Learning Turkish

For a native English speaker, learning Turkish grammar can be challenging at the start. This is because Turkish is categorized in the language family known as Ural-Altaic languages. Some languages that are quite similar to Turkish include Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Kazak, Korean, Manchu, Mongolian, Uzbek, and Tatar. The main difference between English and Turkish include:

Sentence Structure

The ordering of sentence parts is typically ordered as (subject + object + verb). For example, the sentence “My friend bought a car” can be translated as “ArkadaÃ?ŸÃ?±m (My friend) araba (car) aldÃ?± (bought)”.

No Gender

In Turkish, no gender is associated with words. There is no “he”, “she”, or “it” because they are all known simply as “o” .

Vowel Harmony

Vowel harmony is a very important aspect of Turkish. It needs to the learned at the beginning because it affects the way other language rules are applied

Use of Suffix

The Turkish language uses suffixes heavy. The meaning of personal pronouns, tenses, and prepositions can be countered by adding suffixes to the root word.

Once you learn the basic harmony rules and the differences outlined above, learning about other language rules becomes almost simple because everything follows simple and well-defined rules.

The next challenge is Turkish vocabulary because it has almost no resemblance to European languages except for a few words that were directly adapted.

Another important point is how you read the written text. There is one sound for each Turkish character. Each character will always represent the same sound no matter the characters next to it or its position in the word. This makes the Turkish language rather straightforward to pronounce after you become familiar with the alphabet.

Turkish Tutorials: Audio and Visual

Computer Aided Language Instruction Group

40 Minute Turkish

Transparent: Learn Turkish

LangMedia

Word Search Factory Lite

Turkish Tutorials: Text

Basics of Turkish Grammar

European Languages: Turkish

Turkish Learning Dictionary

Resources for Teaching and Learning Turkish

Turkish Language Courses

Distance Turkish Learning Center

Turkish Language Classes