Some remarks on Turkish dictionaries published in Constantinople/Istanbul before and soon after language reform in Turkey (1928)

The language reform which took place in Turkey in 1928, as part of the long-term fundamental changes affecting the Turkish administrative, legal and educational systems, introduced not only the change of writing system from Arabic characters to Latin ones, but also almost "revolutionary" changes in Ottoman Turkish itself. In the second half of the nineteenth century some dictionaries began to appear in Constantinople/Istanbul. The first dictionaries included only Ottoman Turkish vocabulary however the already showed the first symptoms of language change (purification, simplification). Apart from these lexicographic works, bilingual dictionaries comprising Ottoman Turkish vocabulary translated into some European languages such as French, English or German, were also published. In the course of time, however, the contents of those dictionaries underwent some changes due to the reformatory rules introduced in 1928 and also after this date. The Turkish language was in the long-lasting process of change, which caused the appearance of new terminology and thus new kinds of dictionaries.