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About the Turkish Language
The Origins of Turkish
The Turkish Language originated in The Altay Mountain Range in Northern Siberia centuries ago. For this reason it is called an Altaic Language. As the nomads expanded further into Asia Minor, they brought their language with them to Turkmenistan, Khazakstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and other countries.
Many of these languages are mutually intelligible although local usage and vocabulary, spelling and alphabet may differ - however they all exhibit the same grammatical structure of agglutination and vowel harmony.
Turkish being a language emanating from Central Asia, is spoken from the borders of Greece to the hinterland of Western China, there may also be some affinity with the Hungarian, Finnish, Korean and some of the indigenous American Indian languages.
The Ottoman Empire brought the language to the gates of Vienna and to Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa as their empire flourished. It is because of this expansion that the language and vocabulary is peppered with words from Arabic, Persian and European languages. These imported words mostly (but not always) follow the basic grammar and vowel harmony of native Turkish.
The Structure of Turkish
A Mini Nushell Overview of the Turkish Language
Turkish is characterized by vowel harmony, consonant mutation and agglutination. Postpositions are used instead of prepositions.
Thus suffixes added to the stem of the verb may indicate positive or negative forms of the passive, reflexive, causative, potential, subjunctive moods plus further additions for tense and person.
Nouns are also suffixed with possessor and case (declension). Both the subject definite article and grammatical gender are lacking. Adjectives precede their noun and do not have to agree in number or case. The sentence form is SOV - Subject, Object Verb.
The fundamental features of the Turkish Language are:
1. The Consonants - Twenty-one letters represent the consonants.
2. The Adjectives - Adjectives and adjectival phrases predece their noun and do not agree in number.
3. Vowel Harmony - Turkish has eight vowels, four pairs (A-E, I-İ, O-Ö, U-Ü) with corresponding front/back, and rounded/unrounded sounds, which form the basis for vowel harmony. According to vowel harmony rules, vowels of suffixes must have the same properties as the vowel in the last syllable: either front/back or rounded/unrounded.
4. Agglutination - Agglutination in Turkish takes the form of suffixes attached to the end of a word, whether noun or verb. Suffixes add to the word's meaning and/or mark its grammatical function.
(Affixed suffixes or suffix groups - words are composed of a sequence of word elements, each of representing only one grammatical category.)
5. The Absence of Gender - Turkish does not have a definite article, nor does it have gender pronouns (one word signifies he, she, or it).
6. Verbs always come at the end of the sentence - Sentence construction follows the subject-object-verb pattern.
A general description of Turkish Grammar
The Author outside The Manisa Spor Kebab House - Manisa
The language differs from the Indo European Group - English, Spanish, etc. in both grammatical structure and vocabulary. It is also a phonetic language - each letter always retains it own sound - not as in English where the sound of the letters can change, as the letter a does in fat, fate, fare etc.
Also, changes are made to consonants in spelling - Consonant Mutation - in certain circumstances as discussed below.
Another all pervading facet of Turkish is the Rule of Vowel Harmony where subsequent vowels in a word or suffix will follow the vowel grouping of the previous vowel.
Turkish has six cases
A nominative case which carries no ending and five cases each with a typical ending. According to Vowel Harmony the vowels of the ending match the base word.
The endings of the cases are:
Genitive: -in/-ın/-un/-ün
The Genitive is the Case of Ownership
Accusative: -i/-ı/-u/-ü
The Accusative is the Direct Object of a Verb - it equates to - the.. - in English
Dative: -a/-e
The Dative is the Case of Movement Towards - it equates to - to., towards.. - in English.
Locative: -da/-de or -ta/-te - according to Consonant Mutation rules.
The Locative is the Case of Place - it equates to - in.. on.. at.. - in English.
Ablative: -dan/-den or -tan/-ten - according to Consonant Mutation rules.
The Ablative is the Case of Movement Away - it equates to - from.. by.. via.. - in English.
Turkish Pronunciation is Phonetic
In Turkish each letter of the alphabet retains its basic pronounciation.
Welcom Turist We Spik Inglish..
Need we say more..
Picture - thanks to - komikaze.net
They say Turkish Grammar is very regular..?
Mustapha Kemal Ataturk - Founder of Modern Turkey
Turkish grammar is perfectly regular but differs in that it consists of post-positions which are suffixed directly to nouns or other parts of speech to modify their meaning.
This use of suffixes is called agglutination - literally meaning - a gluing on - this is in contrast to English which uses individual prepositions for the same reasons. Agglutination is discussed below.
Another peculiarity of Turkish is the - Rule of Vowel Harmony - where vowels can change in pronunciation and spelling to mirror the previous vowel in a word - this rule is discussed below.
Agglutination
Agglutination - "a sticking on to.."
In English we have many words which agglutinate (extend) to form other words. If we take the simple word - argue - then we can agglutinate it to - argument - by sticking on a -ment suffix.
We can further agglutinate this word with other suffixes viz.: -ative giving argumentative - and even further to - argumentatively by adding a further -ly suffix.
This then is the way of Turkish but even the little words like - in.. from.. at.. - are suffixed to their noun - thus producing an extended word.
Then adding suffix -de - in.. on.. at.. and suffix -dan - from..
1. ev - house
2. evde - ev-de - in the house
3. evden - ev-den - from the house
Most suffixes follow the - Rule of Vowel Harmony - so there can be both an A-UnDotted Vowel Form - A I O U - and an E-Dotted Vowel Form - E İ Ö Ü - for the same suffix.
Similarly adding suffix -da - in.. on.. at..
1. oda - room
2. odada - oda-da - in the room
3. odadan - oda-dan - from the room
All these suffixes and the rules of use are explained in the pages on this web site.
Consonant Mutation
Consonant Mutation
Changes in pronunciation and spelling of consonants to preserve phonetics and euphony.
About Voicing of Consonants
A Voiced Consonant is one where the voice box is used to produce the sound - d, b - are in this category - and an Unvoiced Consonant is where the voice is silent and only air is expelled to produce the sound such as t, p.
The Main Consonants with Two Forms in Turkish
We do have a little consonant mutation in English, the terminal -y of lady changes to an -ie- in the plural - ladies, and the terminal -f of knife changes to a -v- in the plural - knives. This is similar to what happens in Turkish, but it is on a larger scale.
The main changes that occur in turkish words is that a terminal -k may change to a -ğ - (soft g) - when a suffix with a vowel is added.
Also the first letter -d of a suffix may change to a -t when the suffix is added to a word ending in a Voiced Consonant.
There are some changes to some other consonants which are minor - these Rules of Consonant Mutation are all discussed in detail in the web pages.
Vowel Harmony
The Eight Vowels of Turkish
One very interesting feature of Turkish is that the eight vowels can be divided into two groups, the UnDotted and the Dotted vowels. Dotted vowels are pronounced at the front of the mouth (as the French Language) while their UnDotted counterparts are pronounced at the back of the mouth (more like English).
Vowel Harmony Basics
1. The E-Dotted Group of four vowels are e, i, ö, ü
2. The A-UnDotted Group of four vowels are a, ı, o, u.
The harmony lies in the fact that all Turkish words of Altaic Turkic Origin are pronounced either entirely containing A-UnDotted Vowels, like kapılar - doors or bulmacaları - their crosswords, or entirely containing E-Dotted Vowels, like evlerinden - from their house - or köylüler - the villagers.
Grammatical and verb suffixes also follow vowel harmony, being divided into two groups for front-vowel words and back-vowel words.
For example, the Undotted - back-vowel - plural suffix -lar would be added to kapı to form the word for - doors - ie. kapılar whereas the Dotted - front-vowel - plural suffix -ler would be added to köylü to produce - villagers - ie köylüler.
In short, UnDotted Vowels follow UnDotted Vowels and Dotted Vowels follow Dotted Vowels.
Turkish has many imported foreign words from French, such as televizyon - télévision and müzisyen - musician, kuaför - coiffure that have been modified phonetically to the Turkish Alphabet and incorporated into the language. These are spelled according to Turkish phonetics and often have both front and back vowels within one word.
Such is true for the numerous Turkish words of Arabic origin, such as mektup - letter and merhaba - hello, and of Persian origin as hane - office - where vowel harmony does not occur in the word itself. In these cases, consistent with the general rule for vowel harmony in Turkish, the final vowel of the word determines the vowel harmony for suffixation.
Turkish Verbs
There are no irregular verbs, and one single conjugation is used for all verbs. Turkish Verbs are also vowel harmonised.
All verbs belong to one of two groups determined by their infinitive forms, those ending in -mak - (The A-UnDotted Vowel Group), and those ending in -mek - (The E-Dotted Vowel Group.)
The suffixes for all -mak verbs have only A-UnDotted Back Vowels - bakmak - to look - becomes - bakacak - he will look.
However only E-Dotted Front Vowels will be found in the suffixes of -mek verbs - gelmek - to come - becomes - gelecek - He will come.
This means there is more than one form for the tense sign suffix and in this case the future suffix may be -acak or -ecek to follow Vowel Harmony Rules.
Translation of the speech..
People of Turkey.. To this development which keeps flowing on by every ten years, I sincerley wish greater honour, happiness, pride and prosperity in this important celebration.. Happy is the man that can call himself a Turk!
- Mustapha Kemal Ataturk
- From his 10th year Celebration Speech to the Turkish Language Association (TDK).
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Turkish Gender and Articles
There is no subject definite article such as - the - and there is no gender distinction, so no le and la problems like French, Italian etc. This borne out by the fact that Turkish only has one word for he, she and it, namely - o.
There are ways to make a word definitive but it is in the form of a suffix and is used for objects - so there is an objective - the - in Turkish - this is one of the difficulties for those learning Turkish as we do not distinguish between subject and object in English as we use the definite article for both.
An Illustration of the Objective Definite Article
In grammar this is called the Accusative Case.
Fincan masada - The cup is on the table - (subject "the")
Masadaki fincanı bana verin - Give me the cup - (object "the") - which is on the table
Here we see that the object - the cup - fincan - has been made definitive by the addition of the objective suffix -ı to produce - fincanı - the way of saying - the cup - (as an object).
Turkish Adjectives and Adjectival Phrases
Turkish is a Descriptive Language - Adjectives abound..
Adjectives
If Turkish can make something into an adjective - then it will do so...
Turkish is a very adjectival language. At a low level the adjective always preceded its noun, kara kedi - a black cat - as in English. However Turkish makes great use of Adjectival Phrases and Clauses - if it can make something into an adjective, then it will. If we extend this in English we may say -
The black cat with the long tail which is sitting on the mat looks hungry.
However the Turkish way will describe the cat not only as black but also where and upon what it is sitting together with any other attributes, such as its long tail - viz:
On the mat which is sitting long tailed black cat hungry looks.
It pays to remember when learning Turkish that you describe adjectivally the subject and object with regards to place and disposition etc., make the sentence and then - BINGO! - once all the describing is done, then put the verb last in the sentence.
About Vowels and Consonants
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“ I love you..." Seni Seviyorum …”
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The structure of Turkish words is vowel followed by a consonant by a vowel or vice versa. Let us say a vowel will always follow a consonant and a consonant will always follow a vowel. There are no diphthongs (two vowels occurring together) in Turkish words.(There are some imported foreign exceptions).
In order to preserve this rule certain consonants are inserted as "buffers" between vowels. These buffers are always Y, N or S.. Note that Y is considered as a consonant in Turkish.
The majority of Turkish Vowels are always pronounced quite short, there is no lengthening of vowels - this makes understanding sometimes difficult as perforce there is little and light stress in Turkish pronunciation.
Turkish Word Order
Word order is regular, but differs from English.
1. (1) Adjectival Descriptions of Subject.
2. (2) The Subject.
3. (3) Time Clauses.
4. (4) Adjectival Descriptions of Object.
5. (5) The Object
6. - and finally -
7. (6) The Verb.
The verb is always last in a sentence. Turkish punctuation, normally puts a comma after the Subject as with this sentence. It is good practice to do this especially if the subject is extended by a long Adjectival Description.
The man with the fishing rods in his hands, - a long described subject - will be at - the verb - your friend's 50th birthday party - a long described object - tomorrow night - time phrase
Lets put that into Turkish Structure
Hands-his-in-which-are fishing-rods-the-with man, - a described and suffixed subject - tomorrow night - time phrase- friend-your-of 50th birthday party-his-at - a described and suffixed object - will be... - BINGO! - at last - the verb...........
I wish you Good Luck - İyi Şanslar Dilerim - but it's not that bad!
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