OT Religion and language in Ottoman empire (question - Turco-Japanese)

Roger Mills wrote:

> Something that has always intrigued me about Anatolia-- what happened to all
> the Greek- (and perhaps other-)speaking people who were there before the
> Turks came? Did their languages have no effect on Turkish??Only the
> Armenians seem to have survived.
They probably converted to Islam and hence to Turkish.
In most cases in the Ottoman empire preserving ones language
and preserving ones religion went hand in hand.  Converting
OTOH meant total conversion -- religiously, linguistically
and culturally.  The main exceptions are the Bosnian and
Albanian muslims, who were geographically peripheral
and the Roma, who became either christian or muslim but
generally preserved their language
--

/BP 8^)
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

Reply