Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎ Lisân-ı Osmânî) is the variety of the Turkish language that was used in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words in the Ottoman language.^[1] Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw Turkish"), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language.^[2] The Tanzimât era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانلوجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi).

Grammar

Cases

Some words in Ottoman Turkish were spelled with the Arabic ك which is normally pronounced as /k/, but were pronounced as /ɡ/.

• Nominative case: كول‎ göl ("the lake", "a lake"), چوربه‎ çorba ("Chorba"), كيجه‎ gece ("night").
• Accusative case (indefinite): طاوشان كتورمش‎ ṭavşan getirmiş ("he brought a rabbit").
• Genitive case: answers the question كمڭ‎ kimiñ ("whose?"), formed with the suffix ڭ‎ –ıñ, –iñ, –uñ, –üñ. E.g. پاشانڭ‎ paşanıñ ("the pasha's") from پاشا‎ paşa ("pasha").
• Accusative case (definite): answers the question كمى‎ kimi ("whom?") and نه يى‎ neyi ("what?"), formed with the suffix ى‎ –ı, -i. E.g. ‏طاوشانى كتورمش‎ ṭavşanı getürmiş ("he brought the rabbit"). The variant suffix –u, –ü does not occur in Ottoman Turkish as it does in Modern Turkish due to the lack of labial vowel harmony. Thus, كولى‎ göli ("the lake".ACC) where Modern Turkish has gölü.
• Locative case: answers the question نره ده‎ nerede ("where?"), formed with the suffix ده‎ –de, –da. E.g. مكتبده‎ mektebde ("at school"), قفصده‎ ḳafeṣde ("in a cage"), باشده‎ başda ("at the start"), شهرده‎ şehirde ("in town"). As with the indefinite accusative case, the variant suffix –te, –ta does not occur as it does in Modern Turkish.
• Ablative case: answers the questions نره دن‎ nereden ("from where?") and ندن‎ neden ("why?").
• Instrumental case: answers the question نه ايله‎ ne ile ("with what?").

Verbs

The conjugation for the aorist tense is as follows:

Structure

As in most other Turkic and other languages of Islamic communities, initially the Arabic borrowings were not 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.^[3][4][5] 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 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 and Uygur. From the early ages of the Ottoman Empire, borrowings from Arabic and Persian were so abundant that original Turkish words may be hard to find. In Ottoman, one may find whole passages in Arabic incorporated into the text.

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 (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 Seljuks and Anatolian beyliks, thus often regarded as part of Eski Anadolu Türkçesi (Ancient Anatolian Turkish).
• Orta Osmanlı Türkçesi (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or Klasik Osmanlıca (Classical Ottoman Turkish): Language of poetry and administration from the 16th century until Tanzimat. This is the version of Ottoman Turkish that comes to most people's minds.
• Yeni Osmanlı Türkçesi (New Ottoman Turkish): 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 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, as well as to foster a new variety of spoken Turkish that more explicitly reflected Turkey's new national identity as being a post-Ottoman state.

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 loanwords are found below.

Legacy

Historically speaking, Ottoman Turkish is not the predecessor of modern Turkish. Rather the standard Turkish of today is essentially Türkiye Türkçesi as written in the Latin alphabet and with an abundance of neologisms added, which means there are now many fewer loan words from other languages. However, Ottoman was not transformed into the Turkish of today instantly. At first, it was only the script that was changed (many households however continued to use the Arabic system), then the loans taken out, then new words to fit the growing amount of technology. Up until the 60s 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").

Orthography

Calendar in Thessaloniki 1896, a cosmopolitic city with the first 3 lines in Ottoman script

Ottoman Turkish was primarily written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet (elifbâ الفبا), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. It was not, however, unknown for Ottoman Turkish to also be written in Armenian script: for instance, the first novel to be written in the Ottoman Empire was 1851's Akabi, written in the Armenian script by Vartan Pasha. Similarly, when the Armenian Düzoğlu family managed the Ottoman mint during the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid, they kept records in Ottoman Turkish, but used the Armenian script.^[6] Other scripts, too—such as the Greek alphabet and the Rashi script of Hebrew—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 would write Greek using the Ottoman Turkish script.

Numbers

Transliterations

The transliteration system of the [9] There are not many differences between the İA and the DMG transliteration systems.

See also

• Old Anatolian Turkish language
• Culture of the Ottoman Empire
• Romanization

References

Further reading

• V. H. Hagopian (1907). Ottoman-Turkish conversation-grammar: a practical method of learning the Ottoman-Turkish language, Volume 1. D. Nutt.  Online copies: [2], [3], [4]
• Charles Wells (1880). A practical grammar of the Turkish language (as spoken and written). B. Quaritch.  Online copies from Google books: [5],[6], [7]
• 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".
• 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).
• Korkut M. Buğday (1999). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ed. Osmanisch: Einführung in die Grundlagen der Literatursprache. 

External links

• Turkish dictionaries at DMOZ
• Turkish language at DMOZ
• Ottoman Text Archive Project
• Ottoman Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
• Ottoman Turkish Language Texts
• Ottoman Romanization Table
• Ottoman Font Rika
• Ottoman-Turkish-English Open Dictionary
• Ottoman<>Turkish Dictionary - University of Pamukkale