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TRKE

ENGLISH

Ottoman Turkish

Sultan Selim II's Cyprus Ferman

Why is it important to know Ottoman Turkish?


Without knowing Ottoman Turkish, the relationship between Turks and one thousand years of their history will be lost . This means that all texts
written by the Turks of Cyprus from their first arrival to the island in 1571 up until the 1920s and 1930s will come as strange to us. Accordingly,
in order to research Turkish Cypriot history by reading directly from their own sources, one must learn Ottoman Turkish.
Is there a difference between Ottoman Turkish and Ottoman language?
Ottoman Turkish, also known as Lisan-i Turki, refers to the Turkish dialect spoken by the common people of the empire. The Ottoman language,
on the other hand, refers to a language that combined Turkish, Arabic and Persian. The Ottoman language was the official language of the
Ottoman Empire and was more frequently used by the educated class. It is not enough to simply learn the Ottoman alphabet in order to be able to

read Ottoman texts, but memorising the letters along with their qualities is certainly a starting point.
Ottoman Alphabet (The Elifba)
LETTER NAME
Elif
Be
Pe
Te
Se
Cim
im
Ha
H
Dal
Zal
Ra
Ze
Je
Sin
n
Sad
Dad
T
Z
Ayn
Gayn
Fe
Kaf
Kef

LATIN LETTER
A. E
B
P
T
S
C

H
H*
D
Z
R
Z
J
S

S*
D, Z*
T*
Z*
A, , O, U
G, *
F
K*
K

ELIFBA LETTER

EXAMPLE
Emniyet, Ahlak
Bereket
Pehlivan
Trk
Sevap
Cennet
iftlik
Hayat
Haber
Dnya
Zikir
Rahmet
Zaman
Jest
Selam
iir
Sadakat
Dalalet, Ramazan
Talebe
Zalim
Asker, badet, Osmanl, Ulema
Gaflet, Mausa
Fakir
Kbrs
Kitap

Gef
Nef
Lam
Mim
Nun
Vav
He
Ye

G,
N
L
M
N
V
H
Y

Gl, Eitim
Deniz
Lefkoa
Muhabbet
Nazar
Vezir
Hidayet
Yourt


(*Heavy letter)
Why are so many letters the same?
Beginning with the Qarakhanid Empire, when the Turks first embraced Islam, they inherited many Arabic and Persian words into their language.
In order to avoid misspelling certain words that had come from the Arabic language, the Turks accepted the Arabic alphabet in its entirety.
However, certain letters pronounced by the Arabs and the Persians in their own languages, such as - Se (), Ha (), Zal (), Je (), Sad (
), Dad (), T (), Z ( )and Ayn ( )- are not found in the Turkish language. Because of this, Turks pronounced these letters with their
closest equivalents from the Turkish language. Letters such as H (), Kaf ( )and Nef ( )used to be present in the Turkish language, but after
the Turks of Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet, these letters took no place within it. The newly adopted Latin alphabet used for the Turkish
dialect of Turkey has merged some similar sounding letters into one, whereas the Latin alphabet used for the Turkish dialect of Azerbaijan
differentiates some of these letters from one another and caters for their pronunciation. From the Azerbaijani alphabet we can provide the
following examples:
LETTER
LATIN
ELIFBA
AZERI
TURKEY
NAME
LETTER
LETTER
TURKISH
TURKISH
H
X

Xan, ox
Han, ok
Z
*

ulm
Zulm
Ayn

k
Ak
Kaf
Q

Qrmz
Krmz
(*Written as a Z as of 1939)
Despite not gaining a place in the Latin alphabet of Turkey, the letter H ( )is still pronounced in some parts of Turkey, particularly in the southeast, as a cross between the letters K and H. The letter Kaf ( )is also pronounced in the south-east of Turkey as a Q, as indeed it is supposed to
be. However, in central Anatolia and Cyprus this letter is pronounced as a G. Below are some examples:
Gprs (Kbrs)
Gara (Kara)
Goyun (Koyun)

Gabak (Kabak)
Gadayf (Kadayf)
Gave (Kahve)
Guzu (Kuzu)
What is a heavy letter?
In Turkish there are two types of vowels - heavy and light. The heavy vowels are A, I, O and U. The light vowels are E, , and . However, in
Arabic there is no such thing as a heavy or light vowel, due to the fact that the Arabic alphabet does not symbolise vowels with letters. Rather,
vowels in the Arabic language are symbolised as marks either above or below a consonant. Because Arabs are accustomed to reading their own
language, sometimes they do not feel the need to use these marks at all and therefore leave them out. However, when Turks first came across this
writing system, in order to help them read the words, they distinguished some of the similar sounding consonants as heavy letters. Generally,
only a heavy vowel can come after a heavy letter. Therefore, a word such as "Kalb", which is spelt with a Kaf (), is prevented from being read
as "Kelb" or any other incorrect way. Similarly, the word "Kebir" is prevented from being read as "Kabir" because it is spelt with a Kef (),
which is a light letter. This way we are able to distinguish the H from the He, the Dad from the Dal, the Sad from the Sin, the T from the
Te, the Z from the Ze, the Gayn from the Gef and the Kaf from the Kef. Therefore someone who knows the basics of the Ottoman
language shouldn't have much of a problem with this, but they may experience some difficulty with the Dad (), because this can be read as a D
or a Z. Most of the time in the Turkish of Turkey it as written as a Z, as we see in the words 'Zayf' and 'Hafz', but sometimes particularly in the
dialect of Cyprus it can be pronounced as a D, as we see in the word "Ramadan" (Ramazan).
How were vowels written in words originating from Turkish?
Unlike words originating from Arabic, words originating from Turkish would not symbolise vowels with marks above or below the consonants.
Rather, they would be symbolised using letters, as would be the case in words originating from Persian as well.
In the middle of words, the and the I were represented by the letter Ye ().
The letters , O, and U were represented by the letter Vav ().

When found in the middle of a word, the letter Elif ( )would represent an A.
However, if none of these letters are found between two consonants in words originating from Turkish, the presence of an E is automatically
implied.
When it comes to

the beginning of words, the letters and I were represented with the combination of Elif and Ye ().

, O, and U were represented with the combination of Elif and Vav ().
A and E were both represented with an Elif (),
but if this letter had a Hemze ( )symbol on top it would be read as an E,
if it has a Medd ( )symbol on top it would be read as an A
. In order to understand how the endings of words are written, we would need to delve deeper into Ottoman language grammar, due to the
fact that the way suffixes were written in Ottoman Turkish and the way they are pronounced today varies. If however we want to make a
comparison with the Turkish spoken in Turkey today, we may find some links between how these suffixes are written and the dialect spoken in
the Black Sea region of Turkey.
This is because Turks from the Black Sea region tend to pronounce these suffixed in the same way they were written during the Ottoman times
(for example, instead of saying "geldi" they would say "geldu"). Also in the Latin alphabet we use today we find eight vowels all together, but in
the Ottoman alphabet only three letters were used to pronounce these eight sound
s. Normally, the only way to decide which vowels are to be read is by looking as the consonants in the word. If the consonants are heavy,
we pronounce the word with heavy vowels.
Is there a difference between the Ottoman alphabet and the Arabic alphabet?
As we mentioned earlier, the Ottoman alphabet contains all the letters of the Arabic alphabet. However, there are some sounds in the Turkish
language that the Arabic alphabet does not cater for. The Persians had embraced Islam and adopted the Arabic alphabet before the Turks, and had
already solved this problem by inventing some of their own letters. Therefore, the Turks adopted some letters from the Persian alphabet as well.

These letters are known to be Pe ( ), im (), Je ( )and Gef (). All of these letters are represented in Turkey's new Latin alphabet, but the
letter J for Je ( )is usually only used in foreign words that have made their way into the Turkish language, particularly from French "Jeometrik," "Oksijen" and "Teknoloji," for instance. Because there is no P sound in the Arabic language, Arabs tend to read the Pe ( )as a
Be (). In fact, there are some words originating from Arabic that have been accepted by the Turks, that despite being spelt with a Be (), over
time Turks have started pronouncing them as a P. This is apparent in the words "Kitap" and "Mektup" for example. However, in Cyprus, Turks
tend to prefer using the letter B to the letter P. Here are some examples:
Bastrma (Pastrma)
Bahal (Pahal)
Babu (Pabu)
Barmak (Parmak)
Bimek (Pimek)
Bide (Pide)
Badadez (Patates)
What is important about the letter Nef (?)
This letter, also known as the Kaf-i Turki, is a letter wholly original to Turkish. This letter is not found in Arabic or any other language that uses
the Arabic alphabet, such as Persian and Urdu. After Turkey changed its alphabet to Latin, this letter which is pronounced as "ng" was no longer
represented by a symbol. Rather, it was merged into the letter N. This letter is still used in its original form by the Uighur Turks of East Turkistan
(the Xingjian province of China). The Uighur Turks who lived under the Soviet Union and therefore had their alphabet changed to Cyrillic
continued to represent this sound with the letter . The Tatar Turks of Russia and Eastern Europe who adopted the Latin alphabet symbolise this
sound using the letter . Some Tatar Turks using the Cyrillic alphabet write this as . Despite not being represented in the Latin alphabets used
by Turkey and Azerbaijan, this letter still lives on unofficially. In certain dialects of Turkish, including the dialect spoken in Cyprus, the "ng"
sound where this letter used to exist is still pronounced. From the Cyprus dialect we can give the following examples:
Napang, eyising? (Ne yapiyorsun, iyimisin?)
Sening (Senin)
Bing (Bin)
Dengiz (Deniz)

Yalngz (Yalnz)
Yengi (Yeni)
Tangr (Tanr)

Initial A sounds were marked with an alif bearing a wavy top:

Ex: ( anlamak)

Any other alifs you see within a word also denoted the sound A:

Ex: ( masa), ( yanaamaz)

Initial E sounds were marked with a bare alif:

Ex: ( ekmek) ( elli)

The E sounds in open syllables (except for the first one) were marked with a non-binding :

Ex: ( dede) ( taneler)

The consonants that came in pairs or even trios, i.e.; the letters that shared the same consonant sound, such as

//( s), //

( t/d), /( k), were helpful for when deciding which vowel should come next:
Ex: ( dz) ( tuz/toz)*, ( kr) ( kar), ( sor) ( sr)

For important words, unordinary spellings were adopted:

Ex: ( expected spelling for ev) ( preferred spelling for ev) ; ( expected
spelling for lmek) ( preferred spelling for lmek).

Para dediin el kiri.


Para ile imann kimde olduu bilinmez.
Para isteme benden, buz gibi sourum senden.

Para paray eker.


Param seni vereyim de mi dman olaym, vermeyeyim de mi dman olaym?.
Paran ucuz olursa sen pahal olursun.
Parann gittiine bakma, iinin bittiine bak.
Parann yz scaktr.
Paras ucuz olann kendisi kymetli olur.
Paray domuzun boynuna takmlar da Domuz Aa! diye armlar.
Paray veren dd alar.

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