Due to the imperialistic powers languages like French, Spanish and English spread. Ottoman also spread Arabic. But why not Turkish? Why is Turkish language and culture so restricted to Turkey?
France, Spain & England colonized. That spread their languages throughout the colonies. In the Americas and Australia the English & Spanish speakers soon out numbered the native language speakers.
Ottoman Empire conquered existing countries and did not colonize. So a very different dynamic. The actual land mass covered was not really all that great.
Additionally, both Persian & Turkish were effectively official languages.
French is a terrible example actually.
It is spoken by less people than Turkish.
It is overwhelmingly spoken in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Overseas the numbers are smallish.
Portuguese would by an excellent third colonial language to include. Tiny Portugal manage to export Portuguese so well that there are about 250 million speakers making it the #6 or #7 language in the world.
Turkish culture and language did spread. That’s why it’s now in Turkey. It started in Central Asia.
As for why the Turkish language did not displace Arabic, there was a religious factor. The Islamic religion is theologically linked with the Arabic language. So suppressing Arabic would have been seen as suppressing Islam. That would have upset Turkish Muslims along with subject Muslims. Instead the Ottoman rulers co-opted Arabic and Islam by identifying themselves as the Caliphs.
But of course the culture spread.
We’ve got Turkish taffy, ottomans in our living rooms, Young Turks taking over the mob…what more do you need?
What language did the Ottomans use for administrative purposes, Greek or Turkish or local languages?
Turkish & Persian. Not Greek.
Map showing countries and autonomous subdivisions with an official Turkic language:
Wikipedia on the original homeland of the Turkic peoples and their language:
Turkey’s around 2,500 miles/4,000 km from the original homeland of the Turkic people/language.
Would it not have been the holy language of Arabic?
What_Exit said Turkish (their languauge) and Persian (esteemed local language, for the eastern areas anyway). I wondered if they might have just done what the Romans did and used the existing Greek system, but apparently not.
What are you talking bout? French is spoken as one of the top 5 languages while Turkish isn’t.
Cite please?
It is absolutely not a top 5 primary language. I suspect it isn’t even a top second language.
This list has it as #5, but only if you count L2 speakers. It drops down to #16 if you sort the list by L1 speakers. Turkish is #11, and #18 if you add in L2 speakers. So, more first language Turkish speakers than French speakers (which I hadn’t known: wow), but way more people who have learned French as a second language, and comparatively few learning Turkish.
Edit: as for L2, French seems to be the fourth most-learned second language, after English, Arabic, and Hindi: Turkish is #25.
I was going with primary speakers as we were talking about culture.
It feels weird to count English 1st and French 5th when speaking of culture. But at least that explains the 5th bit.
So the Wiki list is showing Portuguese 5th for First Language.
Oh!!!
Edit: Turkish isn’t even on the list
I don’t feel Greek was still the existing system when the Ottomans rose to power. Greek had been the governing language over Asia Minor when the Byzantines ruled the area. But Byzantine power in the area declined after their defeat in the Battle of Manzikert and Persian power had grown, with the result that the Persian (Farsi) language had been replacing Greek as the governing language.
I believe it is also relevant that Turkish as a language is quite Byzantine.
What does that mean