Simplification of language in the Tanzimat Period (1839-1876)

Although language is a natural tool that provides communication between people, it also carries the characteristic of a living entity that has its own rules and develops within the framework of these rules. Languages, which differ in every nation from the past to the present, have changed and developed according to the conditions brought by the time. Even though it started to show the influence of Arabic and Persian under the influence of Islam in Anatolia, different people have tried to emphasize that the Turkish language has nothing missing from these languages since the 13th century. The rise of Arabic and Persian in Anatolia continued until the Tanzimat Period. In the 19th century, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire wanted to remove the obstacles to modernization, as they saw modernization as a way of salvation. While various studies were carried out to raise the awareness of the public, they also tried to simplify the language of bureaucracy. They gave importance to the education of people from all walks of life by establishing science academies and societies. It has been observed that the intellectuals who formed a public opinion by making the newspaper that developed in this period reach large masses also made personal efforts to simplify the language. With these developments in the Tanzimat Period, it was understood that the simpler and more concise use of Turkish was indispensable for national unity, and stronger efforts were made for this purpose in the following periods. In this study, the development of Turkish in the Tanzimat Period was examined. Afterward, the definition of the Turkish language was made, the developments in the language were mentioned after Anatolia was adopted as a homeland, and it was emphasized how the spoken and written language moved away from each other and how the meaning was left in the background in order to make art. The situation of the state in the Tanzimat Period and the developments in the intellectual life as a result of the intellectual developments that followed Westernization were examined, and then the efforts of some intellectuals who saw it appropriate to resurrect the Turkish identity with the emergence of these new ideas of Western origin were investigated. The reforms that came with westernization and the need for the people to accept these reforms emerged, but at this stage, the written language used in the Tanzimat Period was deemed insufficient to ensure communication with the people. Although studies have been carried out for simplification in the language, the desired result has not been achieved, but various attempts have been made for this purpose and the simplification process has been paved. In this thesis, which was prepared to investigate the problems of simplification in the language in the light of the developments in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, newspapers, magazines and archive documents were used, together with first and secondary sources.