Ottoman Turkish

Historically, Ottoman Turkish was transformed in three eras: • (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 (Old Anatolian Turkish). • (Middle Ottoman Turkish) or (Classical Ottoman Turkish): the language of poetry and administration from the 16th century until Tanzimat. • (New Ottoman Turkish): the version shaped from the 1850s to the 20th century under the influence of journalism and Western-oriented literature. Ottoman Turkish was developed and extensively promoted as an imperial and court language during the reign of Mehmed II, with whose encouragement the language became heavily Persianised. 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. ==Legacy==

Historically speaking, Ottoman Turkish is the predecessor of modern Turkish. However, the standard Turkish of today is essentially (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-derived genitive construction () (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, (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. ==Writing system==

1896, a cosmopolitan city; the first three lines in Ottoman script Most Ottoman Turkish was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet (), a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. The Armenian, Greek and Rashi script of Hebrew were sometimes used by Armenians, Greeks and Jews. (See Karamanli Turkish, a dialect of Ottoman written in the Greek script; Armeno-Turkish alphabet) ==Grammar==

The actual grammar of Ottoman Turkish is not different from the grammar of modern Turkish. The focus of this section is on the Ottoman orthography; the conventions surrounding how the orthography interacted and dealt with grammatical morphemes related to conjugations, cases, pronouns, etc. Cases • Nominative and Indefinite accusative/objective: -∅, no suffix. 'the lake' 'a lake', 'soup', 'night'; 'he/she brought a rabbit'. • Genitive: suffix . 'of the pasha'; 'of the book'. • Definite accusative: suffix : 'he/she brought the rabbit'. The variant suffix does not occur in Ottoman Turkish orthography (unlike in Modern Turkish), although it's pronounced with the vowel harmony. Thus, 'the lake' vs. Modern Turkish . • Dative: suffix : 'to the house'. • Locative: suffix : 'at school', 'in (the/a) cage', 'at a/the start', 'in town'. The variant suffix used in Modern Turkish (, ) does not occur. • Ablative: suffix : 'from the man'. • Instrumental: suffix or postposition . Generally not counted as a grammatical case in modern grammars. The table below lists nouns with a variety of phonological features that come into play when taking case suffixes; it includes a typical singular and plural noun, containing back and front vowels, words that end with the letter ( or ) (back and front vowels), words that end in a () sound, and words that end in either or (). These words are to serve as references, to observe orthographic conventions: • Which vowels are written using the 4 letters: , , , and , and which are not. • When words or morphemes are connected to each other, and when they are separated with the use of Zero-width non-joiner. • When a final letter is softened when followed by a vowel sound, and when not; both in Ottoman orthography and in modern Latin orthography. • When harmony of vowel roundness exists in spoken pronunciation and modern Latin orthography, but not in Ottoman orthography. • When the letters () and () are used. Possessives Table below shows the suffixes for creating possessed nouns. Each of these possessed nouns, in turn, take case suffixes as shown above. For third person (singular and plural) possessed nouns, that end in a vowel, when it comes to taking case suffixes, a letter () comes after the possessive suffix. For singular endings, the final vowel ( or ) is removed in all instances. For plural endings, if the letter succeeding the additional () is a vowel, the final vowel ( or ) is kept; otherwise it is removed (note the respective examples for and ). Verbs Below table shows the positive conjugation for two sample verbs (to open) and (to be loved). The first verb is the active verb, and the other has been modified to form a passive verb. The first contains back vowels, the second front vowels; both containing non-rounded vowels (which also impacts pronunciation and modern Latin orthography). Negation and complex verbs Below table shows the conjugation of a negative verb, and a positive complex verb expressing ability. In Turkish, complex verbs can be constructed by adding a variety of suffixes to the base root of a verb. The two verbs are (not to write) and (to be able to love). Compound verbs Another common category of verbs in Turkish (more common in Ottoman Turkish than in modern Turkish), is compound verbs. This consists of adding a Persian or Arabic active or passive participle to a neuter verb, to do ( ) or to become ( ). For example, note the following two verbs: • (to consent); • (to slaughter); (to thank); • (to get better). Below table shows some sample conjugations of these two verbs. The conjugation of the verb is not straightforward, because the root of the verb ends in a [t]. This sound transforms into a [d] when followed by a vowel sound. This is reflected in conventions of Ottoman orthography as well. 'to be' and 'not to be' Verbs In Turkish, there is a verb representing to be, but it is a defective verb. It does not have an infinitive or several other tenses. It is usually a suffix. Negative verb to be is created with the use of the word , followed by the appropriate conjugation of the to be verb; or optionally used as a standalone for 3rd person. • / ben işçi değilim: 'I am not a worker' • / o çiftçi değildir: 'he is not a farmer' • / o çiftçi değil: 'he is not a farmer' • / eğer kendim için hazır değilseydim.: 'if I'm not ready for myself' 'to exist/have' and 'not to exist/have' Verbs Generally, the verbs 'to exist' and 'to have' are expressed using what's called an existential copula, the word var. • / ev var: 'there is a house' The verb 'to have' is expressed in the same way, except that the object noun will take a possessive pronoun, producing sentences that will literally mean "there exists house of mine". • / evim var: 'I have a house' The verbs 'to exist' and 'to have' conjugated for other tenses, are expressed in the same way, with a possessive pronoun if needed, and copula var, followed by the 3rd person singular form of the verb 'to do: etmek attached as a suffix (or separate as a stanadalone verb); as conjugated in the above section. • / evin vardı: 'you had a house' • / bina varmalıydı: 'there had to be a building' The verbs 'not to exist' and 'not to have' are created in the exact same manner and conjugation, except that the copula yok is used. • / ev yok: 'there isn't a house' • / evim yok: 'I don't have a house' • / evin yoktu: 'you didn't have a house' • / bina yokmalıydı: 'there must not have been a building' Verb construction Turkish being an agglutinative language as opposed to an analytical one (generally), means that from a single root verb, with the addition of a variety of morphemes and suffixes, multiple new and different verbs meanings can be expressed in single but larger words. Below table is a sample from the verb (, "to kick"), whose root (which is also 2nd person imperative) is (). Each of the produced new verbs below can be made into an infinitive with the addition of () at the end. ==Structure==

's Turkish Dictionary, Second Edition (1880)|page=7|link=File:Redhouse's_Turkish_Dictionary.pdf%3Fpage=7 Ottoman Turkish was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian. Arabic and Persian words in the language accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary. 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. 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. 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: • (Eloquent Turkish): the language of poetry and administration, Ottoman Turkish in its strict sense; • (Middle Turkish): the language of higher classes and trade; • (Rough Turkish): the language of lower classes. A person would use each of the varieties above for different purposes, with the variant being the most heavily suffused with Arabic and Persian words and the least. For example, a scribe would use the Arabic () to refer to honey when writing a document but would use the native Turkish word () when buying it. ==Numbers==

The transliteration system of the has become a de facto standard in Oriental studies for the transliteration of Ottoman Turkish texts. In transcription, the New Redhouse, Karl Steuerwald, and Ferit Devellioğlu dictionaries have become standard. Another transliteration system is the (DMG), which provides a transliteration system for any Turkic language written in Arabic script. There are few differences between the İA and the DMG systems. ==See also==