Institutiones Linguae Turcicae, cum Rudimentis Parallelis Linguarum Arabicae & Persicae. Vol. I

1756

Shoults Gb 1756 M

[Vienna]: ex typographeo Orientali Schilgiano

The dominant language of the Ottoman Empire (c.1299-1922) was Ottoman Turkish, a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic. Language reform began after the establishment of Turkey, which focussed on using only authentic Turkish words. One who documented early Modern Turkish was Franciscus à Mesgnien Meninski (1623-1698). He first published his Institutiones Linguae Turcicae, a Turkish-to-Latin dictionary and grammar, in 1680. It was ground-breaking in its comprehensiveness; the first on Turkish grammar. Modern-day language historians and linguists still find this publication a valuable reference work for the Turkish language of the early modern period. This copy is the second, enlarged edition, printed in Vienna in 1756.