Tips to Make Learning Turkish Easier

Learning Turkish can initially seem daunting, especially if you're accustomed to Indo-European languages like English. Turkish, a member of the Turkic language family, operates on a different set of linguistic principles. However, once you familiarize yourself with its rules, you'll discover a logical and consistent structure. The language has very few exceptions, making these rules easier to grasp than you might expect. Here are some tips to help you get started with learning Turkish!

Tip 1: One Letter = One Sound

Turkish has a special characteristic that makes reading and writing particularly easy once you have learned the alphabet: Every letter corresponds to exactly one phoneme — and vice-versa. For example, the Turkish S is always voiceless (like in "horse"), and the Turkish Z is always voiced (like in "zerre"). One phoneme can only correspond to one grapheme. For example, in English, [sh] is one phoneme and two graphemes, but this corresponds to the single grapheme [ş] in Turkish. Meanwhile, the English [x] is actually made up of two phonemes, [k] + [s], so it is represented by two graphemes in Turkish, like in the word "toksik" (toxic).

       Another advantage of Turkish is that it uses the Latin alphabet, due to the language reforms carried out by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1928. So, you do not have to learn a completely new alphabet — just a few new letters!

Tip 2: No Articles and No Genders

We can hear your sighs of relief already: Definite articles like “the” do not exist in Turkish, and neither do indefinite articles like “a” or “an.” You also don’t have to spend any time learning arbitrary grammatical genders for every noun (as is the case in most European languages), because they do not exist in Turkish. There is not even a distinction between he, she, and it in Turkish! The pronoun "o" is used for all three — and it can even be omitted. In Turkish, the subject is indicated by the verb ending, and personal pronouns are only necessary if you want to emphasize them, for example: "Meyve yiyor" (She’s eating fruit) versus "O meyve yiyor" (She’s eating fruit). Overusing personal pronouns can quickly sound unnatural.

       No articles, no genders, no pronouns … oh, and no plural forms when you use a numeral! In the end, it makes sense that five apples are more than one. Therefore, the noun remains in the singular form, otherwise it would be redundant in Turkish. For example: "bir araba" (one car) and "beş araba" (five cars). Of all the tips to learn Turkish, this one is easily the most popular.

Tip 3: Turkish Is Inverted (For Word Order)

Most Indo-European languages, including English, have the sentence word order subject–verb–object (SVO). For example: Semra (subject) is reading (verb) a book (object). Word order in Turkish, however, is subject–object–verb (SOV), so the same sentence would look like “Semra book is reading” ("Semra kitap okuyor," in Turkish). This means practically that the verb comes at the end of the sentence. To understand a text a bit quicker, just look for the verb and decipher a sentence starting at the end.

       Speaking of “inverted,” all numerals in Turkish are spoken from left to right and are very regular. This is pretty close to English, except with the teens. On beş "fifteen", for instance, would be literally translated as “ten-five.” The number 10, for example, is "on." You just put the numerals 1 to 9 after it and you already have all the numbers up to 19. As soon as you’ve learned the words for “hundred” ("yüz"), “thousand” ("bin") and so on, you can say any number. For example: 2315 is "iki" (two) "bin" (thousand) "üç" (three) "yüz" (hundred) "on" (ten) "beş" (five).

Tip 4: Turkish Is a ‘Sticky’ Language

Turkish is an “agglutinating” language, which basically means that morphemes stick to each other. Affixes are added to words to indicate plural, past tense, person or case, negation, and much more — but the root word doesn’t change.

       Here is an example: "Pazardayız." What does this word mean? It is not just a word, but rather a whole sentence. "Pazar" means “market orbazaar,” and added to that is the first suffix –da. This suffix is for the locative case, which sounds more complicated than it is. Because there are no prepositions in Turkish (on, by, in, etc.), the same information is communicated in cases. The locative case indicates location, so you always use the suffix –de/-da when you want to say where something is. The last suffix –yız is for the first-person plural. So, the sentence "Pazar-da-yız" means “We’re at bazaar.” As we mentioned before, the personal pronoun is only used for emphasis, which is why there’s no “we” ("biz") here. And the verb “to be” is included in the suffix for first person plural.

       Even if it seems unusual at first, you will notice how quickly you get a feel for it. As soon as you know the rules and the meanings of the different suffixes, sentences like "Arkadaş-lar-ımız-da-yız" (Friend-s-our-at-we-are = “We’re at our friends’ place”) will not seem intimidating at all.

Tip 5: Vowel Harmony Is Important

To make sure that words sound nice even after adding so many suffixes, Turkish follows rules of vowel harmony, which runs through all of its grammar. It helps keep the pronunciation easy because Turkish words either have front vowels (those articulated toward the front of the mouth: [e], [i], [ö], [ü]) or back vowels (those articulated toward the back of the mouth: [a], [ı], [o], [u]). Because vowels in a word are always close to each other, vowel harmony makes the pronunciation sound more natural. These suffixes depend on the vowels in the root word.

       There are two rules: minor vowel harmony and major vowel harmony. Suffixes that follow the minor vowel harmony have two forms, such as the locative suffix. It is –de, when the last vowel in the root word is a front vowel, like in "İzmir’de" (in Izmir), or -da, when the last vowel in the root word is a back vowel, like in "Ankara’da" (in Ankara). As a side note, the “i without a dot,” [ı], is an extra vowel in Turkish that is articulated far in the back of the mouth. To keep it from being confused with a big [i], the “i with a dot” always keeps the dot when it is capitalized: İ.

With major vowel harmony, suffixes have four different forms. Depending on what vowel precedes them, you either use [ı], [i], [u] or [ü]. That’s why you often see words with a series of the same vowel. Let’s take "şoför" (driver) as an example. Possible suffixes for this word would be personal suffixes and the question particle, whose vowels have to match the vowel in the root word. That is how you get sentences like "şoförsünüz" (You’re a driver) or as a question "şoför müsünüz?" (Are you a driver?). The good news is that, as a learner, you will internalize the rules of vowel harmony very quickly. Trust your linguistic intuition and you will see how soon you use them intuitively, without even thinking about the rules!

       With these tips, learning Turkish can become an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Embrace the unique aspects of the language, and you will find yourself mastering it in no time!