Turkish language

Turkish(Türkçe[ˈtyɾctʃe],Türk dili; also known asTürkiye Türkçesi'Turkish of Turkey') is the most widely spoken of theTurkic languages, with around 100 million speakers. It is the national language ofTurkeyand one of two official languages ofCyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist inGermany,Austria,Bulgaria,North Macedonia,Greece,other parts ofEurope, theSouth Caucasus, and some parts ofCentral Asia,Iraq, andSyria. Turkish is the18th most spoken languagein the world.
To the west, the influence ofOttoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of theOttoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one ofAtatürk's reformsin the early years of the Republic of Turkey, thePerso-Arabic script-basedOttoman Turkish alphabetwas replaced with theLatin script-basedTurkish alphabet.
Some distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language arevowel harmonyand extensiveagglutination. The basic word order of Turkish issubject–object–verb. Turkish has nonoun classesorgrammatical gender. The language makes usage ofhonorificsand has a strongT–V distinctionwhich distinguishes varying levels of politeness,social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.
Turkish is a member of theOghuzgroup of theTurkicfamily. Other members includeAzerbaijani, spoken inAzerbaijanand north-westIran,GagauzofGagauzia,Qashqaiof southIranand theTurkmenofTurkmenistan.
Historically theTurkicfamily was seen as a branch of the largerAltaicfamily, includingJapanese,Korean,MongolianandTungusic, with various other language families proposed for inclusion by linguists.
Altaic theory has fallen out of favour since the 1960s, and a majority of linguists now consider Turkic languages to be unrelated to any other language family, though the Altaic hypothesis still has a small degree of support from individual linguists.The nineteenth-centuryUral-Altaictheory, which grouped Turkish withFinnish,HungarianandAltaiclanguages, is considered even less plausible in light of Altaic's rejection.The theory was based mostly on the fact these languages share three features:agglutination,vowel harmonyand lack of grammatical gender.
The earliest knownOld Turkic inscriptionsare the three monumentalOrkhon inscriptionsfound in modernMongolia. Erected in honour of the princeKul Tiginand his brother EmperorBilge Khagan, these date back to theSecond Turkic Khaganate(dated 682–744 CE).After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding theOrkhon Valleybetween 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was theOld Turkic languagewritten using theOld Turkic alphabet, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to a superficial similarity to theGermanicrunic alphabets.
With theTurkic expansionduring Early Middle Ages (c.6th–11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread acrossCentral Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching fromSiberiaall the way toEuropeand theMediterranean. TheSeljuqsof theOghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language,Oghuz—the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language—intoAnatoliaduring the 11th century.Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages,Mahmud al-Kashgarifrom theKara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in theDīwān Lughāt al-Turk(ديوان لغات الترك).
Following the adoption ofIslamaround the year 950 by theKara-Khanid Khanateand theSeljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of theOttomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords fromArabicandPersian.Turkish literatureduring the Ottoman period, particularlyDivan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during theOttoman Empireperiod (c.1299–1922) is termedOttoman Turkish, which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably and was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish. The everyday Turkish, known askaba Türkçeor "vulgar Turkish", spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, contained a higher percentage of native vocabulary and served as basis for the modern Turkish language.
While visiting the region betweenAdıyamanandAdana,Evliya Çelebirecorded the "Turkman language" and compared it with his own Turkish:
After the foundation of the modern state ofTurkeyand thescript reform, theTurkish Language Association(TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate alanguage reformto replaceloanwordsof Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents.By banning the usage of imported words in the press,the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries.In 1935, the TDK published a bilingualOttoman-Turkish/Pure Turkish dictionary that documents the results of the language reform.
Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is considered particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, inhis lengthy speechto the newParliamentin 1927, used the formal style of Ottoman Turkish that had been common at the time amongst statesmen and the educated strata of society in the setting of formal speeches and documents. After the language reform, the Turkish education system discontinued the teaching of literary form of Ottoman Turkish and the speaking and writing ability of society atrophied to the point that, in later years, Turkish society would perceive the speech to be so alien to listeners that it had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995.
The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such asbölemto replacefırka, "political party"—also failed to meet with popular approval (fırkahas been replaced by the French loanwordparti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for examplebetik(originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" incomputer science.
Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
Turkish is natively spoken by theTurkish peoplein Turkey and by theTurkish diasporain some 30 other countries. The Turkish language is mutually intelligible withAzerbaijani. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to theOttoman Empire, such as Iraq,Bulgaria,Cyprus, Greece (primarily inWestern Thrace), theRepublic of North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany; and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.Due to thecultural assimilationof Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic members of the diaspora speak the language with native fluency.
In 2005, 93% of the population of Turkey were native speakers of Turkish,about 67 million at the time, withKurdish languagesmaking up most of the remainder.
Azerbaijani language, official in Azerbaijan, ismutually intelligiblewith Turkish and speakers of both languages can understand them without noticeable difficulty, especially when discussion comes on ordinary, daily language. Turkey has very good relations with Azerbaijan, with a multitude of Turkish companies and authorities investing there, while the influence of Turkey in the country is very high. The rising presence of this very similar language in Azerbaijan and the fact that many children use Turkish words instead of Azerbaijani words due to satellite TV has caused concern that the distinctive features of the language will be eroded. Many bookstores sell books in Turkish language along Azerbaijani language ones, with Agalar Mahmadov, a leading intellectual, voicing his concern that Turkish language has "already started to take over the national and natural dialects of Azerbaijan". However, the presence of Turkish as foreign language is not as high as Russian.In Uzbekistan, the second most populated Turkic country, a new TV channelForeign Languages TVwas established in 2022. This channel has been broadcasting Turkish lessons along with English, French, German and Russian lessons.
Turkish is the official language ofTurkeyand is one of the official languages ofCyprus. Turkish has official status in 38 municipalities inKosovo, including Mamusha,, two in theRepublic of North Macedoniaand two inIraq.Cyprushas requested theEuropean Unionto add Turkish as an official language, as it is one of the two official languages of the country.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is theTurkish Language Association(Türk Dil Kurumuor TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the nameTürk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology oflinguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and of foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin.These changes, together with the adoption of the newTurkish alphabetin 1928, shaped themodern Turkish languagespoken today. The TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in theconstitution of 1982, following the militarycoup d'état of 1980.
Modern standard Turkish is based on the dialect ofIstanbul.ThisIstanbul Turkish(İstanbul Türkçesi) constitutes the model of written and spoken Turkish, as recommended byZiya Gökalp,Ömer Seyfettinand others.
Dialectal variation persists, in spite of thelevelling influenceof the standard used in mass media and in theTurkish education systemsince the 1930s.Academic researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects asağızorşive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept ofaccent, which is also covered with these words. Several universities, as well as a dedicated work-group of the Turkish Language Association, carry outprojectsinvestigating Turkish dialects. As of 2002work continued on the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect-atlasof the Turkish language.Although the Ottoman alphabet, being slightly more phonetically ambiguous than the Latin script, encoded for many of the dialectal variations between Turkish dialects, the modern Latin script fails to do this. Examples of this are the presence of the nasal velar sound [ŋ] in certain eastern dialects of Turkish which was represented by the Ottoman letter /ڭ/ but that was merged into /n/ in the Latin script. Additionally are letters such as /خ/, /ق/, /غ/ which make the sounds [ɣ], [q], and [x], respectively in certain eastern dialects but that are merged into [g], [k], and [h] in western dialects and are therefore defectively represented in the Latin alphabet for speakers of eastern dialects.
Someimmigrants to TurkeyfromRumeliaspeakRumelian Turkish, which includes the distinct dialects ofLudogorie, Dinler, and Adakale, which show the influence of the theorizedBalkan sprachbund.Kıbrıs Türkçesiis the name forCypriot Turkishand is spoken by theTurkish Cypriots.Edirneis the dialect ofEdirne.Egeis spoken in theAegeanregion, with its usage extending toAntalya. The nomadicYörüksof theMediterranean Regionof Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish.This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, who speakBalkan Gagauz Turkish.
TheMeskhetian Turkswho live in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia as well as in several Central Asian countries, also speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, originating in the areas of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin and sharing similarities withAzerbaijani, the language of Azerbaijan.
TheCentral Anatolia RegionspeaksOrta Anadolu.Karadeniz, spoken in the EasternBlack Sea Regionand represented primarily by theTrabzondialect, exhibitssubstratuminfluence fromGreekinphonologyandsyntax;it is also known asLaz dialect(not to be confused with theLaz language).Kastamonuis spoken inKastamonuand its surrounding areas.Karamanli Turkishis spoken in Greece, where it is calledKαραμανλήδικα. It is the literary standard for theKaramanlides.
At least one source claims Turkish consonants are laryngeally-specified three-way fortis-lenis (aspirated/neutral/voiced) like Armenian, although only syllable-finally.
The phoneme that is usually referred to asyumuşak g("soft g"), written⟨ğ⟩in Turkishorthography, represents a vowel sequence or a rather weak bilabial approximant between rounded vowels, a weak palatal approximant between unrounded front vowels, and a vowel sequence elsewhere. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.
In native Turkic words, the sounds[c],[ɟ], and[l]are mainly incomplementary distributionwith[k],[ɡ], and[ɫ]; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of thesephonemesis often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words,[c],[ɟ], and[l]often occur with back vowels:someexamplesare given below. However, there areminimal pairsthat distinguish between these sounds, such as kar [kɑɾ] "snow" vs kâr [cɑɾ] "profit".
Turkish orthography reflectsfinal-obstruent devoicing, a form ofconsonant mutationwhereby a voiced obstruent, such as/bddʒɡ/, is devoiced to[pttʃk]at the end of a word or before a consonant, but retains its voicing before a vowel. In loan words, the voiced equivalent of /k/ is /g/; in native words, it is /ğ/.
This is analogous to languages such asGermanandRussian, but in the case of Turkish it only applies, as the above examples demonstrate, to stops and affricates, not to fricatives. The spelling is usually made to match the sound. However, in a few cases, such asad'name' (dativeada), the underlying form is retained in the spelling (cf.at'horse', dativeata). Other exceptions areod'fire' vs.ot'herb',sac'sheet metal',saç'hair'. Most loanwords, such askitapabove, are spelled as pronounced, but a few such ashac'hajj',şad'happy', andyad'strange' or 'stranger' also show their underlying forms.
Native nouns of two or more syllables that end in /k/ in dictionary form are nearly all /ğ/ in underlying form. However, most verbs and monosyllabic nouns are underlyingly /k/.
The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order,⟨a⟩,⟨e⟩,⟨ı⟩,⟨i⟩,⟨o⟩,⟨ö⟩,⟨u⟩,⟨ü⟩.The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by how and where they are articulated focusing on three key features:front and back,rounded and unroundedandvowel height.Vowels are classified [±back], [±round] and [±high].
The onlydiphthongsin the language are found inloanwordsand may be categorised as falling diphthongs usually analyzed as a sequence of /j/ and a vowel.
The principle of vowel harmony, which permeates Turkish word-formation and suffixation, is due to the natural human tendency towards economy of muscular effort.This principle is expressed in Turkish through three rules:
The second and third rules minimize muscular effort during speech. More specifically, they are related to the phenomenon of labial assimilation:if the lips arerounded(a process that requires muscular effort) for the first vowel they may stay rounded for subsequent vowels.If they areunroundedfor the first vowel, the speaker does not make the additional muscular effort to round them subsequently.
Grammaticalaffixeshave "a chameleon-like quality",and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
Practically, the twofold pattern (also referred to as the e-type vowel harmony) means that in the environment where the vowel in the word stem is formed in the front of the mouth, the suffix will take the e-form, while if it is formed in the back it will take the a-form. The fourfold pattern (also called the i-type) accounts for rounding as well as for front/back.The following examples, based on thecopula-dir("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of i-type vowel harmony in practice:Türkiye'dir("it is Turkey"),kapıdır("it is the door"), butgündür("it is the day"),paltodur("it is the coat").
These are four word-classes that are exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony:
Theroad sign in the photographabove illustrates several of these features:
The rules of vowel harmony may vary by regional dialect. The dialect of Turkish spoken in theTrabzonregion of northeastern Turkey follows the reduced vowel harmony ofOld Anatolian Turkish, with the additional complication of two missing vowels (ü and ı), thus there is nopalatal harmony. It is likely thatelünmeant "your hand" in Old Anatolian. While the 2nd person singular possessive would vary between back and front vowel, -ün or -un, as inelünfor "your hand" andkitabunfor "your book", the lack of ü vowel in the Trabzon dialect means -un would be used in both of these cases —elunandkitabun.
With the exceptions stated below, Turkish words are oxytone (accented on the last syllable).
Turkish has two groups of sentences: verbal and nominal sentences. In the case of a verbal sentence, the predicate is a finite verb, while the predicate in nominal sentence will have either no overt verb or a verb in the form of thecopulaolory(variants of "be"). Examples of both are given below:
The two groups of sentences have different ways of forming negation. A nominal sentence can be negated with the addition of the worddeğil. For example, the sentence above would becomeNecla öğretmen değil('Necla is not a teacher'). However, the verbal sentence requires the addition of a negative suffix-meto the verb (the suffix comes after the stem but before the tense):Necla okula gitmedi('Necla did not go to school').
In the case of a verbal sentence, an interrogative cliticmiis added after the verb and stands alone, for exampleNecla okula gitti mi?('Did Necla go to school?'). In the case of a nominal sentence, thenmicomes after the predicate but before the personal ending, so for exampleNecla, siz öğretmen misiniz? ('Necla, are you [formal, plural] a teacher?').
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generallysubject–object–verb, as in Korean andLatin, but unlike English, for verbal sentences and subject-predicate for nominal sentences. However, as Turkish possesses a case-marking system, and most grammatical relations are shown using morphological markers, often the SOV structure has diminished relevance and may vary. The SOV structure may thus be considered a "pragmatic word order" of language, one that does not rely on word order for grammatical purposes.
Consider the following simple sentence which demonstrates that the focus in Turkish is on the element that immediately precedes the verb:
The postpredicate position signifies what is referred to as background information in Turkish — information that is assumed to be known to both the speaker and the listener, or information that is included in the context. Consider the following examples:
There has been some debate among linguists whether Turkish is a subject-prominent (like English) ortopic-prominent(like Japanese and Korean) language, with recent scholarship implying that it is indeed both subject and topic-prominent.This has direct implications for word order as it is possible for the subject to be included in theverb-phrasein Turkish. There can be S/O inversion in sentences where the topic is of greater importance than the subject.
Turkish is anagglutinative languageand frequently usesaffixes, and specifically suffixes, or endings.One word can have many affixes and these can also be used to create new words, such as creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root (see the section onWord formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word.The only native prefixes arealliterativeintensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for examplesımsıcak("boiling hot" <sıcak) andmasmavi("bright blue" <mavi).
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words, e.g.Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına, meaning "In the manner of you being one of those that we apparently couldn't manage to convert to Czechoslovakian". While this case is contrived, long words frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column:Bayramlaşamadıklarımız(Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings").Another example can be seen in the final word of this heading of the online Turkish Spelling Guide (İmlâ Kılavuzu):Dilde birlik, ulusal birliğin vazgeçilemezlerindendir("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is asine qua nonof national unity").
Turkish does not have grammatical gender and the sex of persons do not affect the forms of words. The third-person pronounomay refer to "he", "she" or "it." Despite this lack, Turkish still has ways of indicating gender in nouns:
There is nodefinite articlein Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case endings. There are sixnoun casesin Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthandsuperscript notation). Since the postpositionileoften gets suffixed onto the noun, some analyze it as aninstrumental case, although in formal speech it takes the genitive with personal pronouns, singular demonstratives, and interrogativekim. Thepluralmarker-ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g.köylerin"of the villages").
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare(bir) ağaç gördük"we sawatree" withağacı gördük"we sawthetree".The plural marker-ler² is generally not used when a class or category is meant:ağaç gördükcan equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"—as opposed toağaçları gördük"we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension ofağaçillustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonantassimilationinsuffixes(ağaçtan, ağaçta) andvoicingof final consonants before vowels (ağacın, ağaca, ağacı).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assignperson: for example-imiz, "our". With the addition of thecopula(for example-im, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. Theinterrogativeparticlemiimmediately follows the word being questioned, and also follows vowel harmony:köye mi?"[going] to the village?",ağaç mı?"[is it a] tree?".
The Turkishpersonal pronounsin the nominative case areben(1s),sen(2s),o(3s),biz(1pl),siz(2pl, or 2h), andonlar(3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions:benim(1s gen.);bizim(1pl gen.);bana(1s dat.);sana(2s dat.); and the oblique forms ofouse the rooton. As mentioned before, all demonstrative singular and personal pronouns take the genitive whenileis affixed onto it:benimle(1s ins.),bizimle(1pl ins.); butonunla(3s ins.),onlarla(3pl ins.). All other pronouns (reflexivekendiand so on) are declined regularly.
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
The following table illustrates these principles.In some cases, the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds; for clarity these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets]. The suffixes involved in the linking are underlined. If the second noun group already had a possessive suffix (because it is a compound by itself), no further suffix is added.
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group.
There is a third way of linking the nouns where both nouns take no suffixes (takısız tamlama). However, in this case the first noun acts as an adjective,e.g.Demir kapı(iron gate),elma yanak("apple cheek", i.e. red cheek),kömür göz("coal eye", i.e. black eye) :
Turkish adjectives are notdeclined. However most adjectives can also be used as nouns, in which case they are declined: e.g.güzel("beautiful") →güzeller("(the) beautiful ones / people"). Used attributively, adjectives precede the nouns they modify. The adjectivesvar("existent") andyok("non-existent") are used in many cases where English would use "there is" or "have",e.g.süt yok("there is no milk",lit."(the) milk (is) non-existent"); the construction "noun 1-GENnoun 2-POSSvar/yok" can be translated "noun 1has/doesn't havenoun 2";imparatorun elbisesi yok"the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-ofclothes-hisnon-existent");kedimin ayakkabıları yoktu("my cat had no shoes",lit."cat-my-ofshoe-plur.-itsnon-existent-past tense").
Turkish verbs indicateperson. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or non-potential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs showtense(present,past,future, andaorist),mood(conditional,imperative,inferential,necessitative, andoptative), andaspect. The inferential suffix-mişis also glossed as adirect evidentialor amirative.Negation is expressed by thesuffix-me²-immediately following the stem.
(For the sake of simplicity the term "tense" is used here throughout, although for some forms "aspect" or "mood" might be more appropriate.) There are nine simple and 20 compound tenses in Turkish. The nine simple tenses are: simple past (di'li geçmiş), inferential past (miş'li geçmiş), present continuous, simple present (aorist), future, optative,subjunctive, necessitative ("must") and imperative.There are three groups of compound forms. Story (hikaye) is the witnessed past of the above forms (except command), referral (rivayet) is the unwitnessed past of the above forms (except simple past and command), conditional (koşul) is the conditional form of the first five basic tenses.In the example below, the second person singular of the verbgitmek("go"), stemgid-/git-, is shown.
There are also so-called combined verbs, which are created by suffixing certain verb stems (likebilorver) to the original stem of a verb.Bilis the suffix for the sufficiency mood. It is the equivalent of the English auxiliary verbs "able to", "can" or "may".Veris the suffix for the swiftness mood,kalfor the perpetuity mood andyazfor the approach ("almost") mood.Thus, whilegittinmeans "you went",gidebildinmeans "you could go" andgidiverdinmeans "you went swiftly". The tenses of the combined verbs are formed the same way as for simple verbs.
Turkish verbs haveattributive forms, including present,similar to the Englishpresent participle(with the ending-en); future (-ecek); indirect/inferential past (-miş); andaorist(-eror-ir).
The most important function of some of these attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to therelative clausesfound in most European languages. The subject of the verb in an-enform is (possibly implicitly) in the third person (he/she/it/they); this form, when used in a modifying phrase, does not change according to number. The other attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek) and an older form (-dik), which covers both present and past meanings.These two forms take "personal endings", which have the same form as thepossessive suffixesbut indicate the person and possibly number of the subject of the attributive verb; for example,yediğimmeans "whatIeat",yediğinmeans "whatyoueat", and so on. The use of these "personal or relative participles" is illustrated in the following table, in which the examples are presented according to the grammatical case which would be seen in the equivalent English relative clause.
Latest 2011 edition ofGüncel Türkçe Sözlük(Current Turkish Dictionary), the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 117,000 vocabularies and 93,000 articles.
Turkish extensively usesagglutinationtoform new wordsfrom nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
Turkish obeys certain principles when it comes to suffixation. Most suffixes in Turkish will have more than one form, depending on the vowels and consonants in the root- vowel harmony rules will apply; consonant-initial suffixes will follow the voiced/ voiceless character of the consonant in the final unit of the root; and in the case of vowel-initial suffixes an additional consonant may be inserted if the root ends in a vowel, or the suffix may lose its initial vowel. There is also a prescribed order of affixation of suffixes- as a rule of thumb, derivative suffixes precede inflectional suffixes which are followed byclitics, as can be seen in the example set of words derived from a substantive root below:
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
New words are also frequently formed bycompoundingtwo existing words into a new one, as in German. Compounds can be of two types- bare and(s)I. The bare compounds, both nouns and adjectives are effectively two words juxtaposed without the addition of suffixes for example the word for girlfriendkızarkadaş(kız+arkadaş) or black pepperkarabiber(kara+biber). A few examples of compound words are given below:
However, the majority of compound words in Turkish are(s)Icompounds, which means that the second word will be marked by the 3rd person possessive suffix. A few such examples are given in the table below (notevowel harmony):
Turkish is written usinga versionofLatin scriptintroduced in 1928 byAtatürkto replace theOttoman Turkish alphabet, a version ofPerso-Arabic script. The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowels—longā, ūandī—and included several redundant consonants, such as variants ofz(which were distinguished in Arabic but not in Turkish). The omission of short vowels in the Arabic script was claimed to make it particularly unsuitable for Turkish, which haseight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in thecultural reformsof the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to aLanguage Commissioncomposed of prominent linguists, academics, and writers. The introduction of the new Turkish alphabet was supported by public education centers opened throughout the country, cooperation with publishing companies, and encouragement by Atatürk himself, who toured the country teaching the new letters to the public.As a result, there was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original, pre-modern levels.
The Latin alphabet was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th-century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary byFrang Bardhi, who also incorporated several sayings in the Turkish language, as an appendix to his work (e.g.alma agatsdan irak duschamas—"An apple does not fall far from its tree").
Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largelyphonemic, with one letter corresponding to eachphoneme.Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being⟨c⟩, which denotes[dʒ](⟨j⟩being used for the[ʒ]found in Persian and European loans); and the undotted⟨ı⟩, representing[ɯ]. As in German,⟨ö⟩and⟨ü⟩represent[ø]and[y]. The letter⟨ğ⟩, in principle, denotes[ɣ]but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters⟨ş⟩and⟨ç⟩represent[ʃ]and[tʃ], respectively. Acircumflexis written overback vowelsfollowing⟨k⟩and⟨g⟩when these consonants represent[c]and[ɟ]—almost exclusively in Arabic and Persianloans.
The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters (q, w, x omitted and ç, ş, ğ, ı, ö, ü added); the complete list is:
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
Dostlar Beni HatırlasınbyÂşık Veysel Şatıroğlu(1894–1973), anashikand highly regarded poet in theTurkish folk literaturetradition.
Bütün insanlar hür, haysiyet ve haklar bakımından eşit doğarlar. Akıl ve vicdana sahiptirler ve birbirlerine karşı kardeşlik zihniyeti ile hareket etmelidirler.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Turkish language uses two standardisedkeyboard layouts, known as Turkish Q (QWERTY) and Turkish F, with Turkish Q being the most common.
On-line sources