Transcription
Back in 2016, I released my first video on the Turkish language. Millions of people have seen it, but unfortunately, it kind of sucked. I didn't explain very much about the language, and the production quality was a bit hokey. So, it's time for a reboot.
The Turkish language is the language of Turkey, or Turkiye as it's now officially known, an incredibly important country at the crossroads of Europe and Western Asia. Because Turkey lies at the edge of the Middle East and borders Syria and Iraq, people who don't know much about the world often assume that the language of Turkey must be Arabic. But that's not the case. Turkish belongs to a completely separate language family, the Turkic language family.
The Turkic language family has over 170 million native speakers, stretching all the way from Europe to Northeast Asia. Speakers of Turkic languages often consider all of them to be dialects of one language, but it's better to consider them closely related sister languages. When I talk about Turkish in this video, I'm talking about the Turkish language of Turkey and its standardized variety based on the dialect of Istanbul. There are around 90 million native speakers of Turkish, mainly in Turkey, but also in Northern Cyprus and other neighboring areas.
Some linguists have theorized that the Turkic languages are part of a larger language family called Altaic, which includes the Mongolic and Tungusic languages, and even Koreanic and Japonic languages. By some definitions, this theoretic family is named after the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, but the existence of the Altaic language family is highly disputed. It's more commonly thought that the similarities between the languages in this group come from contact rather than a common origin.
But the common ancestor language of all the Turkic languages, Proto-Turkic, probably originated in or near Mongolia around the 6th Century. The first known Turkic inscriptions, known as the Orkhon inscriptions, date back to this time. Turkic speakers migrated over a wide area, stretching from Siberia through China and Central Asia, through Western Asia, and up into the Balkans and the North Black Sea region. Oghur Turkic, the ancestor language of today's Turkish language and the entire Oghur branch, was brought to Anatolia by a Turkic Empire known as the Seljuk Empire in the 11th century.
Because the Seljuk Empire were admirers of Persian culture and were Muslims, their language was influenced by the Persian and Arabic languages. Turkic was spoken by everyday people, while Persian served as the administrative and literary language, and Arabic served as the language of religion. When the Ottoman Empire arose after the decline and breakup of the Seljuk Empire, a form of Turkish which was highly influenced by Persian and Arabic became the official language and literary language. This was Ottoman Turkish.
Ottoman Turkish contained a very large number of Persian and Arabic loanwords. According to some estimates, it was over 80%, though that depends on how you calculate it and on the context. This was the language of the elite and wasn't the same as the everyday Turkish language used by regular people, which had less foreign influence but still had some. During the time of Ottoman rule, French was the main language of international diplomacy, and there were close relations between the Ottomans and the French for much of the time. The influence of France led to the adoption of numerous French loanwords into Turkish.
When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, its first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, initiated a language reform and got rid of Ottoman Turkish. He created a new standard language based on the everyday spoken dialect of Istanbul. An effort was made to replace Persian and Arabic words with Turkish equivalents, and the Arabic script was replaced with a modified Latin script, which would be more suitable for the Turkish language. Official language reforms are usually not completely successful, so there are still a lot of loanwords in modern Turkish, just not as many as there were in Ottoman Turkish. According to the Turkish Language Association, 12% of the words in Turkish are loanwords, though it could be higher depending on how you calculate them.
We'll look at some examples of loanwords in Turkish in a minute, but first, a few words about a Turkish course. I think you should check out. If you're excited to learn Turkish, I highly recommend you check out the course Turkish Uncovered by the company Story Learning. Turkish Uncovered was created by Ollie Richards, a major figure in the language learning community, whose approach to language learning is based on using stories. You may have seen some of his best-selling books at your local bookstore or on Amazon, including his book on Turkish.
His Uncovered courses are based on the same philosophy of story learning, but they're much more extensive and are designed to take you from a beginner level up to the B1 level, which is lower intermediate, so that you can genuinely communicate at a basic level with Turkish people. The course consists of 20 chapters of a story, with each chapter containing not only a core reading and listening lesson but also additional video lessons and exercises that build on that core material. If you're tired of boring apps and grammar-based translation, I recommend you try the story learning approach with Turkish Uncovered.
If you use my link in the description, you can try it for seven days for free, and if you upgrade to a paid course, Lang Focus gets a small commission that helps support this channel, so it's win-win. It's great for you, and it's great for Lang Focus. By the way, Turkish isn't the only language in the Uncovered series. They have courses for Spanish, French, German, and other languages. I'll put a link to this page with all of their courses in the description below.
And now, back to the main video. Let's see some examples of foreign loanwords that are still widely used in modern Turkish.
Some words from Arabic:
* Kitap (meaning book)
* Kahve (meaning coffee)
* Tarih (meaning history)
* Kalem (meaning pen or pencil)
* Mektup (meaning letter)
* Hediye (meaning gift)
* Saat (meaning hour or a specific time)
* Zaman (meaning time in a general sense)
Persian loan words:
* Bazar (meaning market and also Sunday, because Sunday is the market day)
* Sebze (meaning vegetable)
* Meyve (meaning fruit)
* Bahçe (meaning garden)
* Renk (meaning color)
* Her (meaning each or every)
* Herkes (meaning everyone)
Some French loan words:
* Ofis (meaning office)
* Televizyon (meaning television)
* Müzik (meaning music)
* Otel (meaning hotel)
* Tren (meaning train)
* Pantolon (meaning pants)
* Gazete (meaning newspaper)
* Rezervasyon (meaning reservation)
Now let's look at some more features of Turkish. Turkish is an agglutinative language, meaning words are formed by adding suffixes to a root in a linear manner. Each suffix has a single grammatical or semantic function, and long strings of multiple suffixes can be added. For example, let's see the possessive suffixes that are attached to nouns.
Let's start with the word "ev" meaning house:
* Evim (my house)
* Evimiz (our house)
* Evin (your house, with "your" in the singular)
* Eviniz (your house, with "your" in the plural or formal singular)
* Evi (his, her, or its house)
* Evleri (their house)
But more suffixes can be added. Let's make the noun plural:
* Evler (houses)
* Evlerim (my houses)
* Evlerimiz (our houses)
* Evlerin (your houses, with "your" in the singular)
* Evleriniz (your houses, with "your" in the plural or formal singular)
* Evleri (his, her, or its houses)
* Evleri (their houses)
Notice that "evleri" can mean his, her, or its houses, their house, or their houses. It can indicate the plural of either the noun or the possessor, creating ambiguity. Standalone possessor pronouns can be used together with the possessive suffix to give emphasis or clarity, as in this case: "onların evleri" (his houses, their house, or their houses).
Now let's go back to just the root word and one suffix:
* Ev (house)
* Evler (houses)
Here's another example:
* Baş (head)
* Başlar (heads)
Note the difference in the suffixes added to the two nouns. It's a result of something called vowel harmony. Vowel harmony affects suffixes that are added to nouns. So, before we look more closely at Turkish agglutination, let's take a look at vowel harmony and some other related features.
Vowel harmony means that the vowels in a Turkish word must be in harmony with each other. They must share certain features, specifically backness and roundness. And because words in Turkish are built by adding suffixes, the vowels of a suffix change depending on the vowels in the word it's being attached to. There are two sets of vowels depending on backness: front vowels and back vowels. Each word normally only has vowels from one of those categories. So, when a suffix is added to a word, the vowel in the suffix must match the category of the last vowel that appears before the suffix.
There are two types of vowel harmony depending on the possible vowels that can appear in a particular suffix.
**E-type vowel harmony:**
* Kedi (cat)
* Kediler (cats)
* Ağaç (tree)
* Ağaçlar (trees)
These two words have the same plural suffix, but the vowel is different, similar to the pair of words we saw before. The vowel "a" in the suffix "-lar" is a back vowel in order to be in harmony with the back vowels in the root word, and the vowel "e" in the suffix "-ler" is a front vowel to be in harmony with the front vowels in the root word. When the vowel in a particular suffix varies between "e" and "a" (front and back), it's called e-type vowel harmony.
There's also **i-type vowel harmony**. In i-type vowel harmony, the vowel in the suffix has one of four variations. It harmonizes with the preceding vowel in both backness and in roundness. For example, the suffix "-siz" meaning "without":
* Sayısız (countless, literally "without number")
* Bilgisiz (uninformed or ignorant, literally "without information")
* Susuz (thirsty or dehydrated, literally "without water")
* Güçsüz (powerless or weak, literally "without power")
And if you add additional suffixes:
* Bilgisizlik (ignorance or unawareness)
* Susuzluk (thirstiness)
* Güçsüzlük (powerlessness)
This suffix "-lik" changes an adjective into an abstract noun. Similar to how the vowels of suffixes change depending on what comes before them, changes take place in some consonants too. This is called consonant mutation. The consonants that can mutate are called non-continuous consonants; the ones that can't mutate are called continuous consonants. Words can't end in these soft or voiced consonants, except in certain loanwords and in a few single-syllable words. At the end of a word, they must be their voiceless equivalents: p, ç, t, or k. But if they're followed by a vowel, they go back to being voiced; they become softened.
We can see this in the different case forms of the word "kitap" (book). It comes from the Arabic word "kitab," but it changed to fit the phonology of Istanbul Turkish. You can still hear the voiced "b" sound in the accusative, genitive, and dative case forms, in which it's followed by a vowel. So, this is the rule in the standard Turkish of Turkey. In various dialects, though, and in closely related Turkic languages like Azeri, words can end in a voiced consonant. Also, let's be clear that this is for non-continuous soft consonants, the ones that change. The continuous soft consonants can come at the end of a word. And also, remember that the continuous hard consonants never mutate either.
Consonant mutation also affects suffixes that begin with "c," "d," or "g." When a word ends in a hard consonant (meaning a voiceless consonant), "c" becomes "ç," "d" becomes "t," and "g" becomes "k." Here's an example:
* Evden (from the house)
* Ağaçtan (from the tree)
And again, note that the vowel difference in the two suffixes is due to vowel harmony. A couple more examples:
* Yunan (Greek)
* Yunanca (the Greek language)
* İngiliz (English)
* İngilizce (the English language)
* Rus (Russian)
* Rusça (the Russian language)
This is a suffix that creates language names out of the names of countries. The default word order of Turkish is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). This sentence means "Their dad knows Turkish."
* Babaları Türkçeyi biliyor. (Their dad knows Turkish.)
Word for word: "Babaları" (their father/dad) + "Türkçeyi" (Turkish, the language, in the accusative case) + "biliyor" (knows). "Baba" is father or dad, "-ları" is the possessive suffix meaning "their." "Bilmek" is the base of the verb "to know," with a present continuous suffix attached in its third-person singular form. We'll talk more about verbs in a minute. "Türkçe" is the noun for the Turkish language. The word for "Turkish" or "Turk" (when not referring to the language) is "Türk."
Turkish coffee: "Türk kahvesi." In translation, it seems like an adjective here, but grammatically, it's actually a noun. This is a compound noun meaning something like "Turk's coffee." In compound nouns, the second noun has a possessive suffix to show that it belongs to the first noun. If we use an actual adjective, this suffix isn't present:
* Sıcak kahve (hot coffee)
Notice that the adjective comes before the noun, and in the compound noun, the modifying noun comes first. Also, note that nouns in Turkish have no grammatical gender, so the adjective doesn't change form for gender agreement.
What if we wanted to turn this into a question? It's quite simple: "Does their dad know Turkish?" You just add the yes/no question marker "-mi" at the end of the sentence. But this word has four forms depending on vowel harmony. It's also inflected for person, but notice that there's no suffix in the third person.
Let's look more at verbs and how they're inflected. Of course, they're affected by agglutination with suffixes that indicate tense, person, number, and so on. The infinitive form of a verb consists of the verb's base followed by "-mek" or "-mak" depending on the last vowel of the base. Here are a couple of examples:
* Uyumak (to sleep)
* İçmek (to drink)
But other suffixes can be attached as well. Negative verb forms have the suffix "-me" or "-ma" after the verb base:
* Uyumamak (not to sleep)
* İçmemek (not to drink)
Let's conjugate these verbs in the general present tense, known as the "-ar" tense. Take this sentence: "I sleep seven hours a day."
* Günde yedi saat uyurum. (I sleep seven hours a day.)
Word for word: "Günde" (day, locative case) + "yedi" (seven) + "saat" (hour) + "uyurum" (I sleep). So, we have the verb base "uyu-" which is followed by the "-r" tense suffix. The suffix has different forms. When the verb base ends in a consonant, either an "i"-type vowel or an "e"-type vowel. Then, after the "-ar" tense, a suffix showing person, a personal suffix, is added, with no suffix indicating third person.
"We drink tea every morning."
* Her sabah çay içeriz. (We drink tea every morning.)
Word for word: "Her" (every) + "sabah" (morning) + "çay" (tea) + "içeriz" (we drink). Again, you can see the verb base "iç-" followed by the "-er" tense suffix, followed by a personal suffix.
Now let's look at the present continuous tense:
* Onlar uyuyorlar. (They are sleeping.)
The present continuous suffix is "-yor," which loses its initial vowel when the verb base ends in a vowel. But when the verb base ends in a consonant, the suffix begins with a vowel with "i"-type vowel harmony. Then, after the present continuous suffix, a personal suffix is added.
These personal suffixes can also be added to nouns and adjectives functioning with the meaning of subject plus the copula (in particular, in the present tense). For example:
* Ben doktorum. (I'm a doctor.)
* Doktorum. (I'm a doctor, just because the standalone subject pronoun can be dropped.)
* Zenginim. (I'm wealthy.)
"Zengin" means wealthy. When the sentence is negative, there's a negative particle "-değil" and the personal suffixes attached to the end of it:
* Zengin değilim. (I'm not wealthy.)
There's also an auxiliary verb which appears in past tense and conditional. "-idi" doesn't appear in that form, but as one of several derived forms, which are conjugated.
* Zengin idim. (I was wealthy.)
Here you can see that it's not a standalone verb, but its past tense endings are suffixed to an adjective. The past tense of verbs is also formed with the same past tense suffixes.
* Ben Ankara'da yaşadım. (I lived in Ankara.)
Notice that the past tense suffix "-dı" has eight forms depending on consonant mutation and vowel harmony, and it takes one of these personal suffixes.
How about the future tense? It's formed by adding the suffix "-ecek" or "-acak" to the verb base. "-y" is added as a buffer when the verb base ends in a vowel, and vowel harmony determines the vowels of the suffix.
* Biz dükkana gideceğiz. (We will go to the store.)
"Dükkana" is the dative form of the word "dükkan" meaning store. "Gideceğiz" is the first-person plural form of the verb "gitmek" meaning to go in the future tense. Notice that the non-continuous consonant "t" becomes "d" because the future suffix begins with a vowel.
Now that we've had a look at some of the important features of Turkish, let's look at some basic phrases, and we'll probably encounter some new features along the way.
* Merhaba. (Hello.) This comes from Arabic "marhaba." There's also a more informal greeting:
* Selam. (Hi.) Which comes from Arabic "salam."
* Nasılsın? (How are you?) "Nasıl" means how, and "-sın" is the personal suffix meaning "you" (in the singular).
* İyiyim, teşekkür ederim. (I'm fine, thank you.) "İyi" means good or fine, and "-yim" is the first-person singular suffix. In other words, "I am." "Teşekkür" is a noun meaning "thank" or, in colloquial English, "a thank you." It comes from Arabic "tashakkur," the verbal noun of the verb "tashakkara" meaning "to be thankful to someone." Just like in English, how we don't say "thank" but rather "thanks" with an "s," in Turkish, the plural of the noun is used. The more informal way to say thanks is "sağ ol," which literally means "be alive" or "be healthy." "Sağ" means alive or healthy, while "-ol" is the imperative form of the verb "olmak," which means "to become" or "to be."
* What's your name?
* Adınız ne? (Formal singular/plural)
* Adın ne? (Informal singular)
* "Adınız" means name, "-ınız" is the possessive suffix meaning "your" (in the plural, but in this case, the formal singular). "Ne" is a question word meaning "what." To ask this more informally, you would ask: "Adın ne?"
* In response: "Benim adım Hasan." (My name's Hasan.) But of course, change "Hasan" to whatever your name is. "-ım" is the possessive suffix meaning "my." Notice that in both cases, the vowels in the suffixes are in harmony with the unrounded back vowel in the noun.
* Nice to meet you.
* Tanıştığıma memnun oldum.
* "Tanışmak" is the root of the verb "tanışmak," which is used with the meaning of "to meet," but literally means "to know each other." "-tık" is actually a reciprocal suffix. "-ı" is a form of the suffix "-lik," which forms nouns from verbs. In this case, "meeting" or "acquaintance." Here it has "-tı" rather than "-lik" due to consonant assimilation with the "ş" consonant that comes before it. And notice that the consonant mutates and becomes soft ("t" becomes "d") when it's followed by a vowel. "-um" is a first-person singular possessive suffix. So, we can think of this as "my meeting you" or "my acquaintance with you." And "-a" is a dative suffix meaning "for." So, the whole word can be translated as "for my meeting you" or "for my acquaintance with you." It's a rather advanced word to break down, so if you just need to know how to say "nice to meet you," beginners might just want to memorize it.
* Memnun oldum. (I became pleased.)
* "Memnun" is an adjective meaning "pleased" or "grateful." It comes from Arabic "manmun." "-ol" is the first-person singular past tense form of the verb "olmak," which we saw a minute ago. So, this phrase means "I became pleased," but as a result of that change, "I'm pleased" right now. A simpler way to say "nice to meet you" is:
* Memnun oldum. (You can skip that first word that was a little complicated to break down.)
* Where's the train station?
* Tren istasyonu nerede?
* "Tren" is the word for train, that was borrowed from French. "İstasyon" also comes from French. "Nerede" is the question word meaning "where."
Let's go back to this compound noun for a minute. In a compound noun like this, at the end of the second word, there's an "i"-type vowel. This is the third-person singular possessive suffix "-i," meaning "its." So, this is like "the train's station," the station belonging to the train. But notice that there's no definite article in Turkish. In other words, there's no word meaning "the." There isn't exactly an indefinite article either, but the word "bir" (one) is used like an indefinite article. For example:
* Orada bir tren istasyonu var. (There's a train station over there.)
Word for word: "Orada" (there) + "bir" (one) + "tren istasyonu" (train station) + "var" (there is). "Var" is a word that shows existence, like "there is" or "there are." It's also used to express that you have something.
* Bende para var. (I have money.)
Word for word: "Bende" (on me, locative case of the first-person personal pronoun "ben") + "para" (money) + "var" (there is). There's no exact equivalent for the word "have." "I have money" can be expressed in another way too:
* Param var. (Money mine there is.)
Word for word: "Para" (money) + "-m" (my, first-person singular possessive suffix) + "var" (there is). In this sentence, at the end of the noun is the first-person singular possessive suffix. The difference between these two sentences is that this one means "I have money" in general, while this one means "I have money on me right now."
What if there's an explicit subject?
* Annemin parası var. (My mother has money.)
You could translate it as "My mother's her money there is." "Annemin" (my mother's) + "parası" (her money) + "var" (there is). "Anne" means mother, and "-m" is the first-person singular possessive suffix. "-nin" is the genitive case ending. So, this whole word means "my mother's." "Parası" has the third-person singular possessive suffix "-sı" with "s" before it as a buffer because "para" ends in a vowel. So, in this sentence, there's both a genitive suffix on the word for mother and a possessive suffix on the possessed noun. You could translate it as "My mother's her money there is."
The negative version of "var" is "yok":
* Annemin parası yok. (My mother doesn't have money.)
What do you think of Turkish after seeing all of the examples in this video? My impression of Turkish is that at first, it might seem strange for speakers of English and other Indo-European languages because of its extensive agglutination and use of vowel harmony. But those features of Turkish are very systematic, so once you get used to them, they stop feeling so strange.
If you're a native speaker of Turkish, what do you think? Are there some interesting expressions or idioms in your language? Let us know in the comments down below.
And now it's time to give a shout-out to all of the Lang Focus Patreon supporters, especially the ones whose names appear on the screen. They are the top-tier Patreon supporters, so many extra special thanks go out to them. If you liked this video, then also check out the video I made comparing Turkish and Azerbaijani, two languages that are very closely related. I guarantee you'll find it fascinating.