List of lingua francas
Turkish is still in use and widely spoken in several areas formerly part of the Ottoman Empire and may be understood by older people in other parts of the Middle East.
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.