Illustration for SmartTurkish: a diverse group of people stands on a globe, surrounded by Turkish and other script symbols, representing multilingualism, language learning, and communication. LMU Munich logo in the top left.
Illustration of two students standing in front of a large fountain on a university campus. One student asks in Turkish, “Do you speak Turkish?” while the other hesitantly replies, “Yes… I mean… a little… maybe,” expressing uncertainty about their language skills.

© Concept and project design: Nevra Lischewski, Photo: Frank Lischewski, Illustration: Berk Cihan

What is SmartTurkish?

SmartTürkisch is a teaching and research approach that understands language as a social and cultural practice in the digital age. It creates urban and digital learning environments in which language is experienced as a dynamic process—one that enables orientation, participation, and exchange. As a space for developing new approaches to teaching and learning, SmartTürkisch connects research and practice and invites students to actively shape how Turkish is learned: collaboratively, creatively, and with a view to the future.

Our Projects

SmartTürkisch projects connect research, teaching, and creativity, making language tangible as a lived and dynamic process. Explore our projects and see how language becomes visible, interactive, and lived.

Digital

VHB-Smart

Digital learning units designed for flexible, independent, and blended learning.

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Flexibel

Turkish: Blended Learning

A model combining digital learning environments with in-class teaching.

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Innovativ

Linguistic Landscape: Visible Turkish

Exploring Turkish in Munich’s public space through documentation and participation.

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Illustration of two students standing in front of a large fountain on a university campus. One student asks, “Where do you start with Ottoman Turkish?” The other responds, “Here and together!”, emphasizing collaborative learning and guidance.

© Concept and project design: Nevra Lischewski, Photo: Frank Lischewski, Illustration: Berk Cihan, Klara Lischewski

Ottoman Turkish: Advanced Perspectives and New Approaches

Ottoman Turkish opens up access to historical texts and reveals linguistic continuities between past and present. As an advanced area of study, it builds on Turkish language skills while introducing script, style, and historical perspective. Within SmartTürkisch, Ottoman Turkish is also reimagined through digital methods and innovative teaching approaches. These make learning more accessible, transparent, and interactive—creating a learning environment that connects tradition with innovation.

View across the Golden Horn in Istanbul, with boats on the water and the historic cityscape in the background, complemented by illustrative elements of birds, leaves and waves.

© Ergün Özsoy

Learning Turkish and Ottoman Turkish at LMU

Language manifests itself in diverse forms—wherever it is used and lived.
Dr. Nevra Lischewski , Lecturer in Turkish and Ottoman Studies, LMU Munich
Profile section featuring a quote by Dr. Nevra Lischewski: “Language manifests itself in diverse forms—wherever it is used and lived.” A portrait photograph of Dr. Lischewski appears beside the quote, identifying her as a lecturer in Turkish and Ottoman Studies at LMU Munich.

Monograph

My research explores multilingualism, language planning, and the social and political conditions under which linguistic diversity is maintained, transformed, or reduced. In my monograph From Multilingualism to Monolingualism, I examine these processes through the sociolinguistic history of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey between 1850 and 1950. Building on this work, I am particularly interested in how language policies and dominant-language structures shape linguistic practices, but also in the agency of linguistic communities themselves: the ways in which languages are maintained, transmitted, and revitalised under unequal conditions. This opens up broader comparative questions about linguistic discrimination and language shift, as well as the potential of community practices not only as strategies of preservation, but also as forms of linguistic resilience and resistance.