Languages of the Ottoman Empire
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.
Sami Frashëri
The choice of wording by Frashëri in labeling the language Turkish as opposed to Ottoman assisted to nurture a national identity among Turkish people. For him his idea of the Ottoman Empire was for Abdul Hamid II to emphasize Ottomanism over Islamism and incorporate concepts like Turkism and Albanianism into the state framework allowing cultural pluralism with Albanians and Turks each developing their own languages and teaching them in schools. He considered cultural and ethnic diversity of the Muslim community as factors that would strengthen Ottoman unity. Frashëri, after several years of work published a 500-page Arabic dictionary (Kamus-i Arabi) in 1896 and he also noted that Kurdish lacked a dictionary but was unable to compile it as he lacked linguistic skills in the language. Stories of him working on an Albanian dictionary existed during his lifetime. He failed however to produce one and George Gawrych holds that probably due to the work of his friend Konstantin Kristoforidhi whose Albanian dictionary was published in 1904 he choose to let it be the standard version.