Turkish and Ottoman Studies Research Guide: Language
Tools

Lexiqamus Osmanlıca Okuma Klavuzu for deciphering illigible words from Ottoman manuscripts. You will just have to fill in the legible letters and the program will list you a list of possible words.

Turkish Keyboard (Lexilogos)

Altay, Äynu, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Even, Evenki, Gagauz, Karachay-Balkar, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Khakas, Krymchak, Kumyk, Kyrgyz, Nanai, Nogai, Old Turkic, Salar, Shor, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut

 

Instructor:  Banu Ozer-Griffin

bo98@cornell.edu

The language reforms initiated by Ataturk between the 1920s and 1930s, introduced a new alphabet and minimized Persian and Arabic loan words in the Turkish language.  With a new set of cultural and governmental institutions, the Modern Turkish Language transformed an entire generation of language learners.    The reformed language replaced Ottoman Turkish, which served as the administrative and literary language of the empire.

Most Turkish letters are similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts. There are a few letters however whose pronunciation is unique to Turkish.

"Yumuşak ge" (Ğ ğ) or "soft g" for example always follows a vowel and is pronounced in one of two ways. If the vowel before it is one of a, ı, o, u then "yumuşak ge" will lengthen the sound of that vowel, eg. yağmur, ağaç. If the vowel is one of e, i, ö, ü then "yumuşak ge" will be pronounced as "y", eg. eğitim, iğne. Since "yumuşak ge" is always preceded by a vowel there are no words in Turkish that start with it.

Pronunciation [ˈtyɾct͡ʃɛ] ( listen)

Turkish Basics provides elementary language resources to learners of the Turkish language. The site is aimed primarily at beginners at Turkish.

A - a   as in "ugly"

B - be   as in "bell"

C - ce   as in "jealous"

Ç - çe   as in "chair"

D - de   as in "decade"  

E - e   as in "elephant"

F - fe   as in "federal"

G - ge   as in "get"

Ğ - ğe*

H - he   as in "helicopter"

I - ı  as in "number"

İ - i   as in "insect"

J -   as in azure" (garaj = garage, pronounced as in French & English)

K - ke  as in "kettle"

L - le  as in  "leg"

M - me  as in "men"

N - ne  as in  "never"

O - o   as in  "orchestra"

Ö - ö   as in "urge"

P - pe  as in  "pen"

R - re  as in  "red"

S - se  as in  "sell"

Ş - şe  as in  "shelf"

T - te  as in  "telephone"

U - u  as in  "oops!"

Ü - ü  as in "fruit, nude"

V - ve  as in  "vegetable"

Y - ye  as in  "yes"

Z - ze  as in  "zebra"

*Türkçe'de Ğ harfi ile başlayan kelime yoktur.

*NOTE: There is no word that begins with the letter Ğ in Turkish.

Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎ Lisân-ı Osmânî ) is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It is a highly demanding language, consisting of a Turkish base overlaid with often remarkably substantial lexical and grammatical borrowings from Arabic and Persian, and was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet.

Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated and rural Turks, who continued to use 'kaba Türkçe' ("vulgar Turkish"), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and which is the basis of the modern Turkish language. The Tanzimât era in the 19th century saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî  or عثمانلوجه‎ Osmanlıca ) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca  and Osmanlı Türkçesi ).

• Ottoman script [PDF]
• Ottoman Turkish keyboard: to type a text with Arabic characters

The Ottoman Text Recognition Network (OTRN) aims to bring together researchers and students of the Ottoman Empire who are interested in applying, testing and developing text recognition technologies for handwritten and printed Ottoman Turkish texts either in Arabic or other scripts such as Armenian, Hebrew or Greek.