About Turkish Language

The Turkish Language

The Turkish language belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. As one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, it is spoken by 65 million people in Turkey and over a large geographical area in Europe and Asia.

It is spoken in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uygur and some population in Cyprus (11.6%) Mongolia (1%), Iran (Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Turkish 1%) Iraq (10%). Furthermore, over a million speakers are found in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece, more than 1.5 million speakers live in Germany and nearly half a million live in other European countries. With a few exceptions, the main features which distinguish the Altaic languages from Indo-European are as follows:

Vowel harmony is a feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues.
No gender.
Agglutination.
Adjectives precede nouns.
Verbs come at the end of the sentence.

More on the Turkish Language

Turkish is quite logical, with few exceptional rules and no genders, but its agglutinative structure is so different from Indo-European languages that speakers of those languages may find its grammar a challenge to learn at first.

(Agglutinative means that words and sentences are made by adding suffixes to a root-word.)

Suffixes
A Turkish word starts with a short root (such as git-, 'go'). One or more suffixes are added to modify the root (gitti, 's/he went'). English uses only a few suffixes, such as -'s for possessive, -s or -es for plural, but Turkish has dozens of suffixes. You can make whole sentences in Turkish out of one little word root and a lot of suffixes.

Vowel Harmony
Suffixes are formed according to Turkish vowel harmony, rules whereby most vowel sounds in a word are made either in the front of the mouth or the back, but not both. Details.

Buffer Letters
Suffixes are sometimes preceded by a 'buffer letter' such as 'y' or 'n' for smooth pronunciation.

Stress is usually on the last syllable of a word.

NOUN SUFFIXES

Plural: -lar, -ler
Bankalar, banks
Oteller, hotels

To, Toward: -a, -e (or -ya, -ye)
Bankaya, to the bank
Otele, to the hotel

From: -dan, -den
Bankadan, from the bank
Otelden, from the hotel

Possessive: -ın, -in, -nın, or -nin
Bankanın, the bank's
Otelin, the hotel's

With: -lı, -li, -lu, -lü
Et, meat; etli, with meat
Süt, milk; sütlü, with milk

Without: -sız,-siz,-suz, -süz
Et, meat; etsiz, without meat, meatless
Süt, milk; sütsüz, without milk

You may see -ı, -i, -u or -ü, -sı, -si, -su or -sü added to any noun. An ev is a house; but the ev that Ahmet lives in is Ahmet'in evi.

VERB SUFFIXES

Infinitive: -mak, -mek
Almak, to take or buy
Gitmek, to go

Simple present: -ar, -er, -ır, -ir, -ur, -ür
Alır, he/she/it takes or buys
Gider, he/she/it goes

Future: -acak, -ecek, -acağ-, -eceğ-
Alacak, he/she/it will take, buy
Gidecek, he/she/it will go

Simple past: -dı, -di, -du, -dü
Aldı, he/she/it took, bought
Gitti, he/she/it went

Continuous: -ıyor-, -iyor- (like English '-ing')
Alıyor, he/she/it is taking, buying
Gidiyor, he/she/it is going

Question: -mı, -mi, -mu, -mü
Alıyor mu? Is he/she/it taking (it)?
Gidecek mi? Will he/she/it go?

First Person Singular (I):-ım, -im, -um, -üm
Alırım, I take

Second Person Singular (you-informal): -sın, -sin, -sun, -sün
Alırsın, You take

Third Person Singular (he/she/it): (no suffix)
Alır, he/she/it takes

First Person Plural (we): -ız, -iz, -uz,-üz
Alırız, we take

Second Person Plural (you-formal): -sınız, -siniz, -sunuz,-sünüz
Alırsınız, You (plural) take; or You (singular-formal) take

Third Person Plural (they): -lar, -ler
Alırlar, They take.

WORD ORDER

Nouns and adjectives usually come first, followed by the verb. The subject of the sentence is often the final suffix (unless the sentence is a question):

Ankara'ya gidecegim, I'm going to Ankara.

Kitap almak istiyorum, I want to buy (take) a book (literally 'Book to buy want I')