right to left with some Arabic letters and additional symbols joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined letters or other symbols.
Ottoman Turkish (Ottoman Turkish: لِسانِ عُثمانی, romanized: Lisân-ı Osmânî, Turkish pronunciation:[liˈsaːnɯosˈmaːniː]; Turkish: Osmanlı Türkçesi) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and to rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish"; compare Vulgar Latin and Demotic Greek), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern standard.[3] The Tanzimât era (1839–1876) saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language[4] (لسان عثمانیlisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانلیجهOsmanlıca); Modern Turkish uses the same terms when referring to the language of that era (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi). More generically, the Turkish language was called تركچهTürkçe or تركیTürkî "Turkish".
Grammar
Cases
Nominative and Indefiniteaccusative/objective: -∅, no suffix. كولgöl 'the lake' 'a lake', چورباçorba 'soup', كیجهgece 'night'; طاوشان گترمشṭavşan getirmiş 'he/she brought a rabbit'.
Genitive: suffix ڭ/نڭ–(n)ıñ, –(n)iñ, –(n)uñ, –(n)üñ. پاشانڭpaşanıñ 'of the pasha'; كتابڭkitabıñ 'of the book'.
Definiteaccusative: suffix ی–ı, -i: طاوشانی كترمشṭavşanı getürmiş 'he/she brought the rabbit'. The variant suffix –u, –ü does not occur in Ottoman Turkish orthography (unlike in Modern Turkish), although it's pronounced with the vowel harmony. Thus, كولیgöli 'the lake' vs. Modern Turkish gölü.[5]
Locative: suffix ده–de, –da: مكتبدهmektebde 'at school', قفسدهḳafeṣde 'in (the/a) cage', باشدهbaşda 'at a/the start', شهردهşehirde 'in town'. The variant suffix used in Modern Turkish (–te, –ta) does not occur.
Ablative: suffix دن–den, -dan: ادمدنadamdan 'from the man'.
Instrumental: suffix or postposition ایلهile. Generally not counted as a grammatical case in modern grammars.
Verbs
The conjugation for the aorist tense is as follows:
Singular
Plural
1st person
-irim
-iriz
2nd person
-irsiŋ
-irsiŋiz
3rd person
-ir
-irler
Structure
Ottoman Turkish was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Arabic and Persian words in the language accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary.[6] As in most other Turkic and foreign languages of Islamic communities, the Arabic borrowings were borrowed through Persian, not through direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of the words of Arabic origin.[7][8][9]
The conservation of archaic phonological features of the Arabic borrowings furthermore suggests that Arabic-incorporated Persian was absorbed into pre-Ottoman Turkic at an early stage, when the speakers were still located to the north-east 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, Bashkir, and Uyghur. From the early ages of the Ottoman Empire, borrowings from Arabic and Persian were so abundant that original Turkish words were hard to find.[10] In Ottoman, one may find whole passages in Arabic and Persian incorporated into the text.[10] It was however not only extensive loaning of words, but along with them much of the grammatical systems of Persian and Arabic.[10]
In a social and pragmatic sense, there were (at least) three variants of Ottoman Turkish:
Fasih Türkçe فصیح تورکچه (Eloquent Turkish): the language of poetry and administration, Ottoman Turkish in its strict sense;
Orta Türkçe اورتا تورکچه (Middle Turkish): the language of higher classes and trade;
Kaba Türkçe قبا تورکچه (Rough Turkish): the language of lower classes.
A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes, with the fasih variant being the most heavily suffused with Arabic and Persian words and kaba the least. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic asel (عسل) to refer to honey 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 Osmanlı Türkçesi اسکی عثمانلی تورکچهسی (Old Ottoman Turkish): the version of Ottoman Turkish used until the 16th century. It was almost identical with the Turkish used by Seljuk empire and Anatolian beyliks and was often regarded as part of Eski Anadolu Türkçesi اسکی آناطولی تورکچهسی (Old Anatolian Turkish).
Orta Osmanlı Türkçesi اورتا عثمانلی تورکچهسی (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or Klasik Osmanlıca (Classical Ottoman Turkish): the language of poetry and administration from the 16th century until Tanzimat.
Yeni Osmanlı Türkçesi یڭی عثمانلی تورکچهسی (New Ottoman Turkish): the version shaped from the 1850s to the 20th century under the influence of journalism and Western-oriented literature.
Language reform
In 1928, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, widespread language reforms (a part in the greater framework of Atatürk's Reforms) instituted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk saw the replacement of many Persian and Arabic origin loanwords in the language with their Turkish equivalents. One of the main supporters of the reform was the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gökalp.[11] It also saw the replacement of the Perso-Arabic script with the extended Latin alphabet. The changes were meant to encourage the growth of a new variety of written Turkish that more closely reflected the spoken vernacular and to foster a new variety of spoken Turkish that reinforced Turkey's new national identity as being a post-Ottoman state.[citation needed]
Historically speaking, Ottoman Turkish is the predecessor of modern Turkish. However, the standard Turkish of today is essentially Türkiye Türkçesi (Turkish of Turkey) as written in the Latin alphabet and with an abundance of neologisms added, which means there are now far fewer loan words from other languages, and Ottoman Turkish was not instantly transformed into the Turkish of today. At first, it was only the script that was changed, and while some households continued to use the Arabic system in private, most of the Turkish population was illiterate at the time, making the switch to the Latin alphabet much easier. Then, loan words were taken out, and new words fitting the growing amount of technology were introduced. Until the 1960s, Ottoman Turkish was at least partially intelligible with the Turkish of that day. One major difference between Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish is the latter'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; for example, the Persian genitive constructiontakdîr-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").
In 2014, Turkey's Education Council decided that Ottoman Turkish should be taught in Islamic high schools and as an elective in other schools, a decision backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who said the language should be taught in schools so younger generations do not lose touch with their cultural heritage.[12]
The transliteration system of the İslâm Ansiklopedisi has become a de facto standard in Oriental studies for the transliteration of Ottoman Turkish texts.[14] In transcription, the New Redhouse, Karl Steuerwald, and Ferit Devellioğlu dictionaries have become standard.[15] Another transliteration system is the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), which provides a transliteration system for any Turkic language written in Arabic script.[16] There are few differences between the İA and the DMG systems.
^M. Sukru Hanioglu, "A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire", Published by Princeton University Press, 2008. p. 34: "It employed a predominant Turkish syntax, but was heavily influenced by Persian and (initially through Persian) Arabic.
^Pierre A. MacKay, "The Fountain at Hadji Mustapha", Hesperia, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1967), pp. 193–195: "The immense Arabic contribution to the lexicon of Ottoman Turkish came rather through Persian than directly, and the sound of Arabic words in Persian syntax would be far more familiar to a Turkish ear than correct Arabic".
^ abcKorkut Bugday. An Introduction to Literary Ottoman Routledge, 5 dec. 2014 ISBN 978-1134006557 p XV.
^Aytürk, İlker (July 2008). "The First Episode of Language Reform in Republican Turkey: The Language Council from 1926 to 1931". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 18 (3): 277. doi:10.1017/S1356186308008511. hdl:11693/49487. ISSN 1474-0591. S2CID 162474551.
^Pamuk, Humeyra (December 9, 2014). "Erdogan's Ottoman language drive faces backlash in Turkey". Reuters. Istanbul. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
^Hagopian, V. H. (1907). Ottoman-Turkish conversation-grammar; a practical method of learning the Ottoman-Turkish language. Heidelberg: J. Groos. p. 89. Retrieved 5 May 2018 – via Internet Archive.
^Transkriptionskommission der DMG Die Transliteration der arabischen Schrift in ihrer Anwendung auf die Hauptliteratursprachen der islamischen Welt, p. 9 Archived 2012-07-22 at the Wayback Machine
V. H. Hagopian (1907). Ottoman-Turkish conversation-grammar: a practical method of learning the Ottoman-Turkish language, Volume 1. D. Nutt. Online copies: [1], [2], [3]
Charles Wells (1880). A practical grammar of the Turkish language (as spoken and written). B. Quaritch. Online copies from Google Books: [4], [5], [6]
V. H. Hagopian (1908). Key to the Ottoman-Turkish conversation-grammar. Nutt.
Sir James William Redhouse (1884). A simplified grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish language. Trübner.
Frank Lawrence Hopkins (1877). Elementary grammar of the Turkish language: with a few easy exercises. Trübner.
Sir James William Redhouse (1856). An English and Turkish dictionary: in two parts, English and Turkish, and Turkish and English. B. Quarich.
Sir James William Redhouse (1877). A lexicon, English and Turkish: shewing in Turkish, the literal, incidental, figurative, colloquial, and technical significations of the English terms, indicating their pronunciation in a new and systematic manner; and preceded by a sketch of English etymology, to facilitate to Turkish students ... (2nd ed.). Printed for the mission by A.H. Boyajian.
Charles Boyd, Charles Boyd (Major.) (1842). The Turkish interpreter: or, A new grammar of the Turkish language. Printed for the author.
Thomas Vaughan (1709). A Grammar of The Turkish Language. Robinson.
William Burckhardt Barker (1854). A practical grammar of the Turkish language: With dialogues and vocabulary. B. Quaritch.
William Burckhardt Barker, Nasr-al-Din (khwajah.) (1854). A reading book of the Turkish language: with a grammar and vocabulary ; containing a selection of original tales, literally translated, and accompanied by grammatical references : the pronunciation of each word given as now used in Constantinople. J. Madden.
James William Redhouse (sir.) (1855). The Turkish campaigner's vade-mecum of Ottoman colloquial language.
Lewis, Geoffrey. The Jarring Lecture 2002. "The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success".
Other languages
Mehmet Hakkı Suçin. Qawâ'id al-Lugha al-Turkiyya li Ghair al-Natiqeen Biha (Turkish Grammar for Arabs; adapted from Mehmet Hengirmen's Yabancılara Türkçe Dilbilgisi), Engin Yayınevi, 2003).
Mehmet Hakkı Suçin. Atatürk'ün Okuduğu Kitaplar: Endülüs Tarihi (Books That Atatürk Read: History of Andalucia; purification from the Ottoman Turkish, published by Anıtkabir Vakfı, 2001).
Kerslake, Celia (1998). "La construction d'une langue nationale sortie d'un vernaculaire impérial enflé: la transformation stylistique et conceptuelle du turc ottoman". In Chaker, Salem (ed.). Langues et Pouvoir de l'Afrique du Nord à l'Extrême-Orient. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud. pp. 129–138.
Korkut M. Buğday (1999). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag (ed.). Osmanisch: Einführung in die Grundlagen der Literatursprache.
External links
Ottoman Turkish test of Wiktionary at Wikimedia Incubator
Ottoman Turkish repository of Wikisource, the free library
For a list of words relating to Ottoman Turkish, see the Ottoman Turkish language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Ottoman Turkish Language: Resources – University of Michigan
Ottoman Turkish Language Texts
Ottoman-Turkish-English Open Dictionary
Ottoman<->Turkish Dictionary – University of Pamukkale You can use ? character instead of an unknown letter. It provides results from Arabic and Persian dictionaries, too.