There is a word in linguistics — aGLUtination (see that little GLUey part in there?), which implies a specific way for words to be formed in a language: you guessed it, as if they are glued out of little fragments (called morphemes) to convey something that in English, say, would take several words or even a whole sentence. Turkish is a great "representative" of such a word structure.
Take, for example, this verb: yapmak (to do). If I were to say "I can do", in Turkish I'd have to take the root of the verb (yap-), then glue to it the part (or morpheme) that is equal to English "can" (-abilir-) and then finish it off with the part that esentially tells people who is making that action, in our case "I" (-im). Done! As a result, instead of a sentence of "I can do" I get a word: yapabilirim. If the doer was "you", our word would change into "yapabilirsin".
That is the principle of agglutination! ...With a simple example :) Want a more hardcore one? Watch this:
Using that logic, you can totally take this to the extreme and start creating wildly large words with ...
erm... some sense in them? This Wikipedia article talks about the longest word in the Turkish language and even provides a story in which it is actually used. But, surely, in everyday speech things don't go that far.
Important remark, though: while having fun gluing words parts to each other, keep in mind another trick of the Turkish language — vowel harmony. Previous Episode mentions Turkish alphabet, particullary the fact that it has 8 vowels (I even organized them in groups of two): a — e, ı — i, u — ü, o — ö. Let's here them pronounced in this short video (2:46):
So, as we glue those suffixes and particles to a word due to agglutination process, we need to remember to do it according to the rules of vowel harmony which states that only certain vowels can follow one another. There are 4 rules to follow:
- Only the vowel ı can follow vowels a, ı;
- Only the vowel i can follow vowels e, i;
- Only the vowel u can follow vowels o, u;
- Only the vowel ü can follow vowels ü, ö.
Example? Let's take again the word yapmak (to do). Changing it to "I did" requires us to take its root (yap-), add the suffix of the past tense (-d-) and finish it with the indicator of the person performing the action, in our case "I" (-ım). Result: yapdım. Look how vowels after the tense indicator -d- change for other verbs:
- bilmek (to know): "I knew" — bildim,
- bulmak (to find): "I found" — buldum,
- görmek (to see): "I saw" — gördüm.
Now that's vowel harmony! And it develops in languages (which is not only Turkish, by the way) mainly because of the natural tendency towards a muscular economy and creating harmonious sounds with the less effort. It is really the reason why Turkish rolls off so nicely of the tongue.
The same 4 rules apply when we make plurals, or posessions, or use aspects, or change adjectives, etc. — any time agglutination happens, it must be done "harmoniously" :) There is a handfull of exceptions, but they are minor.
This would be the gist of the Turkish language at work.
It really all boils down to learning how to glue words instead of creating sentences of separate word items. conjugate verbs properly, while talking like Yoda, and doing it all in harmony with vowels.
Now that you know its script that you would recognize anywhere and easily read and are familiar with its main attributes, I believe we can have some fun and see Turkish in action! Excited? Ben de — Mee too!
Görüşürüz! (gyo-ryu-shyu-ryuz!) See you!
"Ilovethisarticle! Iamsure you töö!"
Discover more about Turkish and other languages at langventure.mystrikingly.com!
