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.
Young Ottomans
One of their greatest legacies of the Young Ottomans in the Ottoman Empire was in their actions, as they were "regarded as the first modern ideological movement among the Ottoman elite of the empire, and they were the first who, through their writings, consciously tried to create and influence public opinion." The use of the press as a tool of political criticism is also attributed to the innovation of the Young Ottomans. Additionally, by assigning new meanings to liberal terminology, with terms such as "vatan" ("motherland") and "hürriyet" ("liberty"), leading Young Ottomans such as Namık Kemal lent the powerful expression of ideologies to later nationalist and liberal groups within the Ottoman Empire.