Languages of the Ottoman Empire
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.
Ezāfe
Besides Persian, ezafe is found in other Iranian languages as well as in Turkic languages, which have historically borrowed many phrases from Persian. Ottoman Turkish made extensive use of ezafe, borrowing it from Persian (the official name of the Ottoman Empire was "Devlet-i Âliye-i Osmaniyye"), but it is transcribed as "-i" or "-ı" rather than "-e". Ezafe is also used extensively in Urdu although its use is mostly restricted to poetic settings or to phrases imported wholesale from Persian since Urdu usually expresses the genitive with the Hindustani declined possessive postposition "kā".