Merhaba! (Meh-r-huh-bah) — the Turkish language greets us in its freshly put on script! Did you notice how easily you could read this Turkish word? Easier than مرحبا (written in Arabic), won't you agree? Yet, this is exactly what the Turkish "hello" looked like even less than 100 years ago! In fact, before 1928, the language was using a Turkish form of the Arabic script (also known as Ottoman Turkish script) for over 1,000 years!
How does one go about changing a millennium-long habit of writing words using certain characters? Through a reform, of course!
July, 1928. The founding father of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (born as Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa), serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938, creates a Language Commission charged with a task to adapt the Latin script to meet the phonetic requirements of the Turkish language.
Starting 1 December 1928, newspapers, magazines, subtitles in movies, advertisement and signs had to be written with the letters of the new alphabet! All of the newly published books had to be printed in Latin script as of 1 January 1929 as well. What a radical turn of events! Surely, it didn't go unopposed. But those novel characters did seem to accomodate the sounding of Turkish speech better than the Arabic ones did. Additional bonus: they were easier to learn for the population, too (not only for you and me, you know).
Let's get to know the letters a bit closer:
Out of 29 Latin-looking letters of the new Turkish alphabet only 6 will require some getting used to — to their shape or pronunciation: 3 are super easy (ğ — letter with no sound that lengthens any vowel written before it; ç — pronounced as ch in "chip"; ş — pronounced as sh in "ship"), the other 3 (vowels ı (not i, but like the Russian ы if you are familiar with it); ü and ö) will take some training.
The rest of the letters are pronounced just the way they are written and there are no other variations on it depending on their position in a word (yeah, I'm talking about you, English). It is even easier than, say, in Spanish — you just read what you see. As to the stress, in 99% of cases it is on the last syllable.
That is why "Merhaba" is so easy to read!
Grammar-wise, Turkish is not at all complicated, but it will challenge your habit of starting each sentence with a Subject, because normally it will be expected now at the end of the sentence. The way I look at it, just talk like Yoda would. Instead of saying, for example, "I want water" — you go: "Water want I, hmmm..." Ok, no "hmmm" :) But you see the logic!
Two other things to wrap your head around are so called agglutination and vowel harmony. But let's keep that for the next Episode to zoom in on both of these language tricks there. For now, just keep in mind that Turkish is what they call an agglutinative language, which in other words means that some things you'd express in English by using a word, in Turkish are made into suffixes or prefixes that you glue to a needed verb, noun or adjective. The resulted word is like a string of pearls — joining all those beads into one single piece of jewelry. And to do that right you need to check for the vowel harmony, too. But, wait, this is a story for another Episode.
We move on to the tenses!
Turkish tenses are quite straightforward: basically, you get 2 options for each Past, Present or Future tense. In Present you choose between what in English are Simple and Continuous tenses, in Future — between Future Simple and Present Simple (just like it happens sometimes in English). And the two Past tenses are Past Simple and another one that is quite unique to Turkish.
It is called reported (or heard) Past tense. You use it for actions that you haven't witnessed, or have heard from somebody else, or at the very least actions you haven't realized you did. Also this unusual past tense is used to tell about a dream or a made-up story — so, essentially, something that isn't real.
As you can see, the moment Turkish verbs conjugation is knocked out of the park, chaning those verbs by tenses won't be such a struggle for there aren't many exceptions from the rules (yep, another stone in your garden, English). Speaking of, here is the video (3:03) that sums up what I've been talking about, gives you a taste of what the Turkish feels like to a learner and a sample of how it sounds:
Familiar letters that are easy to read, painless and direct grammar, approachable sounds — this peculiar language MUST be a hit around the globe! In Turkic-languages circles, Turkish most certainly is being the most widely spoken one with around 75 to 80 million speakers. The biggest part of that number is inside Turkey, of course, but smaller groups of Turkish speakers exist in the countries like Iraq, Syria, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, North Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. But this does make Turkish the 5th most spoken language in the world!
I never expected to be so drawn to Turkish... before I actually came face to face with it. But if you are on the brink of the decision whether or not to give it a swirl, I'd suggest you do. Because it doesn't only make you look at a whole language concept under a different angle, but the way it works is just a pure blast of fun!
Yes, there are things like building a sentence without any words for conjunctions, but specific suffixies and positioning, or a couple of aspects you'd need to adjust to that work in their own way. Well, then again, what language doesn't have those "tweak" points that you just have to accept and train your brain for? My belief still stands: Turkish is an exciting adventure! The one that for us, as langventurists, has just begun!
Tekrar buluşana kadar!
(Tec-ruh-r boo-loo-shuh-nuh kuh-duh-r!) Until we meet again!
"Unexpected Turkish! Thumbs up if you agree )"
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