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Ottoman Turkish Wikipedia

See also the third (rejected), fourth (rejected) and fifth (open) requests.
submitted verification final decision
This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

It is the policy of the language subcommittee that only languages with living native communities may create new wikis. Ottoman Turkish is classified by ISO 639-3 as "historical", which means that it is an older form of Turkish. We have asked for evidence of living native Ottoman Turkish communities from various Ottoman Turkish requesters and publicly on other pages; while we received some evidence of non-native use (such as in academia), unfortunately none have been able to provide any evidence of native use.

If such evidence can be provided, please notify the subcommittee at Talk:Language subcommittee so that we can review this decision. —{admin} Pathoschild 08:17:12, 09 January 2008 (UTC)
Proposal summary
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.

Ottoman language was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire (1299 — 1922). It is related closely to modern Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen languages. It is intelligible to Azerbaijani speakers and Azeris from Southern Azerbaijan (Iran) can easily read the Ottoman texts.

Already a test Ottoman Turkish Wikipedia has established incubator:wp/ota with more than 180 articles [1]. —unsigned by Mehrdad 15:15, 7 December 2006.

There are 1550 articles in Test Ottoman Turkish Wikipedia [2] [3]--Tarih 21:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments in favour

  • Though I think that Ottoman Turkish is not at all a different language of Modern Turkish (these old words can be used in modern Turkish as well!), I think such a wikipedia would be quite useful for many people. Ottoman Turkish and Modern Turkish are like Hindi and Urdu. It is the same language but with some difference in vocabulary, and nevertheless there is a wikipedia for Hindi AND for Urdu.
    • Ottoman Turkish is different from modern Turkish, in vocabulary, syntax and script.
    • The language has a valid ISO 639-2 of Ota
    • Evident by the Development Wiki, the initial response and discussions at the primary proposal, there is sufficient degree of recognition for the project to form a community and to maintain the progress of the project.
    —unsigned by Mehrdad 15:15, 7 December 2006.


Some contributors to these discussions assume that Ottoman language is only a historical language and not used day to day. This is far from truth: Although Ottoman Language is a litrary language as opposed to colloquial language, but millions of learned and educated people who used this language in many countries from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, under Ottoman administration, could not just switch to other language!? They have continued to use this language as minorities to today for various reasons. For some communities like Bektashis in Albania it is used as the language of religion, and for millions of Azeri in Iran it is the literary form of their own Azeri Turkish dialect, which has not been able to develop as a literary language in Iran due to suppressive policies of successive Iranian governments within last 80 years. In Northern Azerbaijan the alphabets have changed to Cyrillic then Latin so not easy for South Azeri people who are only familiar with Ottoman alphabets. Considering the number of historical languages have their own Wikipedia even if one considers Ottoman Turkish as a historical languge does not automatically mean it should not have Wikipediya. Currently I know of following historical languges who have active Wikipedia projects:
--Mehrdad 16:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that these Wikipedias exist is not an argument for the creation of new Wikipedias for non-living languages. GerardM 23:00, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I dont know English very well. So I dont explain everthing well Ottoman Test Wikipedia started 14 months ago. There are o lot of articles in Ottoman test Wikipedia (1300 over). We worked a lot of time in Ottoman Test Wikipedia for 14 months. But this page cahanged 9 days ago [4] why did you say these one years ago ? This is unfairness, wrong, injustice I am a history teacher in Istanbul. User Bèrto 'd Sèra's idea is not true about of Ottoman Turkish Wikipedia in this page [5] every History teacher and every literature teacher know ottoman language. Because they learn ottoman language in Univercity and there are alot of course a bout of Ottoman language for public. Every people can buy ottoman language books from internet [6]

--Tarih 09:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


  • The language is important for understanding ancient Turkish texts, which are important for historical studies of middle ages, Eastern Europe and Turkic people. —unsigned by Yaroslav Zolotaryov 16:08, 7 December 2006.
  • Ottoman Turkish is to Modern Turkish, what Latin is to Romance languages, what Ancient Greek is to Modern Greek, and what Ancient Hebrew is to Modern Hebrew. —unsigned by Vikiyazar 20:00, 11 December 2006.
  • Universities like Harvard and many others [7][8] [9] are offering courses in Ottoman Turkish, so Ottoman Wikipediya can develop to bring an international community of students, lectures and enthusiasts together. —unsigned by Mehrdad 15:55, 14 December 2006.
  • Support--Abrar Ahmed 06:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC) Ottoman Turkish Wiki should be started because the ottoman rules the world for more than 700 years and if Latin has its language why not the ottoman.[reply]
  • Support--lilybaeum 00:14, 22 march 2007 (UTC)ottoman turkish WİKİ is deeply important for the world heritage .TO understand the medievel period and todays more than 30 countries's history this is deadly essential.We are not talking about normal state ottoman language was spoken in 5,6 million km2 .ottoman Turkish also barrowed arabic,greek,persian,romanian, words and synthesized diplomaticly this is why this imperial language deeply essential
  • Support--Absar 11:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support--Cepkah 03.57, 8 April 2007 (UTC) Ottoman language is the archaic turkish such as archiac french or english. And Ottoman language has its own alphabet, its own phonetic system and its own lexis. These distingue the ottoman language from the modern turkish.
  • Support I created the proposal before, so of course I will support it again.--Fox Mccloud 21:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Unfortunately I can not fluently contribute, but I support the idea very much. --Yaroslav Zolotaryov 17:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support ---Vikiyazar 18:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support--Tarih 19:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I am a regular contibuter to Ottoman Test Wiki, and can help with the Wiki set up and creation of templates, and preparations for right to left based editing, kategories and more. --Mehrdad 15:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Support. Actually much more benefit can be provided by Wiktionary and Wikisource projects while a Wikipedia will be some sort of a lab for practicing the already dead language. I doubt many people in modern days Turkey can use Ottoman Turkish script despite the fact that they probably will comprehend spoken or transliterated text. -- Goldie ± (talk) 08:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you _doubt_ that people understand the script..that script shares most of the Arabic characters (once you understand Arabic script, you can almost read any related language, but not necessarily understand it) and fyi, transliterated text is harder to understand. you know that saying dead language is insulting..don't you?--The Joke النكتة‎ 03:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment I already put my support before, but I want to expand that. I am trying to teach myself Ottoman Turkish, and use this test page extensivly when I have some free time. It's really hard to find such standartized text in Ottoman Turkish, and I am still having hard time when reading the original handwritings. So contributors here are doing something amazingly useful. Regards, 192.129.26.10 21:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are many old Ottoman texts in Turkey and they have to be Wikipeded!

But wouldn't then be a Wikisource in Ottoman Turkish a better solution? --Thogo (talk) 23:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

  • Oppose: There is in fact s very small number of people speaking ottoman turkish without being able to understand modern turkish as well (or even being turks themselves) and for the rest there is already the modern turkish Wikipedia. --Lefcant 15:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Mostly everyone who speaks this language also understands moder Turkish, so this old Ottoman language is a complete waste of time when the speakers could read the Turkish Wikipedia.

68.174.15.213 01:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This not quite true. When Ottoman empire disintegrated millions of people out of todays Turkish borders continue to speak this language, even so not in formal context. Meanwhile in modern Turkey the Turkish language went trough a rapid transformation, staring with replacement of the arabic script with latin one.--203.59.21.41 10:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • We really need ottoman turkish wikipedia. I like wikipedia but you haven't ottoman turkish wikipedia :(

General comments

For some rediculous reason there's a huge amount of articles in (several different?) Slavic languages such as this one. Just click several times on 'random page'. 84.167.220.107 23:21, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The incubator is not reserved exclusiveley for the ottoman turkish test-wiki, several other languages are tested there, of which: the belarussian wikipedia.Toira 21:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This wiki will be only written in Arabic alphabet? I know that language was only written in Arabic alphabet, but think this wiki will be able to attract more Turkish netizens if it will introduce automatic conversion between Arabic and Latin (Turkish variant) scripts (like Kazakh Wikipedia). How do you think my opinion? --Yes0song 06:26, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good idea, but discussing it before the completion of approval process has no points. At this stage we need to bring up the question of criteria for accepting new Wiki project proposals and why it is taking so long for Ottoman Wikipedia proposal to be even discussed, when much less successful test projects with later registerations are approved or gone to next stage? --Mehrdad 19:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


WikiTurkic

I invite you to discuss m:User talk:Рөстәм Нурыев/WikiTurkic ----ZUFAr (talk) 07:30, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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