History Of The Turkish Language

If you look closely at the history of the Turkish language, you'll find that it has gone through three distinct stages over the past millennia:

1. Old Anatolian Turkish (11th-16th Century)

2. Middle Ottoman Turkish (17th-18th Century)

3. Newer Ottoman Turkish (19th Century)

4. Modern Turkish (20th-21st Century)

Let's take a closer look at these stages of Turkish language history, which began when Turkic languages spread to modern-day Turkey over the course of millennia through the gradual westward migration of Turkic nomads.

It isn't clear when exactly the first Turkic tribes began arriving in Anatolia, but the Turkish language is most associated with the language spoken by the Oghuz Turkic groups who migrated across different parts of Anatolia between 900-1200 A.D. These groups spoke Old Anatolian Turkish and had already adopted the Arabic script as a means of writing.

The rise of the Seljuk Empire was the first example of an empire with Turkic origins that ruled in Anatolia, lasting between the 11th and 12th centuries. During this period, the rulers of the empire began working to institute Turkish as an official language in the region. Old Anatolian Turkish finally received its status as an official language in Anatolia in 1277 when Mehmet I of Karaman, a leader of the Karamanids, decreed that people in the palaces, divan, council, and on travels should only speak in Turkish.

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Otoman Turkish

Otoman turkish

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Old Anatolian Turkish eventually paved the way for Ottoman Turkish starting in the 16th to 17th century. The Ottoman Empire was established by another Oghuz Turkic group and came to prominence between the 13th and 14th centuries after the fall of the Seljuk Empire. The Ottoman Empire eventually founded its capital in Istanbul and expanded throughout different areas of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. At the peak of its power, the Ottomans controlled a territory extending from Budapest to Mecca!

Ottoman Turkish was similar to Old Anatolian Turkish in that it continued to use the Arabic alphabet. However, it was unique from Old Anatolian Turkish in that it featured a lot more vocabulary and grammatical features from languages like Arabic and Persian. Words from other languages like Arabic, Persian, and Greek were so prominent in Ottoman Turkish that they outnumbered the number of words of Turkish origin. This made Ottoman Turkish a literary language that was spoken more by the upper and elite classes and used more specifically for literature and written records.

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Turkish alphabet

Turkish alphabet

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After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, the modern Turkish Republic was founded in 1923. The new republic formed the Turkish Language Association in 1932 specifically to weaken the dominance of foreign loanwords and replace these words with original Turkish equivalents.