TURKISH LANGUAGE

'Turkish' (''Türkçe'', ) is a language spoken by 65–73 million people worldwide, predominantly in Turkey, with smaller communities of speakers in Cyprus, Greece and Eastern Europe, as well as by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly Germany, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages.
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 Turkish—the immediate precursor of today's Turkish—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the new Turkish Republic, 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.

Contents

Classification

History

Ottoman Turkish

Language reform and modern Turkish

Geographic distribution

Official status

Dialects

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Vowel harmony

Stress

Grammar

Nouns

Adjectives

Verbs

Participles

Word order

Vocabulary

Word formation

Writing system

Sample

See also

Notes

References

External links

Linguistics

Learning resources

Turkish editions of Wikimedia projects

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 thirty living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, which some linguists believe to be a part of a larger Altaic language family.^[1] About 40% of Turkic language speakers are Turkish speakers.^[2] 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, and Gagauz.^[3]

History

Old Turkic inscription with the Orkhon script (c. 8th century). Kyzyl, Russia

The earliest known Turkic inscriptions reside in modern Mongolia, like the Bugut inscriptions written in the Sogdian alphabet during the First Göktürk Khanate, which are dated to the second half of the 6th century.^[4][5] The two monumental Orkhon inscriptions, 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 1889–93, 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.^[6]
With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th–11th 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 Turkic, the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language, into Anatolia during the 11th century.^[7] Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Kaşgarlı Mahmud from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, published the first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, the ''Compendium of the Turkic Dialects'' (Ottoman Turkish: ''Divânü Lügati't-Türk''), which also included the first known map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers.^[8]

Ottoman Turkish

Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks, regarded as the cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative language of these states acquired a rather large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, in particular Ottoman Divan poetry, was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of borrowings. During the course of over six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299–1922), the literary and official language of the empire was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic, which differed considerably from everyday spoken Turkish of the time, and is termed Ottoman Turkish.

Language reform and modern Turkish

After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and following the script reform, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1932, 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.^[9] By banning the usage of replaced loanwords 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 vocabularies they used. 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 monumental 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" twice into modern Turkish: first in 1963, then again in 1986.^[10] 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, but the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier coinages, too, such as ''bölem'' to replace ''fırka'', "political party", failed to meet with popular approval (in fact ''fırka'' 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 word ''dard'' (درد "pain"), is used in Turkish to mean "problem" or "trouble"; whereas the native Turkish word ''ağrı'' 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
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. Modern word is from Old Turkic verb ''or-'' (to cut).
şimal	''kuzey''	north	Derived from the Old Turkic noun ''kuz'' ("cold and dark place", "shadow"). The word is restored from Middle Turkic usage.[11]
Teşrini-evvel	''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

Road sign at the European end of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. Photo taken during the 28th Eurasia Marathon in 2006

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.^[12] 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.^[13] But 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 60–67 million, corresponding to about 90–93 percent of the population, and 65–73 million native speakers exist worldwide.^[14] 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).^[15] However, 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 as well as several municipalities of 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.^[16] 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.^[17]

Dialects

Map of Turkey

Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. In spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and Turkish education system since the 1930s, dialectal variation persists.^[18] Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as ''ağız'' or ''şive'', 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 and work is currently in progress for the compilation and publication of the research as a comprehensive dialect atlas of the Turkish language.^[19][20]
The standard dialect of the Turkish language is ''İstanbul''. ''Rumelice'' is spoken by immigrants from Rumelia, and includes the distinct dialects of Deliorman, Dinler and Adakale influenced by the theoretized Balkan linguistic union. ''Kıbrıs'' 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 and the Balkan peninsula also have their own dialect of Turkish.
''Güneydoğu'' is spoken in the southeast, to the east of Mersin. ''Doğu'', 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.^[21] ''Kastamonu'' is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The Hemşinli dialect, known as ''Hemşince'', is spoken by the western group of Hamshenis around Rize, influenced by Armenian.^[22] ''Karamanlıca'' is spoken in Greece, where it is also named ''Kαραμανλήδικα'' (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.

Sounds

Main articles: Turkish phonology

Consonants

'Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish'

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives
Nasal
Fricative
Affricate
Tap
Approximant
Lateral

The phoneme usually referred to as ''yumuşak g'' ("soft g"), ''ğ'' 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, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens the preceding vowel.²⁹
In native Turkic words, the sounds , and are in complementary distribution with , and , the former set occurring 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. These phonemes are not distinguished in the orthography, in which both sets are written , and .^[23]
When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes <ğ> by consonant alternation. A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in

and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel.^[24]

Vowels

IPA chart for Turkish vowels
Turkish vowel chart.png

The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ''a'', ''e'', ''ı'', ''i'', ''o'', ''ö'', ''u'', ''ü''. There are no diphthongs in Turkish and when two vowels come together, which occurs rarely and only with loanwords, each vowel retains its individual sound.

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'', ''ı'', ''o'', ''u'') or exclusively front vowels (''e'', ''i'', ''ö'', ''ü''). The pattern of vowels is shown in the table below.^[25]

Turkish vowels

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High	''i''	''ü''	''ı''	''u''
Low	''e''	''ö''	''a''	''o''

Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality",^[26] and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:

★ 'twofold (''-e/-a'')':^[27] the locative suffix, for example, is ''-de'' after front vowels and ''-da'' after back vowels. The notation ''-de''² is a convenient shorthand for this pattern.

★ 'fourfold (''-i/-ı/-ü/-u'')': the genitive suffix, for example, is ''-in'' or ''-ın'' after unrounded vowels (front or back respectively); and ''-ün'' or ''-un'' after the corresponding rounded vowels. In this case the shorthand notation ''-in''⁴ is used.
The following examples, based on the copula ''-dir''⁴ ("[it] is"), illustrate the principles of vowel harmony in practice: ''Türkiye'dir''' ("it is Turkey"), ''kapı'dır''' ("it is the door"), but ''gün'dür''' ("it is the day"), ''palto'dur''' ("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 (thus forms like ''bu+gün'' ("today") or ''baş+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 ''dūrbīn'').^[28] There are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule, such as ''anne'' ("mother"). In such words—and in loanwords as well—suffixes harmonize with the ''final'' vowel: thus ''annedir'' ("she is a mother").
The road sign in the photograph above illustrates all 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'' -i''⁴ harmonizing with the final vowel (and softening the ''k'' by consonant alternation): ''viyadüğü''

Stress

Stress is usually on the last syllable.^[29] 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 (/ɫoˈkanta/ ''lokanta'' "restaurant" or /isˈcele/ ''iskele'' "quay"), the stress of proper names is less predictable (/isˈtanbuɫ/ ''İstanbul'', /ˈaŋkaɾa/ ''Ankara'').

Grammar

Main articles: Turkish grammar

Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, or endings.^[30] 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.^[31]
The only native prefixes are alliterative intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example '''sım'sıcak'' ("boiling hot" < ''sıcak'') and '''mas'mavi'' ("bright blue" < ''mavi'').^[32]
The extensive use of affixes can give rise to long words. It is jokingly said that the longest Turkish word is ''Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız'', 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: ''Bayramlaşamadıklarımız'' (Bayram [festival]-Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings").^[33]

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 ''-ler''² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. ''köylerin'' "of the villages").

Case	Ending	Examples		Meaning
		''köy'' "village"	''ağaç'' "tree"
Nominative	Ø (none)	''köy''	''ağaç''	(the) village/tree
Genitive	''-in''4	''köyün''	''ağa'c'ın''	the village's/tree's of the village/tree
Dative	''-e''2	''köye''	''ağa'c'a''	to the village/tree
Accusative	''-i''4	''köyü''	''ağa'c'ı''	the village/tree
Ablative	''-den''2	''köyden''	''ağaç't'an''	from the village/tree
Locative	''-de''2	''köyde''	''ağaç't'a''	in the village/on the tree

The accusative case marker is used only for definite objects; compare ''ağaç gördük'' "we saw 'a' tree" with ''ağacı gördük'' "we saw 'the' tree".^[34] The plural marker ''-ler''² is not used when a class or category is meant: ''ağaç gördük'' can equally well mean "we saw trees [as we walked through the forest]"—as opposed to ''ağaçları gördük'' "we saw the trees [in question]".
The declension of ''ağaç'' illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation in suffixes (''ağaç't'an, ağaç't'a'') and voicing of final consonants before vowels (''ağa'c'ın, ağa'c'a, ağa'c'ı'').
Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign person: for example ''-imiz''⁴, "our". With the addition of the copula (for example ''-im''⁴, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative particle ''mi''⁴ immediately follows the word being questioned: ''köye mi?'' "[going] to the village?", ''ağaç mı?'' "[is it a] tree?".

Turkish	English
''ev''	(the) house
''evler''	(the) houses
''evin''	your house
''eviniz''	your (pl./formal) house
''evim''	my house
''evimde''	at my house
''evlerinizin''	of your houses
''Evinizdeyim.''	I am 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.

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 ayakkabıları 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
''gel-''	(to) come
''gelebil-''	(to) be able to come
''gelme-''	not (to) come
''geleme-''	(to) be unable to come
''gelememiş''	I gather (s)he couldn't come
''gelebilecek''	(s)he'll be able to come
''gelebilirsen''	if you can come
''gelinir''	(passive) one comes, people 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): ''Gelememişti'' = ''Gelememiş idi'' = ''Gelememiş + i- + -di''

Participles

Turkish has several participles, including present (with the ending ''-en''²), future (''-ecek''²), past (''-miş''⁴) and aorist (-''er''² or -''ir''⁴). 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 participles is to form modifying phrases equivalent to the relative clauses found in most European languages. The participles used in these constructions are the future (''-ecek''²) and an older form (-''dik''⁴), which covers both present and past meanings.^[35] 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.^[36]

English equivalent		Example	Translation
Case of relative pronoun	Pronoun		Literal	Idiomatic
Nominative	who, which/that	''şimdi konuşan adam''	"now speaking man"	the man (who is) now speaking
Genitive	whose (nom.)	''babası şimdi konuşan adam''	"father-his now speaking man"	the man whose father is now speaking
	whose (acc.)	''babasını dün gördüğüm adam''	"father-his-ACC yesterday seen-my man"	the man whose father I saw yesterday
	at whose	''resimlerine baktığımız ressam''	"pictures-his-to looked-our artist"	the artist whose pictures we looked at
	of which	''muhtarı seçildiği köy''	"mayor-its been-chosen-his village"	the village of which he was elected mayor
	of which	''muhtarı seçilmek istediği 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	''yazdığım mektup''	"written-my letter"	the letter (which) I wrote
	from which	''çıktığımız kapı''	"emerged-our door"	the door from which we emerged
	on which	''geldikleri vapur''	"come-their ship"	the ship they came on

Word order

Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Japanese and Latin, but unlike in 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 ''çocuğa hikâyeyi anlattı'' "she told the child the story", but ''hikâyeyi bir çocuğa anlattı'' "she told the story to a child".^[37]
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

Main articles: Turkish vocabulary

Origin of the words in Turkish 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.^[38] Among the most significant foreign contributors to Turkish vocabulary are Arabic, French, Persian, Italian, English, and Greek.^[39]

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
''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
''gözlemek''	''göz + -le + -mek''	to observe	Verb
''gözlemci''	''göz + -lem + -ci''	observer	Noun

Another example, starting from a verbal root:

Turkish	Components	English	Word class
''yat-''	''yat-''	to lie down	Verb
''yatık''	''yat- + -(ı)k''	leaning	Adjective
''yatak''	''yat- + -ak''	bed, place to sleep	Noun
''yatay''	''yat- + -ay''	horizontal	Adjective
''yatkın''	''yat- + -gın''	inclined to; stale (from lying too long)	Adjective
''yatır-''	''yat- + -(ı)r-''	to lay down	Verb
''yatırım''	''yat- + -(ı)r- + -(ı)m''	laying down; deposit, investment	Noun
''yatırımcı''	''yat- + -(ı)r- + -(ı)m + -cı''	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
''başparmak''	thumb	''baş'' ("prime") and ''parmak'' ("finger")	primary finger
''önyargı''	prejudice	''ön'' ("before") and ''yargı'' ("splitting; judgement")	fore-judging

Writing system

Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Sivas. September 20, 1928. (Cover of the French ''L'Illustration'' magazine)

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 vowels—long ''ā, ū'' and ''ī''—and 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 made 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.^[40]
There was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels.^[41]
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 <ı>, representing the close back unrounded vowel .^[42] The letter <ğ> in principle denotes , but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters <ş> and <ç> represent and respectively.
The specifically Turkish letters described above are illustrated in this table:

Turkish spelling	Pronunciation	Meaning
''Cağaloğlu''		[İstanbul district]
''çalıştığı''		where/that s/he works/worked
''müjde''		good news

Sample

''Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın'' by Aşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973), a minstrel and highly regarded poet in the Turkish folk literature tradition.

Original	IPA	Translation
Ben giderim adım kalır		After I pass, my name remains
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me
Düğün olur bayram gelir		Weddings happen, holidays come
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me
Can kafeste durmaz uçar		Soul flies from the cage
Dünya bir han konan göçer		World is an inn, settlers depart
Ay dolanır yıllar geçer		The moon wanders, years go by
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me
Can bedenden ayrılacak		Body will be deprived of life
Tütmez baca yanmaz ocak		Hearth won't burn, smoke won't rise
Selam olsun kucak kucak		By armfuls, salutes I pass
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me
Açar solar türlü çiçek		Many blooms thrive and fade
Kimler gülmüş kim gülecek		Who had laughed, who'll be glad
Murat yalan ölüm gerçek		Desire's lie, real is death
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me
Gün ikindi akşam olur		Into evening will turn the days
Gör ki başa neler gelir		Behold what soon will take place
Veysel gider adı kalır		Veysel departs, his name remains
Dostlar beni hatırlasın		May the friends remember me

See also

★ Turkish alphabet

★ Turkish Sign Language

★ Turkish literature

★ Turkish folk literature

★ List of replaced loanwords in Turkish

★ List of English words of Turkic origin

★ Turkish exonyms

Notes

Details of the sources cited only by the author's name are given in full in the ''References'' section.
1. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Language Family Trees - Altaic Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.)
2. Katzner
3. Language Materials Project: Turkish
4. Turcs et Sogdiens: Les Enseignements de L'Inscription de Bugut (Mongolie), Mélanges Linguistiques Offerts à Émile Benveniste, , Louis, Bazin, Collection Linguistique, publiée par la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 1975
5. Eran ud Aneran. Studies presented to Boris Il'ic Marsak on the occasion of his 70/th birthday, , Cengiz, Alyılmaz, Cafoscarina, 2006,
6. Ishjatms
7. Findley
8. Soucek
9. See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform.
10. Lewis (2002): 2–3.
11. Burhân-ı Katı Tercemesi, Mütercim Asım, , , , ,
12. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Report for language code:tur (Turkish) Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.)
13. The European Turks: Gross Domestic Product, Working Population, Entrepreneurs and Household Data Center for Studies on Turkey, University of Essen
14.
15. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Report for language code:kmr (Kurdish) Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.)
16. The name TDK itself exemplifies this process. The words ''tetkik'' and ''cemiyet'' in the original name are both Arabic loanwords (the final ''-i'' of ''cemiyeti'' being a Turkish possessive suffix); ''kurum'' is a native Turkish word based on the verb ''kurmak'', "set up, found".
17. Türk Dil Kurumu - Tarihçe (History of the Turkish Language Association) Turkish Language Association
18.
19. Özsoy
20. Türk Dil Kurumu'nun 2002 yılı çalışmaları (Turkish Language Association progress report for 2002), , Şükrü Haluk, Akalın, Türk Dili, 2003
21.
22.
23. Lews (2001):3-4,6.
24. The /<ğ> alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10.
25. Note that this table is essentially the same as the IPA vowel chart shown above: both table and chart indicate the physical location and quality of each vowel.
26. Lewis (1953):21
27. For the terms ''twofold'' and ''fourfold'', as well as the superscript notation, see Lewis (1953):21–22. In his more recent works Lewis prefers to omit the superscripts, on the grounds that "there is no need for this once the principle has been grasped" (Lewis [2001]:18).
28. In Lewis's marvellously precise formulation, "The effect of vowel harmony extends to non-Turkish words too, bringing as many vowels as possible of a foreign borrowing into one class, or pressing a foreign borrowing whose vowels happen to be all of one class still further into Turkish form." Lewis (2001): 17.
29. ''Handbook of the IPA'', p. 155
30. This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes.
31. see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.
32. "The prefix, which is accented, is modelled on the first syllable of the simple adjective or adverb but with the substitution of 'm, p, r', or 's' for the last consonant of that syllable." Lewis (2001):55. The prefix retains the first vowel of the base form and thus exhibits a form of reverse vowel harmony.
33. This "splendid word" appeared at the time of ''Bayram'', the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287.
34. Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28.
35. See Lewis (2001):163–165, 260–262 for an exhaustive treatment.
36. For the terms ''personal'' and ''relative'' participle see Lewis (1958):98 and Lewis (2001):163 respectively. Most of the examples are taken from Lewis (2001).
37. Lewis (2001): 239–240.
38. Güncel Türkçe Sözlük
39. Türkçe Sözlük (2005)’teki Sözlerin Kökenlerine Ait Sayısal Döküm (Numerical list on the origin of words in ''Türkçe Sözlük (2005)'')
40. Atatürk ve Yazım, , Agop, Dilaçar, Türk Dili, 1977
41. Coulmas, pp. 243–244
42. "Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of ''M'i'ssouri'' as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13.

References

'Printed sources' ★ Türk Dil Kurumu'nun 2002 yılı çalışmaları (Turkish Language Association progress report for 2002), , Şükrü Haluk, Akalın, Türk_Dili, 2003 ★ ★ Writing Systems of the World, , Florian, Coulmas, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 1989, ★ Atatürk ve Yazım, , Agop, Dilaçar, Türk Dili, 1977 ★ The Turks in World History, , Carter V., Findley, Oxford University Press, 2004, ★ ★ Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, International Phonetic Association, , , Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-65236-7 (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb) ★ ★ Languages of the World, Third Edition, , Kenneth, Katzner, Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd., 2002, ★ Teach Yourself Turkish, , Geoffrey, Lewis, English Universities Press, 1953, (2nd edition 1989) ★ Turkish Grammar, , Geoffrey, Lewis, Oxford University Press, 2001, ★ The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success, , Geoffrey, Lewis, Oxford University Press, 2002, ★ Sözlerin Soyağacı: Çağdaş Türkçenin Etimoloji Sözlüğü (Etymological Dictionary of Contemporary Turkish), , Sevan, Nişanyan, Adam Yayınları, Revised and Enlarged 3rd Edition, , ★ Türkçe’nin ağızları çalıştayı bildirileri (Workshop on the dialects of Turkish), , A. Sumru, Özsoy, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, , ★ A History of Inner Asia, , Svat, Soucek, Cambridge University Press, 2000, ★

'On-line sources' ★ The European Turks: Gross Domestic Product, Working Population, Entrepreneurs and Household Data Center for Studies on Turkey, University of Essen ★ Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Language Family Trees - Altaic Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) ★ Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Report for language code:kmr (Kurdish) Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) ★ Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Report for language code:tur (Turkish) Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) ★ Güncel Türkçe Sözlük ★ Language Materials Project: Turkish ★ ★ Türk Dil Kurumu - Tarihçe (History of the Turkish Language Association) Turkish Language Association ★ Türkçe Sözlük (2005)’teki Sözlerin Kökenlerine Ait Sayısal Döküm (Numerical list on the origin of words in ''Türkçe Sözlük (2005)'') 'Further reading' ★ Türk Dilinin Etimoloji Sözlüğü (Etymological Dictionary of the Turkish Language), , İsmet Zeki, Eyüboğlu, Sosyal Yayınları, İstanbul, 1991, ★ Atatürk'ün Türk Dil Kurumu ve Sonrası (Atatürk's Turkish Language Association and its Legacy), , Sevgi, Özel, Bilgi Yayınevi, Ankara, 1986, ★ Arkadaş Türkçe Sözlük (Arkadaş Turkish Dictionary), , Ali, Püsküllüoğlu, Arkadaş Yayınevi, Ankara, 2004,

External links

★ LangToLang Turkish-to-many Dictionary

★ BBC Turkish, including online Turkish radio service

★ Sözlerin Soyağacı: Online Turkish etymological dictionary

Linguistics

★

★ Turkish language at the Rosetta Project archive

★ Turkish language at Language Museum

Learning resources

★ Turkish lessons at the University of Arizona

★ Turkish Language Class free online Turkish course

★ United States Foreign Service Institute free online Turkish Basic Course

Turkish editions of Wikimedia projects

★ VikiKaynak, ''Turkish Wikisource''

★ Vikisöz, ''Turkish Wikiquote''