page_title: Languages of the Ottoman Empire
section_title: French
hierarchical_section_title: Languages of the Ottoman Empire / French
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte postale de la Rue Youksek-Kalidrim à Galata, Constantinople (Istanbul) English: Postcard showing of Youksek-Kalidrim Street in Galata, Constantinople (Istanbul)
context_page_description: The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire was Ottoman Turkish, but many other languages were in contemporary use in parts of the empire. 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.
  The Ottomans had three influential languages: Turkish, spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands; Persian, initially used by the educated in northern portions of the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish; and Arabic, used in southern portions of the Ottoman Empire; Arabic was spoken mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Throughout the vast Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Turkish language was the official language, a version of Turkish, albeit with a vast mixture of both Arabic and Persian grammar and vocabulary.
  Virtually all intellectual and literate pursuits were taken in Turkish language. Some ordinary people had to hire special "request-writers" to be able to communicate with the government.
context_section_description: French became more prominent during and after the Tanzimat era, as Westernisation increased and since, at the time, it was a major language of the philosophical and diplomatic fields along with sciences. It was the sole common language of European origin among all people with high levels of education, even though none of the native ethnic groups in the empire used French as their native language. Lucy Mary Jane Garnett wrote in Turkish Life in Town and Country, published in 1904, that within Constantinople (Istanbul), "The generality of men, in official circles at least, speak French". Among the people using French as a lingua franca were Sephardic Jews, which adopted French as their primary language due to influence from the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Two factions opposing Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Ottoman Armenian and Young Turk groups, both used French.
  Strauss, also the author of "Language and power in the late Ottoman Empire," wrote that "In a way reminiscent of English in the contemporary world, French was almost omnipresent in the Ottoman lands." Strauss also stated that French was "a sort of semi-official language", which "to some extent" had "replaced Turkish as an 'official' language for non-Muslims". Strauss added that it "assumed some of the functions of Turkish and was even, in some respects, capable of replacing it." As part of the process, French became the dominant language of modern sciences in the empire.
  Laws and official gazettes were published in French, aimed at diplomats and other foreign residents, with translation work done by employees of the Translation Office and other government agencies. The employees were nationals of the empire itself. Strauss stated that as Ottoman officials wished to court the favour of people in Europe, "the French translations were in the eyes of some Ottoman statesmen the most important ones" and that due to the features of Ottoman Turkish, "without the French versions of these documents, the translation into the other languages would have encountered serious difficulties." Such translated laws include the Edict of Gülhane, the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856, and the Ottoman Constitution of 1876. Strauss wrote that "one can safely assume that" the original drafts of the 1856 edict and some other laws were in French rather than Ottoman Turkish. Strauss also wrote that the Treaty of Paris of 1856 "seems to have been translated from the French." In particular versions of official documents in languages of non-Muslims such as the 1876 Constitution originated from the French translations. French was also officially the working language of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the period after the Crimean War.
  In addition, newspapers written in other western European languages had editions in French or editions with portions in French. The cities of Constantinople, Beirut, Salonika (Thessaloniki), and Smyrna (İzmir) had domestically-published French-language newspapers.
  In 1827 Sultan Mahmud II announced that the empire's first medical school, the Imperial Military School of Medicine, would for the time being teach in French; that school and a civil medical school both taught in French. By the 1860s advocates of French medium instruction and Ottoman Turkish medium instruction were engaged in a conflict; Turks advocated for Turkish while minoritarian groups and foreigners advocated for French. Spyridon Mavrogenis, employed in the imperial medical school as a professor, advocated for the usage of French. The empire later made Ottoman Turkish the language of the two medical schools. Another French-medium medical school was Beirut's Faculté Française de Médecine de Beyrouth. The Turkish-medium Şam Mekteb-i tıbbiyye-i mulkiyye-i şahane in Damascus acquired books written in French and enacted French proficiency tests. In 1880 the dual Ottoman Turkish and French-medium law school, Mekteb-i Hukuk, was established.
caption: A 1901 postcard depicting Galata in Constantinople (Istanbul), showing signage in Ottoman Turkish, French, Greek, and Armenian
exif: {"Image Make": "HP", "Image Model": "Photosmart C4500 series", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Apple Image Capture", "Image HostComputer": "Apple Mac OS X", "Image ExifOffset": "198", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2982", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4566"}