Ottoman Turkish language

Ottoman Turkish (/ˈɒtəmən/; Turkish: Osmanlı Türkçesi) or the Ottoman language (Ottoman Turkish: لسان عثمانى, lisân-ı Osmânî, also known as تركچه, Türkçe or تركی, Türkî, "Turkish"; Turkish: Osmanlıca), is the variety of the Turkish language used in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrows extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian and its speakers used the Ottoman Turkish alphabet for written communications. During the peak of Ottoman power (c. 16th century CE), words of foreign origin in Turkish literature in the Ottoman Empire heavily outnumbered native Turkish words,[4] with Arabic and Persian vocabulary accounting for up to 88% of the Ottoman vocabulary in some texts.[5]

Ottoman Turkish
لسان عثمانى
lisân-ı Osmânî
RegionOttoman Empire
EthnicityOttomans, Turks
Erac. 15th century - developed into Modern Turkish in 1928[1]
Turkic
Early form
Ottoman Turkish alphabet
Official status
Official language in
Beylik of Tunis
Cretan State
Emirate of Jabal Shammar
Khedivate of Egypt
Ottoman Empire
Provisional National Government of the Southwestern Caucasus
Provisional Government of Western Thrace
Turkish Provisional Government
Turkey (until 1928)[lower-alpha 1]
Language codes
ISO 639-2ota
ISO 639-3ota
ota
Glottologotto1234[3]

Consequently, 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), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language.[6] The Tanzimât era (1839–1876) saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language[7] (لسان عثمانی, lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه, Osmanlıca); Modern Turkish makes the same distinction (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi).

Grammar
A poem about Rumi in Ottoman Turkish.

Cases
  • Nominative and Indefinite accusative/objective): -∅, no suffix. گول‎ göl 'the lake' 'a lake', چوربه‎ çorba 'soup', گیجه‎ gece 'night'; طاوشان گترمش‎ ṭavşan getirmiş 'he/she brought a rabbit'.
  • Genitive: suffix ڭ/نڭ‎ –(n)ıñ, –(n)iñ, –(n)uñ, –(n)üñ. پاشانڭ‎ paşanıñ 'of the pasha'; كتابڭ‎ kitabıñ 'of the book'.
  • Definite accusative: suffix ى‎ –ı, -i: طاوشانى گترمش‎ ṭavşanı 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, كولى‎ gölü 'the lake' vs. Modern Turkish gölü.[8]
  • Dative:
  • Locative: suffix ده‎ –de, –da: مكتبده‎ mektebde 'at school', قفصده‎ ḳafeṣde 'in (the/a) cage', باشده‎ başda 'at a/the start', شهرده‎ şehirde 'in town'. The variant suffix used in Modern Turkish –te, –ta does not occur.
  • Ablative:
  • Instrumental: suffix or postposition ايله‎ ile. Generally not counted as a grammatical case in modern grammars.

Verbs

The conjugation for the aorist tense is as follows:

PersonSingularPlural
1-irim-iriz
2-irsiŋ-irsiŋiz
3-ir-irler

Structure
Redhouse's Turkish Dictionary, Second Edition (1880)

Ottoman Turkish was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Arabic and Persian words in the language accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary.[5] As in most other Turkic and other foreign languages of Islamic communities, the Arabic borrowings were not originally the result of a direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of the words of Arabic origin.[9][10][11]

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 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.[12] In Ottoman, one may find whole passages in Arabic and Persian incorporated into the text.[12] It was however not only extensive loaning of words, but along with them much of the grammatical systems of Persian and Arabic.[12]

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, 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 (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 (Old Anatolian Turkish).
  • Orta Osmanlı Türkçesi (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or Klasik Osmanlıca (Classical Ottoman Turkish): the language of poetry and administration from the 16th century until Tanzimat. It is the version of Ottoman Turkish that comes to most people's minds.
  • Yeni Osmanlı Türkçesi (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. 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.

See the list of replaced loanwords in Turkish for more examples of Ottoman Turkish words and their modern Turkish counterparts. Two examples of Arabic and two of Persian loanwords are found below.

EnglishOttomanModern Turkish
obligatoryواجب vâcibzorunlu
hardshipمشكل müşkülgüçlük
cityشهر şehirkent (also şehir)
provinceولایت vilâyetil
warحرب harbsavaş

Legacy

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 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; for example, the Persian genitive construction 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").

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.[13]

Writing system
Main article: Ottoman Turkish alphabet
Calendar in Thessaloniki 1896, a cosmopolitan city; the first three lines in Ottoman script

Most Ottoman Turkish was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet (elifbâ الفبا), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. The Armenian, Greek and Rashi script of Hebrew were sometimes used by Armenians, Greeks and Jews.

Numbers
1
بر
bir
2
ایكی
iki
3
اوچ
üç
4
درت
dört
5
بش
beş
6
آلتی
altı
7
یدی
yedi
8
سكز
sekiz
9
طقوز
dokuz
10
اون
on
11
اون بر
on bir
12
اون ایکی
on iki

[14]

Transliterations
See also: Ottoman Turkish alphabet

The transliteration system of the İslâm Ansiklopedisi has become a de facto standard in Oriental studies for the transliteration of Ottoman Turkish texts.[15] Concerning transcription the New Redhouse, Karl Steuerwald and Ferit Develioğlu dictionaries have become standard.[16] Another transliteration system is the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), which provides a transliteration system for any Turkic language written in Arabic script.[17] There are not many differences between the İA and the DMG transliteration systems.

İA-Transliteration[18]
ا
 ب پ ت ث ج چ ح خ د ذ ر ز ژ س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق
ك
 گ ڭ ل م ن و ه ی
ʾa b p t s̱ c ç ḥ ḫ d ẕ r z j s ş ṣ ż, ḍ ṭ ẓ ʿ ġ f q kgñğ g ñ l m n v h y
gollark: What if I store all user data in large files uploaded to Discord and make it THEIR problem?
gollark: Discord could even send me emails at the scale ABR operates at, I assume.
gollark: Well that would be hilariously inefficient and annoying. Hmmm.
gollark: Wait, how can I *know* if someone deletes their account?
gollark: I suppose I'll avoid storing actual message content except for opted in users.

See also

Notes
  1. The national language was called "Turkish" in the 1921 and 1924 constitutions of the Republic of Turkey.[2]

References
  1. "Turkey - Language Reform: From Ottoman To Turkish". Countrystudies.us. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Ottoman Turkish". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Eid, Mushira (2006). Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Volume 4. Brill. ISBN 9789004149762.
  5. Bertold Spuler. Persian Historiography & Geography Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd ISBN 9971774887 p 69
  6. Glenny, Misha (2001). The Balkans — Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804–1999. Penguin. p. 99.
  7. Kerslake, Celia (1998). "Ottoman Turkish". In Lars Johanson; Éva Á. Csató (eds.). Turkic Languages. New York: Routledge. p. 108. ISBN 0415082005.
  8. Redhouse, William James. A Simplified Grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish Language. p. 52.
  9. Percy Ellen Algernon Frederick William Smythe Strangford, Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe Strangford, Emily Anne Beaufort Smythe Strangford, “Original Letters and Papers of the late Viscount Strangford upon Philological and Kindred Subjects”, Published by Trübner, 1878. pg 46: “The Arabic words in Turkish have all decidedly come through a Persian channel. I can hardly think of an exception, except in quite late days, when Arabic words have been used in Turkish in a different sense from that borne by them in Persian.”
  10. 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.
  11. 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".
  12. Korkut Bugday. An Introduction to Literary Ottoman Routledge, 5 dec. 2014 ISBN 978-1134006557 p XV.
  13. Pamuk, Humeyra (December 9, 2014). "Erdogan's Ottoman language drive faces backlash in Turkey". Reuters. Istanbul. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  14. Hagopian, V. H. (5 May 2018). "Ottoman-Turkish conversation-grammar; a practical method of learning the Ottoman-Turkish language". Heidelberg, J. Groos; New York, Brentano's [etc., etc.] Archived from the original on 24 May 2017. Retrieved 5 May 2018 – via Internet Archive.
  15. Korkut Buğday Osmanisch, p. 2
  16. Korkut Buğday Osmanisch, p. 13
  17. 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
  18. Korkut Buğday Osmanisch, p. 2f.

Further reading
English
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.
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