Ottoman Turkish (; Turkish: Osmanl? Türkçesi), or the Ottoman language (Ottoman Turkish: ???? ???????, lisân-? Osmânî, also known as ??????, Türkçe or ?????, Türkî, "Turkish"; Turkish: Osmanl?ca), is the variety of the Turkish language that was used in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary, while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.
Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish", as in Vulgar Latin), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language. The Tanzimât era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (???? ??????? lisân-? Osmânî or ?????????? Osmanl?ca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanl?ca and Osmanl? Türkçesi).
Video Ottoman Turkish language
Grammar
Cases
- Nominative case: ???? göl ("the lake", "a lake"), ?????? çorba ("Chorba"), ???? gece ("night").
- Accusative case (indefinite): ?????? ?????? ?av?an getirmi? ("he/she brought a rabbit"). No suffix.
- Genitive case: answers the question ???? kimiñ ("whose?"), formed with the suffix ?? -?ñ, -iñ, -uñ, -üñ. E.g. ??????? pa?an?ñ ("the pasha's") from ????? pa?a ("pasha").
- Accusative case (definite): answers the question ???? kimi ("whom?") and ?? ??? neyi ("what?"), formed with the suffix ?? -?, -i: ??????? ?????? ?av?an? getürmi? ("he/she brought the rabbit"). The variant suffix -u, -ü does not occur in Ottoman Turkish unlike in Modern Turkish because of the lack of labial vowel harmony. Thus, ????? göli ("the lake".ACC), but Modern Turkish has gölü.
- Dative case:
- Locative case: answers the question ??? ??? nerede ("where?"), formed with the suffix ??? -de, -da: ??????? mektebde ("at school"), ?????? ?afe?de ("in a cage"), ?????? ba?da ("at the start"), ?????? ?ehirde ("in town"). As with the indefinite accusative case, the variant suffix -te, -ta does not occur unlike in Modern Turkish.
- Ablative case: answers the questions ??? ??? nereden ("from where?") and ???? neden ("why?").
- Instrumental case: answers the question ?? ????? ne ile ("with what?").
Verbs
The conjugation for the aorist tense is as follows:
Maps Ottoman Turkish language
Structure
Ottoman Turkish was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Arabic and Persian words in the language amounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary. 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.
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. In Ottoman, one may find whole passages in Arabic and Persian incorporated into the text. It was however not only extensive loaning of words, but along with them much of the grammatical systems of Persian and Arabic.
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 (???) 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 Osmanl? 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 Osmanl? Türkçesi (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or Klasik Osmanl?ca (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 Osmanl? 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 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 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").
Writing system
Most Ottoman Turkish was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet (elifbâ ?????), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. The Armenian, Greek and Rashi script of Hebrew were sometimes used by Armenians, Greeks and Jews.
Numbers
Transliterations
The transliteration system of the ?slâm Ansiklopedisi has become a de facto standard in Oriental studies for the transliteration of Ottoman Turkish texts. Concerning transcription the New Redhouse, Karl Steuerwald and Ferit Develio?lu dictionaries have become standard. Another transliteration system is the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), which provides a transliteration system for any Turkic language written in Arabic script. There are not many differences between the ?A and the DMG transliteration systems.
See also
- Old Anatolian Turkish language
- Culture of the Ottoman Empire
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 Hakk? Suçin. Qawâ'id al-Lugha al-Turkiyya li Ghair al-Natiqeen Biha (Turkish Grammar for Arabs; adapted from Mehmet Hengirmen's Yabanc?lara Türkçe Dilbilgisi), Engin Yay?nevi, 2003).
- Mehmet Hakk? Suçin. Atatürk'ün Okudu?u Kitaplar: Endülüs Tarihi (Books That Atatürk Read: History of Andalucia; purification from the Ottoman Turkish, published by An?tkabir Vakf?, 2001).
- Korkut M. Bu?day (1999). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ed. Osmanisch: Einführung in die Grundlagen der Literatursprache.
External links
- Turkish dictionaries at Curlie (based on DMOZ)
- Turkish language at Curlie (based on DMOZ)
- Ottoman Text Archive Project
- Ottoman Turkish Language: Resources - University of Michigan
- Ottoman Turkish Language Texts
- Ottoman-Turkish-English Open Dictionary
- Ottoman<>Turkish Dictionary - University of Pamukkale
- Ottoman<>Turkish Dictionary - ihya.org
Source of article : Wikipedia
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