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Turkish + Persian = Ottoman | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6453 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 1 of 11 18 January 2007 at 4:30am | IP Logged |
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How difficult is it to read Ottoman Turkish for a speaker of Turkish and Persian? From what I've read the main difficulty for a Turkish speaker is the Arabic script and the many Arabic/Persian loanwords that were borrowed from Persian, so I was thinking that maybe if you know Turkish AND Persian, you should be able to understand Ottoman as well. As I'm studying Turkish and plan to study Persian in the future, knowing that I could get another important literary language for free would certainly boost my motivation...
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| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6932 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 2 of 11 18 January 2007 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
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Having at one time aspired to be an Ottomanist, I was struck by this query, but am uncertain how to answer it. In a sense, Turkish and Persian, and the borrowed Arabic vocabulary you pick up while learning these two languages, are a good basis for Ottoman, which is/was essentially Turkish sentence structure filled with Persian and Arabic words, as well as grammatical structures taken from these two other languages.
But I think it necessary to stress that there would still be a lot of thumbing through dictionaries and scratching your head over meaning, given the extremely ornate style of Ottoman Turkish, wherein most educated writers sought to display their erudition by ransacking dictionaries of all three languages in order to select the rarest words possible -- which were not always used in accord with their meanings in the original language. This tendency varied according to period, writer, and genre, but all too often, the result was an extremely complex and artificial literary language that had little relationship with what anyone would say in normal speech. Accordingly, it's hard to distinguish useful vocabulary to learn from the most recondite words, as the latter were considered more elegant. Sentences tended to be extremely long, often approaching and even in my view exceeding the limits of comprehensibility. So learning Ottoman is, to steal the words of Donald Rumsfeld, a "very hard slog", and can be frustrating even with some knowledge of all three of the "constituent" languages. If you're seriously interested in Ottoman, there are a number of sources to look for, some old stand-bys and some newer: First, the book "Osmanisch: Einfuehrung in die Grundlagen der Literaturprache", by Korkut Bugday, (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1999) provides a quick overview of the major grammatical elements, along with reading texts, vocabulary, etc. It's pretty concentrated, though. Here's a review of it: http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Bulletin/35-2/35-2Resources.h tm As for older books, keep an eye out for the now quite rare "Ottoman-Turkish Conversation Grammar", by V. G. Hagopian (Julius Groos, Heidelberg, 1907), and the even rarer 1908 "Key" to it; the book is very user-friendly and provides instruction first in Turkish, then in the relevant aspects of Persian and Arabic that are used in Ottoman. It contains short exercises and reading selections, and is a delightful introduction not only to the Turkish of the time but also to the culture that prevailed during the last days of the empire. University libraries might have it, and used copies occasionally show up for sale, but are normally fairly expensive. There's an annotated reader that should not be too hard to find: "Osmanisch-Tuerkische Chrestomathie", by Richard Kreutel (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1965) You'll definitely need a copy of the 1890 "Turkish and English Lexicon" by James Redhouse, which has been reprinted a number of times in Turkey (and even in Lebanon) in recent years; over 2,200 pages and arranged in order of the Ottoman (i.e., Arabic) script, it's incredibly rich and fascinating reading for anyone interested in Turkish of any sort. Coming back to your question, I guess my answer would be that knowing both Turkish and Persian would not mean you would necessarily be able to read Ottoman, but that these two languages would give you most of what you need to work on Ottoman; two legs of the tripod, as it were. The more Arabic you know, the better, depending on the area of your interest, but even with all three modern languages under your belt, it would still take some time and effort to work your way into Ottoman, given the style most Ottoman writers employed. Also, given the late emergence of printing in the Ottoman Empire, the vast majority of what was written was written by hand, and so familiarity with different forms of handwriting is essential to be able to exploit the vast number of manuscripts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6453 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 11 18 January 2007 at 11:08am | IP Logged |
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Wow, thanks a lot for you answer, daristani! So Ottoman seems quite a difficult task. Anyway, it'll be a long time before I master Turkish and Persian, but maybe once I do, I'll pick it up. I'm very intrigued by Ottoman (and Arabic and Persian) calligraphy, so maybe one day...
May I ask why you gave up your Ottoman studies? Loss of interest? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6932 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 4 of 11 18 January 2007 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
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Hmmm... a combination of reasons... I guess I just gradually lost interest in something that was so remote from the present day and involved so much frustration in studying (I didn't know Arabic and found the Ottoman literary style cloying), I gradually got discouraged by the length of time I would have to keep studying, and I didn't see all that much prospect of eventual employment. My motivation gradually lessened, and I gradually soured on the idea of an academic career. (Note that this was all a personal reaction on my part to my own individual circumstances at the time -- quite a few years ago! -- as well as based on factors such as relations with professors, job prospects, my assessment of my own interests and capabilities, etc., and thus shouldn't be taken as a description of the field itself. I wouldn't seek to discourage anyone from the field; it's just that I myself slowly lost interest over time.)
By the way, in trying to track down that review of the Bugday book, I ran across this site, which has lots of information and a very large collection of links: http://www.osmanischesreich.com/index.html Regardless of whether you decide to take up Ottoman or not, good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patlajan Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6937 days ago 59 posts - 65 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Turkish Studies: German, Mandarin, French | Message 5 of 11 18 January 2007 at 5:54pm | IP Logged |
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I had a professor who was an Ottoman scholar and he stated that learning Ottoman even with a mastery of Arabic and Turkish was quite a slog. Unless one is planning to delve into the period archives in Istanbul, it would seem that effort won't be worth it. But by all means acquire the Redhouse dictionaries - a real treat - lots of great obscure words. Edited by patlajan on 18 January 2007 at 6:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6932 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 6 of 11 06 April 2007 at 3:13pm | IP Logged |
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Further to this older thread on learning Ottoman Turkish, I have just become aware that the full text of the following book is available on-line via Gooble BooksSearch:
Ottoman-Turkish Conversation-grammar: A Practical Method of Learning the Ottoman-Turkish Language By V. H. Hagopian (published in Heidelberg in 1907) 492 pages long, it’s actually a textbook to learn Turkish, which at the time was written in the Arabic script, but it has lots of short lessons, clear explanations, etc., and takes the reader all the way into the Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary used in Ottoman as well as the Turkish part of the language. You can download the text in PDF format at: http://books.google.com/books?vid=0P4_Xsth1C75_V7YoVUqrB&id= j0u9Mw-TsyIC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=hagopian+turkish&as_brr=1#PPR 2,M1 (Should this URL be too long, just go to the Google books page and search for “Hagopian Turkish”, and it’s the first item that comes up. There was a separate key published to the book, but that’s evidently not available on-line. Even so, this is the most user-friendly way I know to get a feel for Ottoman Turkish, even if you don’t know modern Turkish ahead of time. There’s also another old English book for Ottoman available on-line; it’s A Practical Grammar of the Turkish Language (as Spoken and Written), by Charles Wells, published in London in 1880. It’s not nearly as easy to learn from, but does have some interesting reading samples, as well as useful comments on style and usage, for after you’ve progressed a way in the language. It’s available at: http://books.google.com/books?vid=05l_bbqqqcrRAAgI6sz4Ba&id= bYqvxt5wQrcC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=wells+turkish&as_brr=1#PPP4,M 1 or if that doesn’t work, go to the Google books page and search for “Wells Turkish” (which will also turn up a book of readings that Wells wrote: The Literature of the Turks: A Turkish Chrestomathy ... with ... Translations in English (London, 1891) Which starts out with proverbs and the like and then gradually works into more sophisticated texts. So now, thanks to the internet and Google books, you can get hundreds of pages of materials to learn Ottoman Turkish from. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6229 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 07 April 2007 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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Always been interested in this language but living languages take priority over dead ones for the moment. Some more from Google Books (strangely I was not able to find any way to download the books linked to above. Is my browser playing tricks on me?):
http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC04484627&id=pIxKPpczT8 MC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=turkish&as_brr=1 http://books.google.com/books?vid=0-r--MEZFu_k2HcCpEZt_j&id= pIxKPpczT8MC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=turkish+reading&as_brr=1 a couple in french: http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC46265910&id=OTvHRG7w28 cC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT6&dq=grammaire+raisonnee+ottomane&as_brr=1 http://books.google.com/books?vid=0NO-4fg9OhVsJJxpva&id=S_MN AAAAMAAJ&pg=PR2&lpg=PR2&dq=#PPP9,M1 and one of redhouse's dictionaries: http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC41456799&id=yfsCAAAAQA AJ&pg=PA430&lpg=PA430&dq=turkish+redhouse&as_brr=1#PPP7,M1 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 07 April 2007 at 11:57am | IP Logged |
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I had a look at the first link in your last post, and see a "Download" button to the right; just between "Summary" and "About the book".
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