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Ottoman Turkish Alphabet- OSMANLI Türkçes | ||
Tags: Turkish | Writing System | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes  Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 8 04 December 2013 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ottoman Turkish Alphabet- OSMANLI Türkçesi Alfabesi (2009)
Seems useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5187 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 2 of 8 04 December 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Where is this Ottoman Turkish script used, nowadays? Anything written before 1929 I guess. Maybe it can help someone with historical studies but I don't think it can be helpful to modern language learners.
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| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 8 04 December 2013 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably to those who want to read older texts, or people who are really into the turkish language and want to know more than its contemporary form. Also, simply as another resource to have and to be aware of. I personally enjoy having many resources, even for collecting purposes.
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| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 4 of 8 04 December 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Knowing the Ottoman alphabet isn't really necessary for modern Turkish, but knowing it can sometimes be useful for people reading older texts in the Latin alphabet, from which the words might not show up in modern dictionaries. (Still, though, you need access to dictionaries written in Ottoman for use in this way.)
I think that the Turks in Western Thrace (Greece) continued to use the Ottoman script for some time after the official alphabet change in Turkey, but since their population was small and there wasn't much if any publishing there, I don't know how much might be found to read from that era/region. But for people interested in Turkish in the old script, I would recommend a really useful book that teaches Turkish language in the Ottoman script; it's Hagopian's Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar, published in 1907. It doesn't teach the language as a historical artifact, since it was written during the period when that was simply the alphabet in which Turkish was written. It does have a fair amount of Latin-script material, but in a different, French-based, version that's different from the modern Turkish alphabet. But it has short lessons with exercises, and teaches the basic Turkish parts of the grammar first, then gets into the Persian and Arabic portions, which were more prevalent in the Turkish of those days than in that of today. You can find the book itself, and the key to the exercises, at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ottomanturkishco00hago https://archive.org/details/cu31924026883003 The book is perhaps in some sense a curiosity for learners of modern Turkish, but it also provides an interesting cultural insight into the Ottoman Empire at the time, prior to the days of modern Turkish nationalism, and when non-Muslims were a substantial part of the population. (The book's author was an Armenian.) Literary Ottoman was a rather artificial language, chock full of Persian and Arabic expressions that most people at the time had a hard time understanding, But I think that this book is a very easy way to get into the language and culture of the time, and doesn't require knowing modern Turkish. The language has changed quite a bit since that time it was written, of course, but for people with an interest in history or earlier stages of the culture, this is a great resource. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 8 04 December 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, that is very interesting. I am looking into the history of the turkish language these days, and such information is great.
Can those who read arabic also read the ottoman script? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 6 of 8 04 December 2013 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, people who can read Arabic can recognize a lot of words in Ottoman, but Ottoman has a few more letters for sounds not contained in Arabic, and in addition, Turkish has eight vowel sounds, some of which were written, while Arabic has only three vowels, of which only the short ones were written. So Ottoman words, especially Turkish-origin words, given the agglutinative nature of the language, are often MUCH longer than Arabic words, making them hard to read for most Arabic speakers. So Arabic speakers can "read" Ottoman to a degree, but usually won't understand much except for the Arabic words (just as I can "read", say, Polish, but can't understand anything but words borrowed from English.)
I think the Turks' change to the Latin script was probably, based on purely linguistic criteria, a good move; it's true that it suddenly cut them off from their past culture, which in the eyes of traditionalists was a terrible loss (and in the eyes of Ataturk was probably part of the motivation for the change) but in terms of representing the language clearly, I think that the Latin script is more appropriate. A really wonderful book on the whole language issue in Turkey is The Turkish Language Reform A Catastrophic Success by the late Geoffrey Lewis, who was a real scholar of Turkish and wrote beautifully in English. Here's the website for the book: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199256693.do (This page also includes a PDF of Lewis's introduction to the book, which touches on the "catastrophic success" aspect of the change.) In any event, good luck with your studies of Turkish; despite the political disputes of the last centuries, Turks and Greeks do share a history of many centuries, with both positive and negative aspects, and I think it's great when people of the two nations show an interest in the language and culture of the other. ADDENDUM: One of the best Ottoman Turkish dictionaries is purportedly the Leksikon Tourko-Elinnikon by Chloros; it seems to be available for download on this page: http://medusa.libver.gr/browse?type=subject&order=ASC&rpp=20 &value=Ottoman+script (Look at "1899", halfway down the page.) Edited by daristani on 04 December 2013 at 8:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 8 04 December 2013 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Daristani, your answers are some of the best in the entire forum. Thank you!
The beauty of those ottoman script pages make me very jealous I can't read them! Geoffrey Lewis is on my list for his other books as well. Many Greeks speak Turkish for several reasons, and others who don't, want to learn. Surely there are problems between us, but the language is beautiful, no doubt about that. We share some songs as well, and you should see on youtube the friendly comments from both sides. In my log I will stick to litterature, recipes, pop culture, and all the positive aspects I can think of. Again, thank you for the support. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 8 of 8 04 December 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
This link is simply ashtonishing. I found greek base turkish material. I didn't even know this one! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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