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Turkish language
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Turkish ( IPA ) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years.
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Encyclopedia
Turkish ( IPA ) is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany.
The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkishthe immediate precursor of today's Turkishspread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly-founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots.
The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender.
Classification
Turkish is a member of the Turkish, or Western, subgroup of the Oghuz languages, which includes Gagauz and Azeri. The Oghuz languages form the Southwestern subgroup of the Turkic languages, a language family comprising some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia. and Siberia. Some linguists believe the Turkic languages to be a part of a larger Altaic language family. About 40% of all speakers of Turkic languages are native Turkish speakers. The characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family and the Altaic languages. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz languages, including Azeri, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
History
The earliest known Turkic inscriptions are the two monumental Orkhon inscriptions. They reside in modern Mongolia and were erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khan and dating back to some time between 732 and 735, constitute another important early record. After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that the language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Orkhon script, which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to an external similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets.
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz Turkicthe direct ancestor of today's Turkish languageinto Anatolia during the 11th century. Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Ottoman Turkish: Divânü Lügati't-Türk).
Ottoman Turkish
Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, who are both regarded as the cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Ottoman Divan 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 the Ottoman Empire (c. 12991922) was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably from the period's everyday spoken Turkish and is termed Ottoman Turkish.
Language reform and modern Turkish
After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly-established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of 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.
Due 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 particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used a style of Ottoman diction which today sounds so alien that it has had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. There is also a political dimension to the language debate, with conservative groups tending to use more archaic words in the press or everyday language.
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 changessuch as bölem to replace firka, "political party"also failed to meet with popular approval (in fact, firka has been replaced by the French loanword parti). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book") is now used to mean "script" in computer science.
Many of the words derived by TDK coexist with their older counterparts. This usually happens when a loanword changes its original meaning. For instance, dert, derived from the Persian dard (??? "pain"), means "problem" or "trouble" in Turkish; whereas the native Turkish word agri is used for physical pain. Sometimes the loanword has a slightly different meaning from the native Turkish word, giving rise to a situation similar to the coexistence of Germanic and Romance words in English (see List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents). Among some of the old words that were replaced are terms in geometry, cardinal directions, some months' names, and many nouns and adjectives. Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are:
| Ottoman Turkish | Modern Turkish | English translation | Comments |
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| müselles | üçgen | triangle | Compound of the noun üç ("three") and the very old Turkic noun gen ("tension", "side") | | tayyare | uçak | airplane | Derived from the verb uçmak ("to fly"). The word was first proposed to mean "airport". | | nispet | oran | ratio | The old word is still used in the language today together with the new one. The modern word is from Old Turkic verb or- (to cut). | | simal | kuzey | north | Derived from the Old Turkic noun kuz ("cold and dark place", "shadow"). The word is restored from Middle Turkic usage. | | tesrinievvel | ekim | October | The noun ekim means "the action of planting", referring to the planting of cereal seeds in autumn, which is widespread in Turkey |
Geographic distribution
Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to the Ottoman Empire, such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece (primarily in Western Thrace), the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany, and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic Turkish immigrants speak the language with native fluency.
The number of native speakers in Turkey is about 60 million, corresponding to about 90 percent of the population. There are roughly another 10 million native speakers worldwide. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). However, even most linguistic minorities in Turkey are bilingual, speaking Turkish as a second language to levels of native fluency.
Official status
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus. It also has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking local population.
In Turkey, the regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism: indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. 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 the constitution of 1982, following the military coup d'état of 1980.
Dialects
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as agiz or sive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of accent, which is also covered with these same words. Projects investigating Turkish dialects are being carried out by several universities, as well as a dedicated work group of the Turkish Language Association. Work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language.
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is Istanbul. Rumelice is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler, and Adakale, which are influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. Kibris is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots. Edirne is the dialect of Edirne. Ege is spoken in the Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya. The nomadic Yörük tribes of the Mediterranean Region of 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 speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish.
Güneydogu is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. Dogu, a dialect in Eastern Anatolia, has a dialect continuum with Azeri, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The Hemsinli dialect, known as Hemsince, is spoken by the eastern group of Hamshenis around Artvin, influenced by Armenian. Karamanlica is spoken in Greece, where it is also named Ka?aµa???d??a (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.
Sounds
Consonants
The phoneme , usually referred to as yumusak g ("soft g"), g in Turkish orthography, actually represents a rather weak front-velar or palatal approximant between front vowels. 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 , , and are in complementary distribution with , , and ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, , , and often occur with back vowels: some examples are given below.
When a vowel is added to many nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel. This is because the final , , and consonants of these words lose their voicing when not followed by a vowel.
Vowels
| IPA chart for Turkish vowels |
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The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, i, i, o, ö, u, and ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel . There are no diphthongs in Turkish; when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound. However, a slight diphthong can occur when two vowels surround a yumusak g. For example, the word soguk ("cold") can be pronounced /so?k/ (resembling the English soak) by some speakers.
Vowel harmony
The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being two-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by two features: front/back and rounded/unrounded. Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Turkish word incorporates either exclusively back vowels (a, i, o, and u) or exclusively front vowels (e, i, ö, and ü). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below.
Turkish vowels | | Front | Back |
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| | Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded |
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| High | i | ü | i | u |
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| Low | e | ö | a | o |
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Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:
- twofold (-e/-a): the locative suffix, for example, is -de after front vowels and -da after back vowels. The notation -de² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.
- fourfold (-i/-i/-ü/-u): the genitive suffix, for example, is -in or -in after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and -ün or -un after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case, the shorthand notation -in4 is used.
The following examples, based on the copula -dir4 ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye'dir ("it is Turkey"), kapidir ("it is the door"), bu gündür ("it is the day"), paltodur ("it is the coat").
There are some exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony. In compound words, the vowels need not harmonize between the constituent words of the compound. Forms like bu+gün ("today") or bas+kent ("capital") are permissible. In addition, vowel harmony does not apply in loanwords and some invariant affixes, such as -yor (present tense) and -bil- (potential). Some loanwords do, however, exhibit partial or even complete vowel harmony (e.g. mümkün "possible" < Arabic mumkin; and dürbün "binoculars" < Persian durbin). There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as anne ("mother"). In such words, suffixes harmonize with the final vowel: thus annedir ("she is a mother"). Many loanwords from Arabic and French, however, take front-vowel suffixes after final back vowels: for example halsiz < hal + -siz4 "listless", meçhuldür < meçhul + -dir4 "it is unknown", harfler < harf + -ler² "(alphabetical) letters" (instead of the expected *halsiz, *meçhuldur and *harflar).
The road sign in the photograph above illustrates several of these features:
- a native compound which does not obey vowel harmony: Orta+köy ("middle village"a place name)
- a loanword also violating vowel harmony: viyadük ("viaduct" < French viaduc)
- the possessive suffix -i4 harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the k by consonant alternation): viyadügü
Stress
Stress is usually on the last syllable. Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly from
Italian and Greek, as well as many proper names. While such loanwords are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable ( lokanta "restaurant" or iskele "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable ( Istanbul, Ankara).
Grammar
Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, 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 on Word formation). Most affixes indicate the grammatical function of the word.
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example simsicak ("boiling hot" < sicak) and masmavi ("bright blue" < mavi).
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is Çekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmissiniz, meaning "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak". This example is of course contrived; but long words do frequently occur in normal Turkish, as in this heading of a newspaper obituary column: Bayramlasamadiklarimiz (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 (Imlâ Kilavuzu): Dilde birlik, ulusal birligin vazgeçilemezlerindendir ("Unity in language is among the indispensables [dispense-Pass-Impot-Plur-PossS3-Abl-Copula] of national unity ~ Linguistic unity is a sine qua non of national unity").
Nouns
There is no definite article in Turkish, but definiteness of the object is implied when the accusative ending is used (see below). Turkish nouns decline by taking case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand superscript notation. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").
| Case | Ending | Examples | Meaning |
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| köy "village" | agaç "tree" |
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| Nominative | Ĝ (none) | köy | agaç | (the) village/tree | | Genitive | -in4 | köyün | agacin | the village's/tree's
of the village/tree | | Dative | -e² | köye | agaca | to the village/tree | | Accusative | -i4 | köyü | agaci | the village/tree | | Ablative | -den² | köyden | agaçtan | from the village/tree | | Locative | -de² | köyde | agaçta | in the village/on the tree |
The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare agaç gördük "we saw a tree" with agaci gördük "we saw the tree". The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: agaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"as opposed to agaçlari gördük "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of agaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (agaçtan, agaçta) and voicing of final consonants before vowels (agacin, agaca, agaci).
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example -imiz4, "our". With the addition of the copula (for example -im4, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle mi4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? "[going] to the village?", agaç mi? "[is it a] tree?".
| Turkish | English |
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| ev | (the) house | | evler | (the) houses | | evin | your (sing.) house | | eviniz | your (pl./formal) house | | evim | my house | | evimde | at my house | | evlerinizin | of your houses | | evlerinizden | from your houses | | evlerinizdendi | (he/she/it) was from your houses | | evlerinizdenmis | (he/she/it) was (apparently/said to be) from your houses | | Evinizdeyim. | I am at your house. | | Evinizdeymisim. | I was (apparently) at your house. | | Evinizde miyim? | Am I at your house? |
The Turkish personal pronouns in the nominative case are ben (1s), sen (2s), o (3s), biz (1pl), siz (2pl, or formal/polite 2s), and onlar (3pl). They are declined regularly with some exceptions: benim (1s gen.); bizim (1pl gen.); bana (1s dat.); sana (2s dat.); and the oblique forms of o use the root on. All other pronouns (reflexive kendi and so on) are declined regularly.
Linking nouns (Tamlama)
Two nouns, or groups of nouns, may be joined in either of two ways:
- definite (possessive) compound (belirtili tamlama). Eg Türkiye'nin sesi "the voice of Turkey (radio station)": the voice belonging to Turkey. Here the relationship is shown by the genitive ending -in4 added to the first noun; the second noun has the third-person suffix -(s)i4.
- indefinite (qualifying) compound (belirtisiz tamlama). Eg Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "Turkey-Republic = the Republic of Turkey": not the republic belonging to Turkey, but the Republic that is Turkey. Here the first noun has no ending; but the second noun has the ending -(s)i4the same as in definite compounds.
The following table illustrates these principles. In some cases the constituents of the compounds are themselves compounds: these subsidiary compounds are marked with [square brackets].
Linked nouns and noun groups | Definite (possessive) | Indefinite (qualifier) | Complement | Meaning |
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| kimsenin | | yaniti | nobody's answer | | | kimse | yaniti | the answer "nobody" | | Atatürk'ün | | evi | Atatürk's house | | | Atatürk | Bulvari | Atatürk Boulevard (named after, not belonging to, Atatürk) | | Orhan'in | | adi | Orhan's name | | | Orhan | adi | the name "Orhan" | | | R | sessizi | the consonant r | | [R sessizi]nin | | söylenisi | pronunciation of the consonant r | | | Türk | [Dil Kurumu] | Turkish language-society | | | [Türk Dili] | Dergisi | Turkish-language review | | | Ford | [aile arabasi] | Ford family car | | Ford'un | | [aile arabasi] | (Mr) Ford's family car | | [Ford ailesi]nin | | arabasi | the Ford family's car | | | Ankara | [Kiz Lisesi] | Ankara Girls' School | | | [yil sonu] | sinavlari | year-end examinations | | Bulgaristan'in | | [Istanbul Baskonsoloslugu] | the Istanbul Consulate-General of Bulgaria (located in Istanbul, but belonging to Bulgaria) | | | [ [Istanbul Üniversitesi] [Edebiyat Fakültesi] ] | [ [Türk Edebiyati] Profesörü] | Professor of Turkish Literature in the Faculty of Literature of the University of Istanbul | | | ne oldum | delisi | "what-have-I-become!" madman = parvenu who gives himself airs |
As the last example shows, the qualifying expression may be a substantival sentence rather than a noun or noun group.
Adjectives
Turkish adjectives are not declined. 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 adjectives var ("existent") and yok ("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-GEN noun 2-POSS var/yok" can be translated "noun 1 has/doesn't have noun 2"; imparatorun elbisesi yok "the emperor has no clothes" ("(the) emperor-of clothes-his non-existent"); kedimin ayakkabilari yoktu ("my cat had no shoes", lit. "cat-my-of shoe-plur.-its non-existent-past tense").
Verbs
Turkish verbs indicate person. They can be made negative, potential ("can"), or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show tense (present, past, inferential, future, and aorist), mood (conditional, imperative, necessitative, and optative), and aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.
| Turkish | English |
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| gel- | (to) come | | gelebil- | (to) be able to come | | gelme- | not (to) come | | geleme- | (to) be unable to come | | gelememis | Apparently (s)he couldn't come | | gelebilecek | (s)he'll be able to come | | gelmeyebilir | (s)he may (possibly) not come | | gelebilirsen | if you(sing.) can come | | gelinir | (passive) one comes, people come | | gelebilmeliydin | you(sing.) should have been able to come | | gelebilseydin | if you(sing.) could have come | | gelmeliydin | you(sing.) should have come | |
All Turkish verbs are conjugated in the same way, except for the irregular and defective verb i-, the Turkish copula, which can be used in compound forms (the shortened form is called an enclitic): Gelememisti = Gelememis idi = Gelememis + i- + -di.
Attributive verbs (participles)
Turkish verbs have attributive forms, including present (with the ending -en²), future (-ecek²), indirect/inferential past (-mis4), and aorist (-er² or -ir4). These forms can function as either adjectives or nouns: oynamayan çocuklar "children who do not play", oynamayanlar "those who do not play"; okur yazar "reader-writer = literate", okur yazarlar "literates".
The most important function of attributive verbs is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The attributive forms used in these constructions are the future (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik4), which covers both present and past meanings. 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.
| English equivalent | Example | Translation |
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| Case of relative pronoun | Pronoun | Literal | Idiomatic |
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| Nominative | who, which/that | simdi konusan adam | "now speaking man" | the man (who is) now speaking | | Genitive | whose (nom.) | babasi simdi konusan adam | "father-his now speaking man" | the man whose father is now speaking | | | whose (acc.) | babasini dün gördügüm adam | "father-his-ACC yesterday seen-my man" | the man whose father I saw yesterday | | | at whose | resimlerine baktigimiz ressam | "pictures-his-to looked-our artist" | the artist whose pictures we looked at | | | of which | muhtari seçildigi köy | "mayor-its been-chosen-his village" | the village of which he was elected mayor | | | of which | muhtari seçilmek istedigi köy | "mayor-its to-be-chosen wishing-his village" | the village of which he wishes to be elected mayor | | Remaining cases (incl. prepositions) | whom, which | yazdigim mektup | "written-my letter" | the letter (which) I wrote | | | from which | çiktigimiz kapi | "emerged-our door" | the door from which we emerged | | | on which | geldikleri vapur | "come-their ship" | the ship they came on | | | which + subordinate clause | yaklastigini anladigi hapishane günleri | "approach-their-ACC understood-his prison days-its" | the prison days (which) he knew were approaching |
Word order
Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Korean and Latin, but unlike English. In more complex sentences, the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the participial modifiers discussed above. The definite precedes the indefinite: thus çocuga hikâyeyi anlatti "she told the child the story", but hikâyeyi bir çocuga anlatti "she told the story to a child".
It is possible to alter the word order to stress the importance of a certain word or phrase. The main rule is that the word before the verb has the stress without exception. For example, if one wants to say "Hakan went to school" with a stress on the word "school" (okul, the indirect object) it would be "Hakan okula gitti". If the stress is to be placed on "Hakan" (the subject), it would be "Okula Hakan gitti" which means "it's Hakan who went to school".
Vocabulary
The 2005 edition of Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, the official dictionary of the Turkish language published by Turkish Language Association, contains 104,481 entries, of which about 14% are of foreign origin. Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.
Word formation
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
| Turkish | Components | English | Word class |
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| göz | göz | eye | Noun | | gözlük | göz + -lük | eyeglasses | Noun | | gözlükçü | göz + -lük + -çü | optician | Noun | | gözlükçülük | göz + -lük + -çü + -lük | optician's trade | Noun | | gözlem | göz + -lem | observation | Noun | | gözlemci | göz + -lem + -ci | observer | Noun | | gözle | göz + -le | observe | Verb (order) | | gözlemek | göz + -le + -mek | to observe | Verb (infinitive) |
Another example, starting from a verbal root:
| Turkish | Components | English | Word class |
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| yat- | yat- | lie down | Verb (order) | | yatmak | yat-mak | to lie down | Verb (infinitive) | | yatik | yat- + -(i)k | leaning | Adjective | | yatak | yat- + -ak | bed, place to sleep | Noun | | yatay | yat- + -ay | horizontal | Adjective | | yatkin | yat- + -gin | inclined to; stale (from lying too long) | Adjective | | yatir- | yat- + -(i)r- | lay down | Verb (order) | | yatirmak | yat- + -(i)r-mak | to lay down | Verb (infinitive) | | yatirim | yat- + -(i)r- + -(i)m | laying down; deposit, investment | Noun | | yatirimci | yat- + -(i)r- + -(i)m + -ci | depositor, investor | Noun |
New words are also frequently formed by compounding two existing words into a new one, as in German. A few examples of compound words are given below:
| Turkish | English | Constituent words | Literal meaning |
|---|
| pazartesi | Monday | pazar ("Sunday") and ertesi ("after") | after Sunday | | bilgisayar | computer | bilgi ("information") and say- ("to count") | information counter | | gökdelen | skyscraper | gök ("sky") and del- ("to pierce") | sky piercer | | basparmak | thumb | bas ("prime") and parmak ("finger") | primary finger | | önyargi | prejudice | ön ("before") and yargi ("splitting; judgement") | fore-judging |
Writing system
Turkish is written using a modified version of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Atatürk to replace the Arabic-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
The Ottoman alphabet marked only three different vowelslong a, u and iand included several redundant consonants, such as variants of z (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 has eight vowels.
The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. The task of preparing the new alphabet and selecting the necessary modifications for sounds specific to Turkish was entrusted to a Language Commission composed 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 Third World levels.
Latin was applied to the Turkish language for educational purposes even before the 20th century reform. Instances include a 1635 Latin-Albanian dictionary by Frang 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 largely phonetic, with one letter corresponding to each phoneme. Most of the letters are used approximately as in English, the main exceptions being , which denotes ( being used for the found in Persian and European loans);
and the undotted , representing . As in German, <ö> and <ü> represent and
. The letter , in principle, denotes but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and <ç> represent and , respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , , or when these consonants represent , , and almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loans. An apostrophe is used to separate proper nouns from any suffixes: eg Istanbul'da 'in Istanbul'.
The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:
| Turkish spelling | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|
| Cagaloglu | | [Istanbul district] | | çalistigi | | where/that s/he works/worked | | müjde | | good news | | lazim | | necessary | | mahkûm | | condemned |
Sample
Dostlar Beni Hatirlasin by Asik Veysel Satiroglu (18941973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.
See also
External links
- , online Turkish, Ottoman, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian dictionary with vocabulary translation pronunciations and idioms
- incl. sound file
- , with a special emphasis on law, medicine, finance...
Linguistics
Learning resources
Turkish editions of Wikimedia projects
- , Turkish Wikisource
- , Turkish Wikiquote
- , Turkish Wiktionary
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