Series | Eurasian Studies
Edited book | Riflessi e ombre nel Mar Bianco
Chapter | I mediatori dei ‘testi in trascrizione’ (Transkriptionstexte) turchi tra Levante ed Europa
Abstract
The so‑called ‘Turkish transcriptional texts’, i.e. Ottoman texts in non‑Arabic scripts, are important sources for the knowledge of the historical grammar, especially phonology, of the Ottoman language. The term was created by Turkologists specifically for texts written between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in the Latin alphabet. The texts were usually written by European travellers with no or little knowledge of Turkish, relying on information from native speakers. This essay focuses on how the authors of the texts obtained their linguistic material. A detailed linguistic analysis of selected passages will show that the mediators were often of Greek origin.
Submitted: June 26, 2023 | Accepted: Oct. 11, 2023 | Published Feb. 21, 2024 | Language: it
Keywords History of Ottoman language • Turkish transcriptional texts • Cultural mediators • Ottoman Greeks • European grammars of Turkish
Copyright © 2024 Matthias Kappler. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-794-4/014