The Ottoman Turkish reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Ottoman Turkish

The form of the Turkish language used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire, containing extensive borrowings from Arabic and Persian and written in Arabic script. The Ottoman Turkish spoken in the capital differed incredibly from the Turkish spoken by farmers and villagers in the countryside, almost to such an extent that they did not understand each other.

In 1928, following the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a more popular Turkish with influences from European languages rather than from Arabic and Persian and using the Roman script. The Ottoman Turkish is held by many to be a completely different language than the Turkish of today. This seems to be politically motivated and does not hold up linguistically. However, very few people in Turkey can understand spoken Ottoman Turkish, let alone written.

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