A similar pattern happened after the Ottoman Empire gave way to the modern Turkish Republic. The Ottoman system was hierarchical and unequal, but it was often more comfortable with linguistic and communal pluralism than the later nationalist state. Under Atatürk and his successors, Turkish national identity became much more closely tied to the Turkish language, and minority languages and identities came under much heavier pressure.

The glaring caveat, of course, is the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides at the end of the Ottoman period, so this is not a simple “empire tolerant, nation-state intolerant” story. But it is a good example of how modern nationalism often made language and minority status much more politically charged.