Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Turkish Language shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Turkish Language offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Turkish Language at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Turkish Language? Wrong! If the Turkish Language is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Turkish Language then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Turkish Language? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Turkish Language and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Turkish Language wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Turkish Language then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Turkish Language site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Turkish Language, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Turkish Language, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Language|name = Turkish|nativename = |pronunciation = |familycolor = Altaic|states = ,
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and by immigrant communities in
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and other countries of the Turkish diaspora, [Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Europe ([Altaic language#Controversy)|fam2 = Turkic languages|fam3 = Oghuz languages|fam4 = Western Oghuz|script = Latin alphabet (Turkish alphabet)|nation = ,
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In municipalities with more than 20% Turkish speakers.|agency = Turkish Language Association, with smaller communities of speakers in [Cyprus, Bulgaria, 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 language—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 Turkish alphabet 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 language and Arabic language 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 language and Azerbaijani language. 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 languages. About 40% of Turkic language speakers are Turkish speakers.Katzner 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 Azerbaijani language, Turkmen language, Qashqai language, and Gagauz language.

History 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 Göktürks, which are dated to the second half of the 6th century. 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 Russians 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 languages runic alphabets.Ishjatms

With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th century–11th century), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuq dynasty of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz languages, the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language, into Anatolia during the 11th century.Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguistics of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari 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.Soucek

Ottoman Turkish Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq dynasty, regarded as the cultural ancestors of the Ottoman Empire, the administrative language of these states acquired a rather large collection of loanwords from Arabic language and Persian language. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, in particular Ottoman 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.

Language reform and modern Turkish (1927). The literacy rates rose to 48.4% among males and 20.7% among females in 1950.|accessdate=2007-04-27|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-4701%28195804%2924%3A2%3C101%3APAMIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z|laysummary=http://www.jstor.org/journals/00324701.html|laysource=JSTOR-->|thumb|right|300pxAfter the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and following the #Writing system, 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.See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. 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 languages 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 Nutuk to the new Grand National Assembly of Turkey 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.See Lewis (2002): 2–3 for the first two translations. For the third see 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 language. 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 Scripting language 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 languages and Romance languages 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:{] 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.|-|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 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. 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. 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. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish language making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). 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.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". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the #Language reform and modern Turkish 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 Turkey following the military 1980 Turkish coup d'état.

Dialects

Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. In spite of the Dialect levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and Education in Turkey since the 1930s, dialectal variation persists. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as ağız or şive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of Accent (linguistics), 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.Özsoy

The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by Immigration to Turkey 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 Sea 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 Region, Turkey, has a dialect continuum with Azerbaijani language, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia Region, Turkey region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region, Turkey and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek language in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The Hemşince, known as Hemşince, is spoken by the western group of Hamshenis around Rize, influenced by Armenian language. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named Kαραμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.

Sounds Consonants {| class="wikitable"|+ Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish|-!! colspan="2" | Bilabial! colspan="2" ]! colspan="2" | Dental consonant! colspan="2" | Alveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Postalveolar! colspan="2" | Palatal consonant! colspan="2" | Velar consonant! colspan="2" | Glottal consonant|- align=center|Plosives]| colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Fricative consonant| colspan="2" || | | | | colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" ||| | ||- align=center|Affricate consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Flap consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Approximant consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center| Lateral consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||}

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.

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. In such words , and often occur with back vowels:Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some Turkish language#Writing system are given below.

When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation (linguistics). A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel.The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10.

Vowels {| align="right"!align="right"|IPA chart for Turkish vowels|-||}

The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, Turkish dotted and dotless I, Turkish dotted and dotless I, o, ö, u, ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel ."Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of M'issouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. 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: Vowel backness and Roundedness. 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.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.

{]es have "a chameleon-like quality",Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:

• twofold (-e/-a):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 :18). 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/-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 -in4 is used.

The following examples, based on the Turkish copula -dir4 (" 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).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. 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 *halsız, *meçhuldur and *harflar).

The #Geographic distribution 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 (linguistics)): viyadüğü

Stress Stress (linguistics) is usually on the last syllable.Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly fromItalian language and Modern Greek language, 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 ( İstanbul, Ankara).

Grammar Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, or endings.This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. 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.see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.The only native prefixes are alliteration intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" < sıcak) and masmavi ("bright blue" < mavi)."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.

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 -Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings").This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287.

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 Declension in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand #Vowel harmony. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").

{]|Ø (none)|köy|ağaç|(the) village/tree|-|Genitive case|-in4|köyün|ağa'cın|the village's/tree'sof the village/tree|-|Dative case|-e²|köye|ağaca|to the village/tree|-|Accusative case|-i4|köyü|ağacı|the village/tree|-|Ablative case|-den²|köyden|ağaçtan|from the village/tree|-|Locative case|-de²|köyde|ağaçta|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".Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: ağaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees we walked through the forest"—as opposed to ağaçları gördük "we saw the trees question".

The declension of ağaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation (linguistics) in suffixes (ağaç'tan, ağaçta) and voice (phonetics) of final consonants before vowels (ağacın, ağaca, ağacı).

Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign grammatical person: for example -imiz4, "our". With the addition of the Turkish copula (for example -im4, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative word particle mi4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? " to the village?", ağaç mı? " it a tree?".

{|class = "wikitable"|-!Turkish!English|-|ev|align="right"|(the) house|-|evler|align="right"|(the) houses|-|evin|align="right"|your house|-|eviniz|align="right"|your (pl./formal) house|-|evim|align="right"|my house|-|evimde|align="right"|at my house|-|evlerinizin|align="right"|of your houses|-|Evinizdeyim.|align="right"|I am at your house.|-|Evinizde miyim?|align="right"|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 declension. 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 Grammatical person. They can be made negative, potential ("can") or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show Grammatical tense (Present tense, Past tense, Grammatical mood#Inferential, Future tense, and aorist), Grammatical mood (Conditional mood, Imperative mood, necessitative, and Optative mood), and Grammatical aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.

{] 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 -en²), future (-ecek²), past (-miş4) 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 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 (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik4), which covers both present and past meanings.See Lewis (2001):163–165, 260–262 for an exhaustive treatment. 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.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).

{|class="wikitable"|-!colspan="2"|English equivalent!rowspan="2"|Example!colspan="2"|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 (language) and Latin, but unlike in English language. In more complex sentences the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the #Participles 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".Lewis (2001): 239–240.

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 language, French language, Persian language, Italian language, English language, and Greek language.

Word formation Turkish extensively uses agglutination to Word formation 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:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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 Compound (linguistics) two existing words into a new one, as in German language. A few examples of compound words are given below:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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 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 Turkish alphabet of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to replace the Arabic alphabet-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 #Vowel harmony.

The reform of the script was an important step in the Atatürk's 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 Turkish alphabet#Modern Turkish alphabet 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.There was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels.Coulmas, pp. 243–244

Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely Phonetic spelling, 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, and represent and. The letter in principle denotes , but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , or when these consonants represent , and —almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loanword.Lewis (2001):3-7.

The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!Turkish spelling!Pronunciation!Meaning|-|Cağaloğlu|| district|-|çalıştığı||where/that s/he works/worked|-|müjde||good news|-|lâzım||necessary|-|mahkûm||condemned|}

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

{]!width="33%"|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.

References Printed sources

• (2nd edition 1989)

On-line sources

Further reading

External links

• Turkish Phrases with Video
• 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
• Vikisözlük, Turkish Wiktionary

{{Infobox Language|name = Turkish|nativename = |pronunciation = |familycolor = Altaic|states = ,
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and by immigrant communities in
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and other countries of the Turkish diaspora, [Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Europe ([Altaic language#Controversy)|fam2 = Turkic languages|fam3 = Oghuz languages|fam4 = Western Oghuz|script = Latin alphabet (Turkish alphabet)|nation = ,
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In municipalities with more than 20% Turkish speakers.|agency = Turkish Language Association, with smaller communities of speakers in [Cyprus, Bulgaria, 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 language—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 Turkish alphabet 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 language and Arabic language 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 language and Azerbaijani language. 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 languages. About 40% of Turkic language speakers are Turkish speakers.Katzner 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 Azerbaijani language, Turkmen language, Qashqai language, and Gagauz language.

History 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 Göktürks, which are dated to the second half of the 6th century. 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 Russians 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 languages runic alphabets.Ishjatms

With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages (c. 6th century–11th century), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical region stretching from Siberia to Europe and the Mediterranean. The Seljuq dynasty of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, Oghuz languages, the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language, into Anatolia during the 11th century.Findley Also during the 11th century, an early linguistics of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari 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.Soucek

Ottoman Turkish Following the adoption of Islam c. 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq dynasty, regarded as the cultural ancestors of the Ottoman Empire, the administrative language of these states acquired a rather large collection of loanwords from Arabic language and Persian language. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, in particular Ottoman 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.

Language reform and modern Turkish (1927). The literacy rates rose to 48.4% among males and 20.7% among females in 1950.|accessdate=2007-04-27|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-4701%28195804%2924%3A2%3C101%3APAMIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z|laysummary=http://www.jstor.org/journals/00324701.html|laysource=JSTOR-->|thumb|right|300pxAfter the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and following the #Writing system, 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.See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish language reform. 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 languages 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 Nutuk to the new Grand National Assembly of Turkey 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.See Lewis (2002): 2–3 for the first two translations. For the third see 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 language. 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 Scripting language 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 languages and Romance languages 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:{] 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.|-|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 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. 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. 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. Turkish is spoken as a first or second language by almost all of Turkey's residents, with Kurdish language making up most of the remainder (about 3,950,000 as estimated in 1980). 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.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". These changes, together with the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the #Language reform and modern Turkish 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 Turkey following the military 1980 Turkish coup d'état.

Dialects

Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey. In spite of the Dialect levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and Education in Turkey since the 1930s, dialectal variation persists. Academically, researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as ağız or şive, leading to an ambiguity with the linguistic concept of Accent (linguistics), 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.Özsoy

The standard dialect of the Turkish language is İstanbul. Rumelice is spoken by Immigration to Turkey 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 Sea 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 Region, Turkey, has a dialect continuum with Azerbaijani language, particularly with Karapapak dialects in some areas. The Central Anatolia Region, Turkey region speaks Orta Anadolu. Karadeniz, spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region, Turkey and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek language in phonology and syntax. Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. The Hemşince, known as Hemşince, is spoken by the western group of Hamshenis around Rize, influenced by Armenian language. Karamanlıca is spoken in Greece, where it is also named Kαραμανλήδικα (Karamanlidika). It is the literary standard for Karamanlides.

Sounds Consonants {| class="wikitable"|+ Consonant phonemes of Standard Turkish|-!! colspan="2" | Bilabial! colspan="2" ]! colspan="2" | Dental consonant! colspan="2" | Alveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Postalveolar! colspan="2" | Palatal consonant! colspan="2" | Velar consonant! colspan="2" | Glottal consonant|- align=center|Plosives]| colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Fricative consonant| colspan="2" || | | | | colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" ||| | ||- align=center|Affricate consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Flap consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center|Approximant consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align=center| Lateral consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" | | colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||}

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.

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. In such words , and often occur with back vowels:Lewis (2001):3-4,6. some Turkish language#Writing system are given below.

When a vowel is added to nouns ending with postvocalic , the becomes by consonant alternation (linguistics). A similar alternation applies to certain loan-words ending in and , which become and , respectively, with the addition of a vowel.The / alternation does not usually apply to monosyllabic nouns. Lewis (2001):10.

Vowels {| align="right"!align="right"|IPA chart for Turkish vowels|-||}

The vowels of the Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, a, e, Turkish dotted and dotless I, Turkish dotted and dotless I, o, ö, u, ü. Undotted is the close back unrounded vowel ."Americans will recognize in it the first vowel of M'issouri as pronounced by a native of that state." Lewis (2001):13. 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: Vowel backness and Roundedness. 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.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.

{]es have "a chameleon-like quality",Lewis (1953):21 and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony:

• twofold (-e/-a):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 :18). 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/-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 -in4 is used.

The following examples, based on the Turkish copula -dir4 (" 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).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. 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 *halsız, *meçhuldur and *harflar).

The #Geographic distribution 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 (linguistics)): viyadüğü

Stress Stress (linguistics) is usually on the last syllable.Handbook of the IPA, p. 155 Exceptions include some suffix combinations and loanwords, particularly fromItalian language and Modern Greek language, 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 ( İstanbul, Ankara).

Grammar Turkish is an agglutinative language and frequently uses affixes, or endings.This section draws heavily on Lewis (2001) and, to a lesser extent, Lewis (1953). Only the most important references are specifically flagged with footnotes. 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.see Lewis (2001) Ch XIV.The only native prefixes are alliteration intensifying syllables used with adjectives or adverbs: for example sımsıcak ("boiling hot" < sıcak) and masmavi ("bright blue" < mavi)."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.

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 -Recipr-Impot-Partic-Plur-PossPl1; "Those of our number with whom we cannot exchange the season's greetings").This "splendid word" appeared at the time of Bayram, the festival marking the end of the month of fasting. Lewis (2001):287.

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 Declension in Turkish, with all the endings following vowel harmony (shown in the table using the shorthand #Vowel harmony. The plural marker -ler² immediately follows the noun before any case or other affixes (e.g. köylerin "of the villages").

{]|Ø (none)|köy|ağaç|(the) village/tree|-|Genitive case|-in4|köyün|ağa'cın|the village's/tree'sof the village/tree|-|Dative case|-e²|köye|ağaca|to the village/tree|-|Accusative case|-i4|köyü|ağacı|the village/tree|-|Ablative case|-den²|köyden|ağaçtan|from the village/tree|-|Locative case|-de²|köyde|ağaçta|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".Because it is also used for the indefinite accusative, Lewis uses the term "absolute case" in preference to "nominative". Lewis (2001):28. The plural marker -ler² is not used when a class or category is meant: ağaç gördük can equally well mean "we saw trees we walked through the forest"—as opposed to ağaçları gördük "we saw the trees question".

The declension of ağaç illustrates two important features of Turkish phonology: consonant assimilation (linguistics) in suffixes (ağaç'tan, ağaçta) and voice (phonetics) of final consonants before vowels (ağacın, ağaca, ağacı).

Additionally, nouns can take suffixes that assign grammatical person: for example -imiz4, "our". With the addition of the Turkish copula (for example -im4, "I am") complete sentences can be formed. The interrogative word particle mi4 immediately follows the word being questioned: köye mi? " to the village?", ağaç mı? " it a tree?".

{|class = "wikitable"|-!Turkish!English|-|ev|align="right"|(the) house|-|evler|align="right"|(the) houses|-|evin|align="right"|your house|-|eviniz|align="right"|your (pl./formal) house|-|evim|align="right"|my house|-|evimde|align="right"|at my house|-|evlerinizin|align="right"|of your houses|-|Evinizdeyim.|align="right"|I am at your house.|-|Evinizde miyim?|align="right"|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 declension. 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 Grammatical person. They can be made negative, potential ("can") or impotential ("cannot"). Furthermore, Turkish verbs show Grammatical tense (Present tense, Past tense, Grammatical mood#Inferential, Future tense, and aorist), Grammatical mood (Conditional mood, Imperative mood, necessitative, and Optative mood), and Grammatical aspect. Negation is expressed by the infix -me²- immediately following the stem.

{] 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 -en²), future (-ecek²), past (-miş4) 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 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 (-ecek²) and an older form (-dik4), which covers both present and past meanings.See Lewis (2001):163–165, 260–262 for an exhaustive treatment. 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.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).

{|class="wikitable"|-!colspan="2"|English equivalent!rowspan="2"|Example!colspan="2"|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 (language) and Latin, but unlike in English language. In more complex sentences the basic rule is that the qualifier precedes the qualified: this principle includes, as an important special case, the #Participles 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".Lewis (2001): 239–240.

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 language, French language, Persian language, Italian language, English language, and Greek language.

Word formation Turkish extensively uses agglutination to Word formation 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:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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 Compound (linguistics) two existing words into a new one, as in German language. A few examples of compound words are given below:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!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 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 Turkish alphabet of the Latin alphabet introduced in 1928 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to replace the Arabic alphabet-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 #Vowel harmony.

The reform of the script was an important step in the Atatürk's 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 Turkish alphabet#Modern Turkish alphabet 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.There was a dramatic increase in literacy from its original Third World levels.Coulmas, pp. 243–244

Turkish now has an alphabet suited to the sounds of the language: the spelling is largely Phonetic spelling, 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, and represent and. The letter in principle denotes , but has the property of lengthening the preceding vowel and assimilating any subsequent vowel. The letters and represent and respectively. A circumflex is written over back vowels following , or when these consonants represent , and —almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian loanword.Lewis (2001):3-7.

The specifically Turkish letters and spellings described above are illustrated in this table:

{|class = "wikitable"|-!Turkish spelling!Pronunciation!Meaning|-|Cağaloğlu|| district|-|çalıştığı||where/that s/he works/worked|-|müjde||good news|-|lâzım||necessary|-|mahkûm||condemned|}

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

{]!width="33%"|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.

References Printed sources

• (2nd edition 1989)

On-line sources

Further reading

External links

• Turkish Phrases with Video
• 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
• Vikisözlük, Turkish Wiktionary

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