Language contact in spoken Ottoman: observations on graphic syncretism in a Karamanlidika book (1718)

Karamanlidika texts (Turkish texts in Greek characters), because of their syncretistic nature, besides being predominantly translations from Greek, bear a great potential for the analysis of contact-induced phenomena in all language levels. On the other hand, Ottoman Turkish has been extensively studied in terms of language contact only in respect to the, mostly lexical, influence of Persian and Arabic in literary language, while spoken Ottoman seems much harder to be examined under this aspect. Although many Turkish texts in Greek characters have been produced in Istanbul and must be considered merely as a graphic variety of written Ottoman, other Karamanlidika texts, especially from the earlier period, reflect the spoken language in the chrono-geographical setting of 18th and 19th-century Asia Minor, and thus may serve as an excellent example for an analysis of especially syntactic contact features. Furthermore, they can also provide a basis as a model for the investigation of Ottoman religion-defined Turkish varieties in the Balkans, such as Gagauz and Ottoman Turkish in Cyrillic script, as well as for (former) graphically syncretistic Balkan varieties outside the Turkic realm, such as Bosnian, or Muslim-defined (“Aljamiado”) Greek in Crete and Epirus. The contribution is an attempt for a new approach to syncretistic writing and language systems in the framework of contact linguistics, taking as an example the first printed Karamanlidika book, Gülzar-i İman-i Mesihi (1718), comparing the Greek original with he Turkish translation.