Honnan tudtak törökül a 17. századi erdélyiek?
Where Did 17th Century Transylvanians Know Turkish Language From?

Summary/Abstract: Although the Principality was a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, knowledge of the Ottoman Turkish language was not very widespread in Transylvania. Apart from rare and isolated attempts, it received no place in the education. Besides some politicians who sought refuge in the Empire, it was generally only the interpreters in service of the Constantinople embassy of the Principality who mastered the language. A special institution, that of the “Turkish scribes” was set up: they learned Ottoman Turkish in Constantinople, at the expense of the Princes, in order to serve the country later on. One of these, Jakab Harsányi Nagy, even contributed to the boom of the scholarly literature about the Turkish language that had taken place from the late 1660s with his “Colloquia Familiaria Turcico-latina”.

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