Is Turkish Difficult To Learn?

 

Turkish like any other language isn’t hard to learn when following the right learning methods. The Turkish language has its own rules to follow. And as the millions who were able to learn the language, so could you. It won’t happen in a day or two, it will take time as much as you devote to learning it and of course using the right methods. That’s why some people learn it faster than others.

In this post, I will talk about:

1. Things you should know before learning Turkish

2. Steps you need to follow to learn 

Turkish Things you should know before learning Turkish

1. Turkish Has a Different Word Order

While most European languages use the Subject-Verb-Object order, Turkish uses Subject-Object-Verb.

For example, if you want to say “the boy eats an apple” in Turkish, you’ll use this phrase Çocuk bir elma yiyor, and when translating this sentence you will get “the boy an apple eats”.

This might be very confusing at the beginning, but taking the time to learn Turkish in the right way and finding someone to practice the language with, will make you speak right without even thinking of it. 

2. Turkish Is an Agglutinative Language

Turkish is a suffix-based language which means that suffixes are added to the root word to give a different meaning. This is found slightly in English (but not as much as Turkish), for example, take the word “forgive” when adding to it “ness” you will have “forgiveness”. Keep in mind that in Turkish, these suffixes are added to any word and change the meaning of the word (unlike English).

While English is not agglutinative, Turkish is, which means word endings are constantly used to give and change meaning in a word or sentence. English uses small helping words to give and change meaning, while Turkish mostly uses suffixes.

So, what does this look like?

English – “Go to your class.”

Turkish – “Sınıfına git.”

Sınıf (class) – n (your) – a (to) so sınıfına means “to your class” 

Another intimidating example for new learners:

kork (fear)

korkusuz (fearless)

korkusuzlaştir (to make someone fearless)

korkusuzlaştirabilecekrimiz (one who we can make fearless).

And this can go on and on!

This might be very daunting to understand at the beginning, but understanding this pattern and with the right learning method will get a good understanding of Turkish agglutination.

3. Turkish Has Formal and Informal Pronouns

Just like some languages such as French, Turkish uses different pronouns in both formal and informal ways. With a friend or a family member we use “sen / you” and in a formal speech like when speaking with a stranger or your boss we use “siz / you”.

4. Each Letter is spelled in a Turkish Word

In an English word, it is very common to pronounce letters in a different way than what they are written. For example, the Ph in the word “Phrase” is pronounced as “F” and the list goes on. In Turkish, is this not common, every letter in a word is pronounced as it is. Very few exceptional cases are when there is a “Ğ” in a Word. For example, “eğer” is pronounced as “eyer”.

This makes reading and writing in Turkish very easy once you’ve learned the Turkish alphabet. Where every letter corresponds to exactly one sound.

1. Turkish Language Has No Genders

In Turkish, you don’t have to worry about choosing the right pronoun for gender. “He, She, It” has the same pronoun which is “O”, and according to the meaning of the sentence, you will know what pronoun do they mean. Also, in Turkish, the personal pronoun is indicated by the verb ending, which makes personal pronouns unnecessary in a sentence except when wanting to emphasize them.

Example: “O yemek yiyor” is the same as “Yemek yiyor” (which means He, She, or It is eating), as you notice we can simply omit the personal pronoun “O” because the verb ending indicates the personal pronoun meant by the sentence.

2. Vowel Harmony Is Important

To make sure Turkish words sound pleasant when saying them, the Turkish language follows the vowel harmony rule in all of its grammar and this happens according to the ince (soft) vowels and the kalın (heavy) vowels. Vowel harmony makes the pronunciation sound more natural. These endings depend on the vowels in the main word.

Steps you need to follow to learn Turkish

1. Learn the Turkish alphabet

The Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters — 8 vowels and 21 consonants, it uses the same Latin alphabet as English, just with a few exceptions.

2. Master pronunciation 

Turkish pronunciation is not complicated as it is a phonetically written language. Each letter has one sound.

3. Build your vocabulary

Start with the most common Turkish words and phrases that you can use in your daily life. Turkish has loanwords from English, French, Arabic, and other languages.

4. Immerse yourself in Turkish every day

Listen to Turkish music, podcasts, news, and read kid’s books and stories.

Is Turkish difficult to learn? Watch the below video!!