The languages spoken by the different tribes of Turkish or Tartar origin form a principal division of the great Uralo-Altaic or Turanian family, of which the chief common characteristics have been pointed out under Tueanian Race and Languages. They constitute together a well marked group of nearly related idioms; even the Yakut - the one which differs most from the rest, and is supposed to have severed itself from the main stem before the division of the latter into its other branches - is so distinctly a Turkish language that its relationship is apparent upon the most superficial examination; and it has been asserted, though with questionable accuracy, that a Yakut from the Lena could make himself passably understood at Constantinople. The Tartar dialects are for the most part known only by scanty vocabularies and the descriptions of travellers; a few have been treated grammatically; three or four, as the Uigur, the Jagatai or oriental Turkish, and the Osmanli, have received literary culture, and are to be studied in written monuments. Of these last, the dialect of the tribe which has been for 500 years dominant in European and Asiatic Turkey, or the Osmanli Turkish, as it is distinctively called, is of by far the greatest importance, and to it we shall chiefly direct our attention.

Its peculiarities are such as naturally result from its position and its culture under the powerful influence of Arabic and Persian; every part of its vocabulary, and even some departments of its grammar, are filled with Arabic and Persian elements; so that it presents the remarkable and unique spectacle of a dialect made up of materials derived from the three grand and totally disconnected families of language, the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan or Indo-European, to the detriment, of course, of its native character, by the corruption of its forms and the artificiality of its style. This is true especially of the language taught in the grammars and written in the literature; the vernacular idiom of the people is a much purer Turkish. The Osmanli is usually written with the Arabic alphabet, which is exceedingly ill suited to it, as to the Persian, since it marks the vowels very imperfectly, and in its distinction of consonantal sounds is in part defective and in part redundant; to construct the spoken alphabet and phonetic form of the language from the published grammars is well nigh impossible. It is also sometimes written with the Armenian alphabet, which represents it much more faithfully.

It has nine vowels: four hard, a, o, u, and a peculiar guttural i; and five soft, a (a flat), e, i, b (French eu), and ü (French u). In the same word, as a general rule, only vowels of one or of the other of these classes are allowed to succeed one another; the dominant syllable, which is usually the final one of the root or theme, assimilating to its own character all that follow it. The consonants are y, r, I; ng, n, m; s, z, sh, zh; M, gh,f, v; k, g, t, d, p, b; h; and the compounds tch, j. The language has no proper articles, although its numeral "one " and its demonstrative are sometimes used nearly as articles. The adjective is uninflected. The nouns have no distinction of gender; their plural is formed by the addition of lar or ler. There is no nominative case ending; the unchanged theme is employed as subject, in address (vocative), and also as indefinite object of a verb. Of cases, formed by inseparable affixed particles, which may properly be regarded as terminations of declension, there are an accusative, in i; a genitive, in ung; a dative, in e; an ablative, in den; an instrumental, in le; and a locative, in de. These affixes are, saving certain slight euphonic changes, invariable; they are appended to the simple theme in the singular, and to the plural sign ler in the plural.

The numerals are: 1, Mr; 2, iki; 3, ütch; 4,dort; 5, besh; 6, elti; 7,yedi; 8, sekiz; 9, dokuz; 10, on; 11, on bir, etc.; 20, yeyirmi; 30, otuz; 40, kirk; 50,elli; 60, eltmish; 70, yetmish; 80, seksen; 90, doksan; 100, yoz; 1000, bing. To form the ordinals, inji is added. The personal pronouns, which alone offer some anomalies of declension, are: I, ben; we, biz; thou, sen; ye, siz. In the third person we have rather a demonstrative than a personal pronoun: that one, ol; those, anlar. Possessive pronominal suffixes are: m, my; miz, our; n, thy; niz, your; i or si, his, hers, its; lari or leri, their. These are appended directly to the nominal theme, singular or plural, and the affixes of case follow them, as baba-lar-um-dan, from my fathers. There is no relative pronoun, except the Persian ki. The verbal roots are not always reducible to a monosyllabic form. From each root are formed a number of themes of derivative conjugation, by adding conjugational affixes; these are: for the passive, il; for the reflexive, in; for the reciprocal, ish; for the causal, der; and for the negative me; which last, by prefixing e, becomes a sign of impossibility.

Any or all of these affixes may be combined at once with a verbal root, so far as the idea admits of their combined modification; so that in theory we may have as many as 36 themes from one root, each conjugated throughout in the same manner as the simple root: e. g., from sev-mek, to love (mek is infinitive affix), come sev-il-me-mek, not to be loved; sev-der-il-mek, to be made to love; sev-ixh-ileme-mek, not to be able to be loved by one another, etc. The root of the verb, without affix, is the second person singular imperative: e. g., sev, love! The tenses and moods are of two kinds, simple and periphrastic. The former are formed either by appending a predicative pronominal suffix to a participle (except in the third person, which is left without suffix), or by adding a possessive suffix to a noun of action; thus, from dogmak, to strike: pres. part, dogur, striking; pres. dogur-um, strikingI, i. e., I am striking, I strike; pret. dogd-um, striking-mine, i. e., I have struck. The periphrastic tenses are formed by combining a participle or noun of action with an auxiliary verb; as dogmish idum, having struck was I, i. e., I had struck.

By these means, a great variety of more or less genuine verbal forms is produced, in the admission and classification of which, however, grammarians greatly differ; and the verbal paradigm is a very rich one as regards the number and nicety of its distinctions. What are prepositions in other languages are in Turkish postpositive affixes; but many proper prepositions are borrowed by it from the Arabic and Persian, and are placed and construed according to the usage of those languages. It is almost entirely destitute of any conjunctions except those of Arabic and Persian origin, some of which - as those for and, but, or, if, as, that - are in frequent and familiar use, although more in the formal and written style than in the conversational. The place of conjunctions is supplied by gerundives and possessive forms, through means of which the different members of a compound sentence are twined into one, with the principal verb always at the end. This position of the verb, together with the operation of the rule that the determining word must precede the determined, gives the Turkish construction an inverted form which often seems very strange. - Litekatuke. The earliest literature produced by any of the divisions of the Turkish race is that of the Uigurs, a remote eastern branch of the family, who originally occupied the country south of Lake Baikal, but later established themselves about the Tangnu Tagh, and played a conspicuous part in the contests and migrations of central Asia during several centuries, until their nationality was swallowed up in the Mongol empire, about A. D. 1200. Something of culture and Christianity was communicated to them from Syria, doubtless by Nestorian missionaries; and their scanty alphabet, of 14 characters, formed from the Syriac, became later the parent of the Mongol and Mantchoo alphabets.

Most of the Uigur literature is lost, and of what remains only a few relics have found their way to Europe; little is known of it in detail, although it has been made to yield some information respecting the history of the people. They are said by the Chinese to have received and translated the Chinese classics and histories, and they are known also to have adopted to some extent the Buddhist doctrines and literature. The second era of Turkish culture dates from the conquest by Turkish tribes of the countries of Mohammedan Asia, beginning with the latter half of the 10th century. Overrunning first the N. E. provinces of Iran, and finding there the new Persian literature beginning its career, their wild chiefs became its admirers, patrons, and imitators, and the Turkish mind and language received that strong Persian impress which they have ever since borne. The eastern Turkish literature, or that produced beyond the Caspian, is usually called the Jagataian, from the name given to the country E. of the Oxus in the partition of the Mongol empire. It is much less abundant, and also much less known, than the literature of the western branch.

Its most flourishing period was from the time of Tamerlane (1400) to that of Baber (died 1530). Its most admired author is Mir Ali Shir, the vizier of Sultan Hussein, and a munificent patron of Persian authors, particularly of the poet Jami; his most interesting work, perhaps, is his collection of biographies of earlier Jagataian poets, with specimens of their productions. The memoirs of his own life and times by Sultan Baber, the conqueror of Hindostan and founder of the Mongol dynasty, cover a period of nearly 40 years, and are written with entire simplicity and naturalness. The astronomical works prepared at Samarcand, under the patronage and direction of Ulugh Beg (died 1449), grandson of Tamerlane, deserve honorable notice. - The literature of the western or Osmanli Turks, to which alone we usually apply the name of Turkish literature, is exceedingly rich, but it is upon the whole of inferior interest, because it contains so little that is original and distinctively national in style and spirit.

It is mainly an imitation, more or less successful, of Persian models, but in part also of Arabic. As the language of the Osmanlis is full of Persian words, compound's, phrases, and even forms of construction, so is their history, their philosophy, their poetry, a reworking of Persian material, an echo of Persian taste. The history of the Osmanli literature begins with that of Osmanli nationality; even before the power of the dynasty was established by the capture of Constantinople, works had been produced which the nation has never let perish, and has hardly excelled; prominent among the great names of this era are those of Sheikhi, the romantic poet, and also the ablest physician of his time, of Solyman Tchelebi, and of Nesimi the free-thinker. But the most flourishing period in the whole history of the literature was the 16th century, chiefly during the reigns of Solyman the Magnificent and his son Selim II. Meshihi, renowned as an elegiast, and Kemal Pasha Zadeh, a man of universal learning and an admired author in many different departments, especially in history and in Moslem jurisprudence, wrote early in the century. Both these branches are of great importance and prominence in the Turkish literature.

The latter, of inferior interest to us, but of the highest consequence to the Turks themselves, in its double aspect, religious and legal, and indispensable to those who would fully understand the internal life of the nation, is illustrated by an unbroken series of great writers. In history, besides general and independent authors, such as Mohammed Effendi, Betchevi, and Hadji Khalfa, the line of official historiographers and annalists of the realm, commencing with Saad ed-Din, deserve especial notice. Among his successors were Nahna, Reshid, Izzi, and Vasif. Notwithstanding the turgid and affected style of the official historians, they are most valuable authorities for the history of the Ottoman empire, in its internal and its external relations. Saad ed-Din wrote under Solyman, and has been excelled by none who came after him in dignity and philosophic spirit; he brought the story of the rise and growth of the Turkish power down to 1526. Of the same period is Lami'i, one of the most highly esteemed of Turkish authors, and in some departments quite unsurpassed; his works are both in prose and verse, and include many translations from the Persian. Fasli, distinguished by depth of thought and tenderness of sentiment, lived till 1563. But the chief ornament of the century is Baki, the acknowledged prince of Turkish lyric poets, and ranked by the orientals with the Persian Hafiz and the Arab Motanebbi in the trio of unrivalled masters of song.

He died at a great age in 1600. A new period of literary activity and excellence, although decidedly inferior to that already referred to, followed in the 17th century, under the patronage of the great vizier Koprili, in the reign of Mohammed IV. Most worthy of note here are Nebi, the most admired poet of the century, Nefi, the first of Turkish satirists, Naima the historian, and Hadji Khalfa, the historian, geographer, biographer, and encyclopaedist, a man of immense learning and industry, whose history of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature, in Arabic, is a chief authority upon its subject, for both the East and the West. In the 18th century, the distinguished vizier Raghib Pasha is eminent both as an author and as a patron of learning; but among the innumerable writers, in every department, of the last century or two, there are few who deserve to be particularly noticed; we may mention merely Said Rufet Effendi, Aini Effendi, and Pertev Effendi as the most esteemed poets. The Turks have done little for the grammatical and lexicographical illustration of their own language, but a great deal for that of the Arabic and Persian. The press was introduced into Constantinople early in the 18th century, by Ibrahim Effendi, and, both there and elsewhere, has been actively engaged in publishing the most important works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, especially the last (including the series of official histories), together with hosts of less valuable or altogether insignificant productions.

Many translations have been made by the Turks of European as well as oriental works. Among original works are a history of the Turkish sultans by Hajruhah Effendi (1854 et seq.), the biographical works of Resnü Ahmed Effendi and Faik (1853), the works of travel by Mehemed Khurshid Effendi (1861), and Prince Subti's numismatical writings (1862). Several societies have been established in Constantinople for the promotion of various branches of scientific research, and besides the regular journals of these, several literary and scientific magazines of some merit are now published. The most accessible and useful grammars are those of Davids (London, 1832) and Redhouse (in French, Paris, 1846). Kazem-Beg's grammar (in Russian; German by Zenker, Leipsic, 1848) includes also the other dialects, and is valuable for the comparative study of the language. Bohtlingk's Yakut grammar (in German, St. Petersburg, 1851) is also important in this bearing. Of chrestomathies, we have one by Dieterici (in French, Berlin, 1854), and Barker's reading book, grammar, and vocabulary (London, 1854). The best dictionaries are those of Kieffer and Bianchi (2d ed., Paris, 1843-'6, Turkish-French), and Redhouse (London, 1856 -'7). A new and more complete one, by Zenker, explained in French and German, and embracing the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages, is now (1876) nearly completed.