The Turkish Language

If you are able to read this article, you already speak English. Are you learning another European language of Indo-European origin as a second or third language? Learning any language is difficult of course, and every language is interesting for different reasons, but I think learning another European language is relatively not very fun or challenging. Yes, including Russian. Of course, there are considerable grammatical differences between European languages, but there are too many similarities between them at the same time. When you speak a European language, learning another one becomes much easier, particularly if you are learning the ones that have closer ties to each other. In addition to that, there are so many words in common that you already know a large number of words or their variants from the start, which is definitely an advantage for language learners.

Why Learn Turkish?

If you are fluent in English, and you are not moving to the country whose language you are learning, then it is not essential to learn another language in today’s world. Learning a language is more of a hobby, so it is also about how much fun you are having with challenging your brain. For that reason, I would encourage you to learn a language that is from a different language family if there is not a different purpose you have in mind when learning a language. There are plenty in the market, but I can only suggest to you the one I know about: Turkish! Though I caution you that if you are looking for any use, Turkish is probably not for you unless you decide to move to Turkey.

Turkish is thought to be a part of what is called the Altaic language family. This hypothetical language family includes Turkic, Mongolic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages. So yes, Turkish is originally an Asian language. Despite having a considerable number of words from Persian, French, Arabic, and English due to the cultural influence from these languages at different points in history, the grammatical structure of the language is still connected to its Asian roots. So Turkish is neither a Middle Eastern nor an Indo-European language. Despite a common misconception, a Turkish person’s understanding of Arabic is not any better than yours, except for some common words that survived the simplification policy of the early republic period. As a result of that policy, even Ottoman Turkish is like a foreign language for Turks today.

What Is Turkish Like?

Turkish is an agglutinative language. So we do a lot of things with suffixes. We use suffixes instead of prepositions, times, cases, questions, plurals, etc. A demonstration:

Duyabilmeliydim — I must have been able to hear.

Let’s dissect it:

Duy-abil-meli-y-di-m
to hear — can(be able to) — must — combining letter — past tense suffix — first person pronoun

That might seem chaotic to you, but only because you have no idea how this language works, which is why it can be more fun and challenging to learn a different kind of language that has a whole different grammatical concept. The word or suffix order in a sentence is often the opposite of its English equivalent, as in the example above.

Cultural Impact on the Language

The impact of culture is observable in many areas. In Turkish, when there is someone you don’t know very well, you are expected to use the second plural pronoun to address them formally and to show your respect. Using the second singular pronoun would indicate a more intimate conversation like you are talking to your friend, so it would be awkward. Several languages have similar formal uses. Germans use Sie for that purpose, which is also “she” in German. In English, you don’t have to think about when to use the second singular or the second plural, as both of them are the same: you. Southern “y’all” does not really look like a pronoun, but it still works for that purpose. In English, there is no formal addressing with the pronoun, either.

Nasılsın?: How are you? (the second singular person)
Nasılsınız? How are you? (the second plural person)
Nasılsınız? How are you? (the formal use of the second singular person)

Ties with relatives are stronger and more important in Turkey, which reflects itself with a complex array of words to define different relatives, some of which I still get confused about myself. You also may need to differentiate between your relatives from your mother’s side and the ones from your father’s side for some relatives:

uncle: dayı (mother’s brother), amca (father’s brother)
aunt: teyze (mother’s sister), hala (father’s sister)

Seniority is also important in the language and in the culture. I call my younger brother by his name, but he has to call me “abi”, which means older brother (the word for older sister is “abla”). If you have multiple older brothers and need to make a distinction between them, you also use their name: “Burak abi”. You can’t just call your elders by their names, it is really weird and disrespectful. You have to use a proper title. When you are talking to a random senior male, you would say “amca”, uncle, which is also a generic title for senior males, or “teyze” for senior females. If you want to address your teacher/professor, then you use their name and add “hocam”, which means my teacher. Calling someone who is your senior by generation or by rank with their name is weird.

Gender

Many European languages have different articles for words having different genders. English has a single article, but the gender concept is still present in personal pronouns. Turkish doesn’t have either of them.

he-she-it: o

There are issues in some languages in terms of gender equality. In English, “men” is more commonly used to address an occupation, so they feel the urge to say women too. In German, there is a gender distinction, but then you should make sure that you address both genders: Lehrer und Lehrerinnen (men and women teachers) I can only think of one word in Turkish with a similar issue: scientist is bilim adamı (science man). Apart from that, the language doesn’t really have a gender concept. Therefore the pronouns in English are confusing for me personally often times and I get them mixed up despite being a fluent speaker.

Plurals

In Turkish, when you specify the number of the plural noun, you don’t need an extra suffix to show that it is plural. When you use the plural suffix, that means you don’t indicate the number but you state that it is more than one. So you either indicate the number or that it is plural for countable nouns. For uncountable nouns, you pluralize the unit and not the noun itself.

ev: house
evler: houses
iki ev: two houses (see, -ler suffix dropped)
iki kilogram şeker: two kilograms of sugar (uncountable noun)

Pronunciation

Turkish must be one of the easiest languages to pronounce. It is written in Latin, but it has language-specific letters: ç, ı, ğ, ö, ş, ü. Three English letters are not used in Turkish: q, w, and x. Every letter has a single sound and reading them only requires combining them. Turkish words can be dissected into syllables and most syllables include a vowel and a consonant(s) which are very easy to combine. The pronunciation of Turkish words is nothing like English or French, where letters are pronounced differently in different words. When I was a child, in some American movies that I watched, learning to read was a big deal for some people and I never understood why until I started learning English. Because in Turkey, you can even figure it out by yourself as a child without much help if you try.

Dissection of words into syllables:

Ge-li-yo-rum
Ma-sa
O-kur-ken

How Does Turkish Sound Like?

Here is a random clip from a Turkish TV drama:

Long Words

German is often mocked for having long words which are usually really a combination of words that are connected together. We don’t really use very long words in daily life, but the language is capable of going crazy. Even though we don’t use them, we can easily make sense of them. All of those suffixes in the words serve a different purpose.

korkusuzlaştırabileceklerimizdenmişçesineyken: when it seems like that one is one of those we can make fearless

çekoslavakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız: are you one of those people whom we unsuccessfully tried to make resemble the citizens of czechoslovakia

Note: the second part is the question part and is separated because of a grammatical rule

So, you are still not intrigued?