The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire was Ottoman Turkish, but many other languages were actually spoken throughout the huge empire. The Ottomans had three main languages, known as "Alsina-i Thalātha" (The Three Languages), that were common to Ottoman readers: Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian. Turkish was spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia; Persian was initially a literary and high-court language used by the educated in the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish; and Arabic, which was the legal and religious language of the empire, was also spoken regionally, mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Levant., translated from German into English by . "Persian Historiography Outside Iran in Modern Times: Pre-Ottoman Turkey and Ottoman Empire" (Chapter 13.5). In: Persian historiography and geography. Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd, 2003. , 9789971774882. Start: 68. CITED: pages 68-69. -- Original German content in: Spuler, Bertold. "Die historische und geographische literatur in persischer sprache." in: Iranian Studies: Volume 1 Literatur. BRILL, 1 June 1968. , 9789004008571. Chapter "Türkei", start p. 163, cited pp. 163-165. Content also available at , as "DIE HISTORISCHE UND GEOGRAPHISCHE LITERATUR IN PERSISCHER SPRACHE." Same pages cited: p. 163-165.

Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish. Some ordinary people had to hire special "request-writers" (arzuhâlcis) to be able to communicate with the government. In small towns where several ethnicities lived together, the people would often speak each other's languages. In cosmopolitan cities, people often spoke their family languages, and many non-ethnic Turks spoke Turkish as a second language. Educated Ottoman Turks spoke Arabic and/or Persian, as these were the main non-Turkish languages in the pre-Tanzimat era. - From: Akdeniz Language Studies Conference 2012 - Cited: p. 1091.

Italian seems to have remained the best known European language among Turks for some time, and as late as the nineteenth century (B.Lewis “The muslim discovery of Europe”, III On language and translation). The original version of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) between the Ottoman and Russian empires was in Italian and was later translated in Russian and Turkish.

In the last two centuries, French and English emerged as popular languages, especially among the Christian Levantine communities. The elite learned French at school, and used European products as a fashion statement. The use of Ottoman Turkish for science and literature grew steadily under the Ottomans, while Persian declined in those functions. During this period, Ottoman Turkish gained many loanwords from Arabic and Persian.

Linguistic groups were varied and overlapping. In the Balkan Peninsula, Slavic, Greek and Albanian speakers were the majority, but there were substantial communities of Turks and Romance-speaking Romanians, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. In most of Anatolia, Turkish was the majority language, but Greek and Armenian—and in the east and southeast, Kurdish and Aramaic—were also spoken. In Syria, Iraq, Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, most of the population spoke varieties of Arabic while elites spoke Turkish. However, in no province of the Empire was a single language spoken exclusively.

Translations of government documents As a result of having multiple linguistic groups, the Ottoman authorities had government documents translated into other languages, especially in the pre-Tanzimat era.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 22 (PDF p. 24) Some translators were renowned in their language groups while others chose not to state their names in their works.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 24 (PDF p. 26) Documents translated into minority languages include the Edict of Gülhane, the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, the Ottoman Penal Code (Ceza Kanunnamesi), the Ottoman Commercial Code (Ticaret Kanunnamesi), the Provincial Reform Law (Vilayet Kanunnamesi), the Ottoman Code of Public Laws (Düstur),Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 23 (PDF p. 25) the Mecelle,Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 31 (PDF p. 33) and the Ottoman Constitution of 1876.Strauss, "Language and power in the late Ottoman Empire," (), Google Books PT193.

Because of the many linguistic communities in the Empire, it was important for the government to have officials that could speak and translate official government documents, communicate with foreign ambassadors, and even write books in foreign languages. These were called dragomans. Many of them were some of the highest ranking officials in the Ottoman Empire. Their translated and published works often generated interest in the Ottoman Empire in Europe.

Alsina-i Thalātha Ottoman Turkish

Throughout the empire's history, Turkish enjoyed official status, having an important role as the lingua franca of the government.Darling, L.T., 2012. 5. Ottoman Turkish: Written Language and Scribal Practice, 13th to 20th Centuries. In Literacy in the Persianate World (pp. 171-195). University of Pennsylvania Press. Written in Perso-Arabic script, Ottoman Turkish contained many loanwords from Arabic and Persian, marking significant difference from the Turkish that rural Turks used.Korkut, J., Morphology and lexicon-based machine translation of Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish. The 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire stated that Ottoman Turkish was the official language of the government and that in order to take a public office post, one had to master Ottoman Turkish. - Translation inclosed in dispatch No. 113 in the MS. Records, U.S. Department of State, dated December 26, 1876 (PDF version) Until the 19th century, the language is referred to as simply "Turkish".University of Chicago. Middle Eastern Studies. “Ottoman Turkish.” https://mes.uchicago.edu/languages/ottoman-turkish

The history of Ottoman Turkish can largely be seen through three eras:

Eski Osmanlı Türkçesi اسكی عثمانلی توركچه‌سی (Old Ottoman Turkish) was a form of Turkish used until the 16th century that was very similar to the language that the Seljuks used.

Orta Osmanlı Türkçesi اورتا عثمانلی توركچه‌سی (Middle Ottoman Turkish) was the language of poetry and administration until the Tanzimat reforms in the mid-19th century.

Yeni Osmanlı Türkçesi یڭی عثمانلی توركچه‌سی (New Ottoman Turkish) was a form from the 1850s into the 20th century influenced by journalism and Western literature.Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. California: University of California Press. pp. 75–92. doi:10.1525/luminos.64.b. ISBN 978-0-520-97210-0.

The grammar of Ottoman Turkish is not different from modern-day Turkish. The differences between the two are the Persian and Arabic loan-words that were wiped out by Ataturk's reforms, replaced with Turkish equivalents; and the use of the Perso-Arabic instead of the Latin script.Lewis, Geoffrey (2002). The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-925669-3.Lewis, Geoffrey (2002). The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-925669-3.

Vekayi-i giridiyye, a newspaper published in Egypt after 1830, was the first newspaper in the Turkish language in the empire. It was published in both Turkish and Greek.

At the time of the empire, Turkish fluency was low among Jewish people, who interacted with their millet in other languages and who had a lack of opportunity to learn Turkish.

Arabic Arabic was the liturgical and legal language of the empire, being one of the two major languages (along with Ottoman Turkish) for Ilm (Ottoman Turkish: ulûm).

Arabic was the language taught in the Madaris.Ihsanoglu, E. and Al-Hassani, S., 2004. The Madrasas of the Ottoman Empire. Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, Manchester. Mathematics Education in the Balkan Societies Up To the WWI. The Ottoman legal apparatus relied on old Arabic Hanafi legal texts, which remained untranslated until the late empire, and Ottoman jurists would also continue to author new jurisprudential works in the language.Panaite, V., 2019. Ottoman Law of War and Peace: The Ottoman Empire and Its Tribute-Payers from the North of the Danube. Brill.C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Leiden: Brill, 1937–1949), G II 583, S II 654.Ali, Mohammed Farid. "Principles of issuing fatwa (usul al-ifta) in the Hanafi legal school: an annotated translation, analysis and edition of sharh uqud rasm al-mufti of IbnAbidin Al-Shami." (2013). Indeed, Arabic was the major language for the works of the Hanafi school,Taşkömür, H., 2019. Books on Islamic Jurisprudence, Schools of Law, and Biographies of Imams from the Hanafi School. In Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4)(2 vols) (pp. 389-422). Brill. which was the official Maddhab of the empire.Peters, R., 2020. What Does It Mean to Be an Official Madhhab?: Hanafism and the Ottoman Empire. In Sharia, Justice and Legal Order (pp. 585-599). Brill.

The Arabic newspaper Al Jawaib began in Constantinople, established by Fāris al-Shidyāq, a.k.a. Ahmed Faris Efendi. It published Ottoman laws in Arabic, including the Ottoman Constitution of 1876.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 34 (PDF p. 36)

Several provincial newspapers () were written in Arabic. The first Arabic language newspaper published in the Arab area of the empire was Ḥadīqat al-Akhbār, which Strauss has described as having a "semi-official" status.Strauss, Johann. "Language and power in the late Ottoman Empire" (Chapter 7). In: Murphey, Rhoads (editor). Imperial Lineages and Legacies in the Eastern Mediterranean: Recording the Imprint of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Rule. Routledge, 7 July 2016. (), Google Books PT192. There was a French edition with the title Hadikat-el-Akhbar. Journal de Syrie et Liban.Strauss, "Language and power in the late Ottoman Empire," (), Google Books PT192 and PT193. Others include the Tunis-based Al-Rāʾid at-Tūnisī and the bilingual Ottoman Turkish-Arabic paper in Iraq, Zevra/al-Zawrāʾ. According to Strauss, the latter had "the highest prestige, at least for a while" of the provincial Arabic newspapers.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 25-26 (PDF p. 27-28)

During the Hamidian period, Arabic was promoted in the empire in the form of Pan-Islamist propaganda.Chouinard, A.M., 2010. A Response to Tanzimat: Sultan Abdul Hamid II and Pan-Islamism. Inquiries Journal, 2(05).

The Düstur was published in Arabic. Ziya Pasha wrote a satirical article about the difficulty of translating it into Arabic, suggesting that Ottoman Turkish needed to be changed to make governance easier.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 21 (PDF p. 23)

In 1915, the Arabic-language university Al-Kuliyya al-Ṣalaḥiyya () was established in Jerusalem.

Persian

Persian was the language of the high court and literature between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The Persian-language paper Akhtar ("The Star") published Persian versions of Ottoman government documents, including the 1876 Constitution.Strauss, "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," p. 25 (PDF p. 27)

According to Strauss, Persian versions of the Takvim-i Vekayi may have existed.

Non-Muslim minority languages