what can you tell me about the turkish language?

Question

i recently found the singer Tarkan who is from Turkey. i love the music, but am unfamiliar with the language. when i try to look it up, i find chains of unfamiliar terms. what i really want is to know what languages it has evolved from, what it is similar to, and some characteristics, like vowel sounds and such. any information would be much appreciated. as much as you know in as simple terms as possible please. even links are helpful. thanks so much.
ps. i speak english and know a bit of latin and french if that would help with associations. if you have a bunch of information, or would just prefer, you can message me. thanks

Answer 1

Hi, Turkish is my native language.

I can tell you that Turkish is very unrelated to English and all the Indo-European languages. Syntactically (structurally), it's close to Japanese and Korean. We use the Roman alphabet, we have pretty much the same letters as in English with a few exceptions. The alphabet goes;

A B C Ç D E F G Ğ H I İ J K L M N O Ö P R S Ş T U Ü V Y Z

Turkish is an agglutinative language which means that we have lots of suffixes attached to the words. Example;

You say "on the table"

We say "masada" (masa is table and "da" is the suffix that means "in" here)

Our word order is different from English. We place the verb at the end of the sentence. We can also drop personal pronouns (Turkish is also a pro drop language which means you can drop the pronouns) because we already mark the words with the relevant information. Example;

(Ben) Seni seviyorum.

Ben is the personal pronoun "I" but it's optional as you see. We use the pronouns when we want to emphasize or for merely pragmatic reasons. We can drop it, because the verb seviyorum already gives you the clue that it's the first person speaking.

Here you can have some more information on Turkish;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language

Answer 2

The Turkish language is very beautiful, but can be complex. There are some things that are difficult to translate into English, and some things simply have no translation and can only be explained. For example, when someone coughes, there is nothing to say. But in Turkey, if someone coughs, one says "halal" to that person, much similar to saying "bless you" when someone sneezes (in Turkish when someone sneezes, we say "cok yasa", pronounced "chok yasha".

I'll start with some letters. There are different types of letters in Turkish. Although most are the same as in English, their pronunciation and appearance may differ. All letters that have two different appearances are:

c, g, i, o, s, u --> ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş, ü

The "c" is pronounced like the j in jim, or the j in jump, like a soft g. But a "ç" is pronounced like "ch" as in "chair".

The "g" is pronounced like the a hard g, like the g in "go". And the "ğ" is kind of dfficult to explain. It is kind of like an "ah" sound.

The "i" is pronounced like the i in "independent". The "ı" is written like an "i" without the dot, and sounds like "uh".

The "o" is like the o in "morn". The ö, which looks like an o with two dots above it, is hard to explain..my name has one actually, and no one can pronounce it. The best way I can describe it is "eoh". lol.

The s is pronounced like the s in "spin", and the ş is pronounced like "sh" as in "shop".

And finally, the u is pronounced kind of like the o's in "moon", but with a more "u" sound to it. The ü is hard to explain as well. You can sort of imagine it like the o's in "food" with a British accent.

Sorry for the long lesson. Those were just the letters..so now it should be a little easier for you to perhaps pronounce and say what you want to :) There is much more to the language such as grammar, but I think what I had given should be good. Good luck, and I appreciate your interest in the Turkish languagae and culture, you should visit Turkey one time, it is beautiful ;)

PS -- Tarkan lives in the USA. He has plenty of English songs as well, you should check them out ;)

Answer 3

I recommend that you get a Turkish friend who lives in the city you live.....that is the best way to learn Turkish.