When did Turkey begin speaking Turkish?

11th century
Modern Turkish is the descendant of Ottoman Turkish and its predecessor, so-called Old Anatolian Turkish, which was introduced into Anatolia by the Seljuq Turks in the late 11th century ce. Old Turkish gradually absorbed a great many Arabic and Persian words and even grammatical forms and was written in Arabic script.

Is Ottoman Turkish still spoken?

Ottoman Turkish was based on Anatolian Turkish and used in the Ottoman Empire for administrative and literary language between 1299 to 1923. It is not a spoken language. The language is still seen quite a lot in written form in older books, periodicals, documents and letters.

How did Turks end up in Turkey?

Turks from Central Asia settled in Anatolia in the 11th century, through the conquests of the Seljuk Turks. This began the transformation of the region, which had been a largely Greek-speaking region after previously being Hellenized, into a Turkish Muslim one.

Is Turkish written left to right?

As with Arabic and Persian, texts in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet are written right to left.

Can modern Turks understand Ottoman Turkish?

Not only today’s ordinary Turkish people cannot understand Ottoman Turkish but even Ottoman Era ordinary Turks could not understand Ottoman Turkish. Ottoman Turkish is a ruler class language only spoken by educated people. This difference does not comes from sound difference but words,phrases.

Is Turkish a form of Arabic?

Turkish is not a form of Arabic. It not even remotely related to Arabic, but belongs to a separate language family, Turkic, which has absolutely nothing to do with Arabic, which is a Semitic or Afro-Asiatic language much closer to Hebrew.

What languages were spoken in Anatolia before the Turks?

The main languages were Greek, Armenian and Kurdish. After the arrival of the Turks Turkish became one of the languages of Anatolia and gradually over the centuries grew but the other languages also continued in Anatolia. Even throughout the Ottoman Empire anatolia continued to be multi-lingual.

Where do people from Eastern Anatolia live?

Greek -speakers have now lived hugging the western coast for hundreds of years. Iranians have settled wide swaths of eastern Anatolia, the ancestors of the Kurds and Zazaki peoples. Greek is newly implanted all over western and central Anatolia, while Armenian is widely spoken throughout the east and south.

When did the Turkification of Anatolia begin and end?

The Turkification of Anatolia began under the rule of the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century and it continued under the rule of the Ottoman Empire between the late 13th and the early 20th century and it has continued under the rule of today’s Republic of Turkey.

What happened to the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia?

By the end of the 14th century, most of Anatolia was controlled by various Anatolian beyliks. Smyrna fell in 1330, and the last Byzantine stronghold in Anatolia, Philadelphia, fell in 1390. The Turkmen Beyliks were under the control of the Mongols, at least nominally, through declining Seljuk sultans.