THE TURKISH GRAMMAR
Turkish has 29 letters in its alphabet. Some of these letters / o, u, a, ı / and /
ö, ü, e, i / are vowels (ünlüler), and the others / b, c, ç, d, f, g, ğ, h, j, k, l,
m, n, p, r, s, ş, t, v, y, z / are consonants (ünsüzler).
All the letters above represent phonemes, that is why they are shown be
tween “/ /” signs. Phonemics is not interested in detailed phonetic differ
ences. Some of the vowels / ı, ö, ü / do not exist in English. They are pro
nounced: /ı/ as in English “again”; /ö/ as in German “schön”; and /ü/ as in
German “hütte” respectively.
Among the consonants, there are the / ç, ş, ğ / phonemes, which are pro
nounced as “ch” as in “church”, “sh” as in “fish”; and to produce the /ğ/
phoneme, which does not exist in English, first produce /g/ phoneme, and
make it longer by letting your breath pass between your tongue and the hard
palate of your mouth while vibrating your vocal cords.
THE TURKISH VOWEL AND CONSONANT HARMONY
Turkish is said to be an agglutinative language, which means that suffixes
are attached to word roots or stems one following the other in a sequence to
arrange words. To understand how these suffix chains are arranged, one
should understand the vowel and consonant harmony rules of the Turkish
language before one begins to attach suffixes to roots or stems, and to the
suffixes following them.
THE VOWEL HARMONY SEQUENCE
A Turkish speaker follows two certain harmony chains to produce a vowel
harmony sequence:
1. The hard vowel harmony chain. 2. The thin vowel harmony chain.
1. The hard (back) vowel harmony chain is “o ⟶ u ⟶ a ⇄ ı”
2. The thin (front) vowel harmony chain is “ö ⟶ ü ⟶ e ⇄ i”
In both chains, the first vowels /o/ and /ö/ never repeat themselves. The
other vowels can be repeated as many times as necessary. The arrow (→)
points to the vowel that will follow the previous one. The arrows (⇄), pointing
to both directions, show that /i/ may follow /e/, or /e/ may follow /i/. In the
hard vowel harmony chain, /a/ and /ı/ do the same. Furthermore, besides the
arrows, the letters “r” are put under repeatable vowels to complete our
diagrams:
1. The hard (back) vowel harmony chain: “o ⟶ ur ⟶ ar ⇄ ır”
2. The thin (front) vowel harmony chain: “ö ⟶ ür ⟶ er ⇄ ir”
As one could see, the two diagrams look exactly like one another. All the
words in the Turkish language follow either the first or the second harmony
sequences. The words borrowed from other languages do not follow these
sequences as expected, but the suffixes that attach to them follow thevowels of the last syllables of such words. Consequently, one could build
words in the Turkish language follow either the first or the second harmony
sequences. The words borrowed from other languages do not follow these
sequences as expected, but the suffixes that attach to them follow thevowels of the last syllables of such words. Consequently, one could build
up meaningless chains made up of only vowels following the two vowel
chains:
“o*u*u*a*ı*a*ı”, “o*a*ı*a”, “ü*ü*e*e*i”, “ö*e*i*e”, "ö*ü*ü*ü", "o*a"
For instance:
“kom*şu*ya” (o*u*a); “kom*şu*lar*dan” (o*u*a*a); “ge*le*cek*ler” (e*e*e*e);
“o*luş*tur*duk*la*rı*mız*dan” (o*u*u*u*a*ı*ı*a); “u*nu*ta*lım” (u*u*a*ı);
“o*ku*la” (o*u*a); “ten*ce*re*ye” (e*e*e*e); “ka*ça*ma*ya*cak” (a*a*a*a*a)
One could make up Turkish meaningless vowel chains as many as one
wishes using the above vowel chains. I advise those who are interested in
learning Turkish to make up vowel chains like the chains above, and repeat
them loudly again and again. In doing so, they can memorize the Turkish
vowel harmony sequences easily and soundly as they learn a piece of
music. When they repeat them, they may even feel and sound as if they
were speaking Turkish.
As it has already been stated, borrowed words do not follow the vowel
harmony sequences, but the last syllables of such words are attached to
suffixes in accordance with the vowel and consonant harmony rules:
patates-ler-i (pa*ta*tes*le*ri) “the potatoes”; televizyon-u
(te*le*viz*yo*nu) “the television”; mandalina-/y/ı (man*da*li*
na*yı) “the tangerine”; sigara-/y/ı (si*ga*ra*yı) “the cigarette”.
The /y/ phonemes used above are glides (semivowels) (consonants)
inserted between two vowels to help them to pass the voice from one vowel
to the following one smoothly and harmoniously. They do not carry meaning.
One more thing to add to the explanation above is that the words that are
formed of two separate words do not follow the above vowel harmony se
quences:
kahverengi (kahve + rengi) “brown”; buzdolabı (buz + dolabı) “refrige
rator”; bilgisayar (bilgi + sayar) “computer”; tavanarası (tavan + arası)
“attic”.
Besides the vowel harmony rules above, there are three more essential
vowel rules to consider:
1. The verbs ending with vowels drop these vowels when they attach to the
allomorphs of [İ.YOR]. These vowels are double underlined. Besides the
double underlimed vowels, there are some consonants that are single un-
derlined which show that they detach from their syllables and attach to the
first vowels of the following allomorphs to produce new syllables.
Bekle-i.yor → (bek*li*yor); başla-ı.yor → (baş*lı*yor); anla-ı.yor → (an*lı*yor);
gizle-i.yor → (giz*li*yor); oku-u.yor → (o*ku*yor); atla-ı.yor → (at*lı*yor)
ye-i.yor → (yi*yor); gözle-ü.yor → (göz*lü*yor); gizle-i.yor → (giz*li*yor)
Gel-i.yor-um → (ge*li*yo*rum); yüz-ü.yor-uz → (yü*zü*yo*ruz); iç-er-im →
(i*çe*rim); yaz-a.cak-ım → (ya*za*ca*ğım); yakalan-a.cak-ız → (ya*ka*la*-
na*ca*ğız); gül-er-im → (gü*le*rim); kork-ar-ız → (kor*ka*rız)
2. When the last syllables of the nouns (including the infinitives), the verbs,
and the inflectional morphemes end with vowels, and the first vowels of the
following allomorphs start with the same vowels, these two vowels combine
and are articulated as a single vowel. For example, when the last vowel of
the word “anne” and the first vowel of the allomorph “em” happen to be
articulated together, they combine and are articulated as a single vowel:
“anne-em” → (an*nem):
anne-en (an*nen); tarla-am (tar*lam); araba-an.ız (a*ra*ba*nız);
kafa-an (ka*fan); git-ti-in (git*tin); bekle-di-ik (bek*le*dik); gül-dü-
ük (gül*dük); yakala-dı-ım (ya*ka*la*dım); git-me-em (git*mem);
çalış-ma-am (ça*lış*mam); temizle-en-mek (te*miz*len*mek); Dinle-er
mi-sin? (din*ler / mi*sin); ol-sa-am (ol*sam), bil-se-em (bil*sem)
If the last vowel of a word and the first vowel of an allomorph happen to be
different, these two vowels are generally linked by the /y/ glides:
oku-ma-/y/ız (o*ku*ma*yız); gel-me-/y/iz (gel*me*yiz); tava-/y/a →
(ta*va*ya);
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Article souse :TURKISH GRAMMAR UPDATED ACADEMIC EDITION 2013
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