The Turkish Language: Phonology, Grammar, and Vocabulary Explained

[00:00:00]Turkish is a really cool language so let’s talk  about itǃ It’s spoken by around 90 million people,   primarily in Turkey, as well by the Turkish  diaspora in places such as Bulgaria, Iraq,   Cyprus, and many others. It’s a part of  the Turkic language family, alongside   languages such as Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz,  Uyghur, Tatar, among others. Within Turkic,   Turkish is a part of the Oghuz branch,  making it particularly close to Turkmen   and especially to Azerbaijani, to the  point of partial mutual intelligibility.

[00:00:27]As for sounds, Turkish has 8 vowels, those being  /a/ /e/ /ɯ/ /i/ /o/ /œ/ /u/ and /y/. It notably   has vowel harmony, where within native Turkish  words, front vowels /e/ /i/ /œ/ and /y/ primarily   occur in words with only other front vowels, and  back vowels /a/ /ɯ/ /o/ and /u/ mostly occur with   other back vowels, and the vowels in suffixes  change based on the previous vowel. For example,   there are plural forms taşlar, yıldızlar,  yollar, kuşlar for words with back vowels,   but evler, işler, göller, and günler for words  with front vowels. This plural suffix follows   twofold harmony, which is simply between /e/  for front vowels and /a/ for back vowels.   Many suffixes follow this, but many others follow  fourfold harmony, which agrees for rounding in   addition to frontness, where front unrounded  vowels /i/ and /e/ take /i/, front rounded   /y/ and /œ/ take /y/, back unrounded /ɯ/ and  /a/ are followed by /ɯ/ and finally back rounded   /u/ and /o/ take /u/. Compare the words verdim,  gördüm, aldım, and sordum. The mid front rounded   vowel /œ/ doesn’t appear in any suffixes, and  of all the grammatical suffixes /o/ only occurs   in -iyor, where only the first vowel changes for  vowel harmony. Far from all Turkish words follow   vowel harmony internally, especially compounds and  loanwords from other languages. These words still   usually take suffixes based on the last vowel, so  the plural of insan is insanlar and not insanler.   There are plenty of loanwords where because of  underlying palatalization, words ending with   back vowels take front harmony instead, such  as with harf taking the plural form harfler.

[00:02:01]The consonants of Turkish are /m/ /n/ /p/ /b/  /t/ /d/ /tʃ/ /dʒ/ /k/ /g/ /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /ʃ/   /ʒ/ /h/ /l/ /j/ and /ɾ/. The velar stops /k/  and /g/ become palatal stops [c] and [ɟ] next   to front vowels /e/ /i/ /œ/ and /y/. The /l/  phoneme is pronounced as a typical l sound   around front vowels, but next to back vowels  /a/ /ɯ/ /o/ and /u/, it’s pronounced as a dark   l [ɫ]. In loanwords, the front versions of these  sounds can also occur before back /a/ and /u/,   making them technically different phonemes.  Compare kar /kar/ with kâr /caɾ/. There’s also   the marginal phoneme called yumuşak g, meaning  soft g, which is silent and lengthens preceding   vowels at the ends of words and before another  consonant, pronounced [j] between front vowels,   and between back vowels it’s either silent or  pronounced [ɰ] or as something close to it.

[00:02:51]Turkish also has voicing assimilation with its  stops, fricatives, and affricates. If a suffix   starts with an obstruent, it becomes voiceless  after roots ending with /p/ /t/ /tʃ/ /k/ /f/   /s/ /ʃ/ or /h/ and is voiced elsewhere.  Compare the -ça in açıkça with the -ca   in kurnazca and cesurca, or the -tan in taştan  with the -dan in tuzdan. For the most part,   voiced /b/ /d/ and /dʒ/ became /p/ /t/ and /tʃ/  at the ends of words, though they maintain their   voicing when followed by a suffix starting with  a vowel, compare kitap with its accusative form   kitabı. /k/ usually contrasts with the soft g  phoneme, with yaprak becoming yaprağı, and only   voices to regular /g/ after other consonants,  with renk turning into rengi. This type of   alternation primarily only occurs with  multisyllable words while one syllable   ones usually have the consonant stay voiceless.  Voiced /b/ /d/ /dʒ/ and /g/ also still occur at   the ends of loans and a handful of native  words that used to have long vowels though.

[00:03:52]Worth noting is that the voiced postalveolar  fricative /ʒ/ is rare in Turkish and limited to   loans. Voiceless stops /p/ /t/ /k/ and /c/ are  all aspirated at the beginnings of syllables,   similar to in English and other Germanic  languages. A very notable thing is that the   rhotic is pronounced as a voiceless tap [ɾ̥] at  the ends of words and before voiceless consonants,   as in yer [jæɾ̥] and arka [ɑɾ̥kʰɑ].  Interestingly, the velar stop phoneme   /k/ is pronounced as a uvular [q] around  back vowels in some Turkish dialects. The   fricative /h/ is pronounced as palatal [ç]  after front vowels, and glottal elsewhere.

[00:04:27]The phonetic long vowels [aː] [eː] [iː]  and [uː] occur in various loanwords from   Persian and Arabic. /i/ /y/ and  /u/ are pronounced as near-close   [ɪ] [ʏ] and [ʊ] at the ends of words. /e/  is pronounced as near-open [æ] before coda   /m/ /n/ /l/ and /ɾ/, open-mid [ɛ] at the  ends of words, and close-mid elsewhere.

[00:04:46]The syllable structure of Turkish allows for  consonant clusters both at the beginnings   and ends of syllables, though word-initial  clusters only occur in loanwords, and even then,   some Turkish speakers often insert vowels [i] or  [ɯ] to break them up, such as pronouncing tren as   [tʰiɾæn] or kral as [kʰɯrɑɫ]. Certain nouns from  Arabic also have clusters appearing in inflections   despite not being present in base forms, such  as isim becoming isme and hak becoming hakka.

[00:05:14]The stress of most native Turkish words lands  on the last syllable, though with plenty of   exceptions, including the ones on screen if  you’re interested in pausing and reading.

[00:05:23]I’m sorry that the phonology section was  so long, but fortunately Turkish spelling   is fairly simple so the orthography  section won’t be nearly as lengthy!   Turkish is written with the Latin alphabet,  using the base 26 letters, though <q>, <w>,   and <x> are rare and limited to recent loanwords,  and there are 6 extra letters with diacritics. The   letters c-cedilla <ç> and s-cedilla <ş>  are used for /tʃ/ and /ʃ/, and o-umlaut   <ö> and u-umlaut <ü> represent /œ/ and /y/.  A dotless i <ı> is used for /ɯ/, and finally   soft g is represented with a breve on the letter g  <ğ>. The rest of the letters mostly have the same   values they do in the IPA, except for <y> which  represents /j/, <j> which represents /ʒ/, and   most outstandingly plain <c> is used for  the voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/.  The capital version of <i> is written with a dot  above <İ>, as not to be confused with capital   <ı> /ɯ/, notably appearing in the native  spelling of İstanbul. With proper nouns,   Turkish uses an apostrophe <’> to separate  the base word from its inflections, such as in   country and city names, in addition to the names  of people. <k> <g> and <l> represent both their   front versions /c/ /ɟ/ /l/ and back versions  /k/ /g/ and /ɫ/, using circumflexes on a and   u (â û) to indicate when they have their front  allophones before /a/ and /u/. On rare occasions,   circumflexes are additionally used in Perso-Arabic  loanwords to indicate long vowels, other times   doubled letters are used, and most of the time  these long vowels are completely unwritten.  Turkish also used to be written with the  Arabic abjad, all throughout the span   of the Ottoman Empire, ceasing to be used  only a century ago with the empire’s fall.

[00:06:58]And now we’re back to comically long sections with  grammar! Turkish word order is purely head-final,   with adjectives before nouns, postpositions  after nouns, and Subject-Object-Verb word order,   though the other 5 word orders are valid  for marking emphasis. A large portion of   native Turkish root words are only  one syllable, but Turkish is also   highly agglutinative to where words can  become monstrously long. Turkish conveys   grammatical information with a boatload of  suffixes, but no prefixes. Prefixes appear   primarily in loanwords and are exclusively  used to derive vocabulary, not grammar.

[00:07:30]As alluded to earlier, the plural suffix of nouns  is -lar when following back vowels and -ler when   following front vowels. Nouns in Turkish also  have cases, of which there are 6 primary ones.   The nominative is the base form of nouns and is  used to refer to subjects of the sentence. The   definite accusative has the suffix -i -ü -ı or  -u depending on the final vowel, and refers to   definite direct objects, while indefinite direct  objects, ones which would not translate as English   “the” simply take the nominative. The dative  case which has the suffix -e or -a can refer   to indirect objects, and means “to” or “into”  when used with places. The locative case has   the suffixes -de -da -te or -ta and refers to  location, translating to the prepositions “in”,   “on”, or “at”. Suffixes for the ablative case  are the same as the locative but with an -n at   the end, and generally means “from”, but can also  mean “made of”, “through”, “out of”, or be used   in comparisons with adjectives to mean “than”.  Finally, the genitive has the same suffixes as the   accusative but with an -n added to the end, and  refers to possession or ownership. There’s also   the marginal instrumental case, a contracted form  of the postposition ile meaning “by” or “with”,   becoming -le or -la after consonants and adding a  -y after vowels before the -le or -la. Whenever a   case suffix beginning with a vowel comes after a  noun ending with a phonemic vowel sound, -y- is   inserted between the two vowels in the accusative  and dative and -n- is inserted for the genitive.

[00:08:56]There are also possessive suffixes  attached to nouns, with -im for “my”,   -in for “your”, -i for the 3rd person singular,  -imiz for “our”, -iniz for the 2nd person plural,   and -leri for “their”, and of course all  of these change for vowel harmony. When   the aforementioned suffixes follow  a noun that ends with a vowel,   the initial -i is removed, except for the  3rd person singular suffix which becomes -si.

[00:09:19]There are also various predicative forms that can  be added to nouns and adjectives to mean “I am”,   “you are”, or “we are”, so kişiyim means  “I’m a person”, kişisin means “you’re a   person”, kişiyiz means “we’re people”, and  kişisiniz means “y’all are people”. Speaking   of pronouns, the 3rd person singular  pronoun is o, which also means “that”,   and the 3rd person plural is  onlar with the plural suffix.

[00:09:42]I won’t be going into nearly as  much detail with Turkish verbs   because they are very complicated and  I don’t wanna give anyone a stroke.

[00:09:49]As a very broad overview, verbs change for  the 6 subject pronouns and have several main   conjugations: the aorist, used for habitual  actions and general truths, the continuous,   progressive, and future, whose names I hope are  self-explanatory. There’s the simple definite   past for previous actions which the speaker can  directly attest happened, and the inferential   past or perfect, when a speaker cannot verify  that a previous action occurred but has some   relevance to the present. There’s also the  conditional for hypothetical actions, the   necessative used for when an action must happen,  and the largely merged imperative and optative   moods which are used for commands in the second  person and translate roughly as “let” in the 1st   and 3rd persons. Many though not all of these  conjugations can be combined to form compounds.

[00:10:34]Verbs are made negative with the  suffix -me, and there are separate   potential forms, translating as “can” in  the positive or “can’t” in the negative.   There’s also the question particle mi,  which is written as a separate word.

[00:10:46]Turkish additionally has  several causative suffixes,   which can be stacked such as in  öldürtmek which means “cause to kill”,   with kill itself meaning “cause to die”.  Sometimes they’re also stacked further   but with no change in meaning. There  are also passives, which interestingly   when used with intransitive verbs serve as an  impersonal form, translating as “you” or “one”.

[00:11:07]Verbal nouns are present in Turkish, formed  with the suffix -me, and these are often   used in compound words and when other  languages would use an auxiliary verb.  There are also converbs, which are suffixes  attached to verbs to link two verbs or clauses,   variously meaning “while”, “as”, “when”, or “and”.

[00:11:24]Finally, let’s talk about Turkish vocabulary!  There are many suffixes for deriving nouns,   verbs, and adjectives from each other, as in most  languages. These can even be added to pronouns,   such as in sensizlik which means  “the state of being without you”.

[00:11:38]Turkish also has reduplication in its vocabulary.  Many adjectives have dedicated emphatic forms,   roughly translated as “very”. They’re formed  by repeating the first vowel of the root and   any consonant before that, and adding -p -r -s  or -m to the end of that reduplicated syllable.   So güpgüzel means “very pretty”, tertemiz means  “very clean”, kaskatı means “hard as a rock”,   and simsiyah means “pitch black”. Full  reduplication of the word was used to   derive adverbs, and nouns can be repeated as  well to mean “many” or “all of”. There’s also   m-reduplication, where m can be inserted  in the middle of two reduplicated words to   mean something along the lines of “etc”, “or  anything”, “or anyone”, and “or the like”.

[00:12:20]The majority of words used are of native  Turkic origin. Persian and Arabic were   large sources of foreign vocabulary during the  Ottoman Empire, but during Atatürk’s rule many   of these words were removed and replaced  by native Turkish ones. There’s been an   onslaught of loanwords from European languages  starting in the 1900s, particularly from French.

[00:12:39]Examples of Perso-Arabic loans include  kitap, mevsim, ufuk, diğer, her, and   examples of French ones include bank,  stil, dinozor, kalite, and tünel.

[00:12:51]Whatever I could write as a summary would  not be as cool as Turkish is as a language.  Until next time, güle güle!