Ottoman Turkish language

Ottoman Turkish is the variant of the Turkish language which was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire, containing extensive borrowings from Persian, which in turn had been permeated with Arabic borrowings. That the Arabic borrowings were not the result of the direct exposure of Ottoman Turkish to Arabic is evidenced by the typically Persian phonological mutation of the Arabic (e.g. /rezvân/ instead of /ri?w?n/). In addition to that, the conservation of archaic phonological features of the Arabic borrowings suggests that the Arabic-enriched Persian was absorbed into pre-Ottoman Turkic in an early stage when it still was North-East of Persia before the Westward migration of the Turkic tribes under Islam. An additional argument for this is that Ottoman Turkish shares this Persianate character of its Arabic borrowings with other Turkic languages that had even less interaction with Arabic, such as Tatar. Like all languages of Islamic peoples, Ottoman Turkish was written in Arabic script. In spite of the fact that the Ottoman Turkish spoken in the capital was essentially the same as the plain Turkish spoken by farmers and villagers in the countryside, the large extent of Arabo-Persian borrowings made it unintelligible for peasants.

Related Topics:
Turkish language - Ottoman Empire - Persian - Arabic - Arabic script

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In 1928, following the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a more homogeneous Turkish emerged, with less influence from Arabic and Persian and using the Latin alphabet. The reason for the changes was that because people who didn't have training for that language could not understand it, as their mother language was a more homogeneous Turkish. Ottoman Turkish is held by many to be a completely different language than the Turkish of today. This seems to be politically motivated and does not hold up linguistically. However, few in modern-day Turkey can understand spoken Ottoman Turkish, let alone written.

Related Topics:
1928 - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Latin alphabet - Mother language - Turkey

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