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Turkish Lesson | |
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enjoyturkey.com
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Let's learn some Turkish... Generally speaking ; the commonly spoken language in city centers and the west part of the country is English; because of the high number of Germans in the south part, German more common around Antalya. In tourist areas you would not have any difficulty in communicating with people. Even people may speak French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. In case you are traveling in the Black sea or east part of the country, to know some Turkish words would very much help you to communicate. Turkish people are very friendly and warm so they behave very closely and touchy ( ! by the way Turkish man kiss each other, so do not think they are Gay. This shows the closeness between people) . People may wish to have a communication with you, even some do like to show they speak a foreign language or use the possibility of doing some language practice. Do not get anxious if people start to ask questions like " Where are you from ?", "Is it the first time in Turkey ?", "Where do you stay ?" , "What is your name?". This is just the habit of trying to chat... By the way, incase a Turkish person hear a Turkish word from a foreigner they would very much like that. Turkish is a easy language to speak and read. It is written as it is pronounced. Just read the word in your own alphabet (in case it is the Latin one), you would nearly pronounce it perfect . There are several exception letters that you need to take care while speaking: In addition to c,g,i,o,s,u letters there are the "ç"(tche), "ğ"(hh), "ı"(ae), "ö"(?), "ş"(sche), "ü"(?). Also the Turkish alphabet does not have the "x,q and w" letters. There are 29 letters in the Turkish Alphabet: 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 Below you would find some words that might help you during your stay in Turkey....
1: Bir 11:Onbir 100: Yüz 2: İki 20:Yirmi 111:Yüzonbir 3: Üç 25:Yirmibeş 200:ikiyüz 4: Dört 30: Otuz 1000: Bin 5: Beş 40: Kırk 10.000:Onbin 6: Altı 50: Elli 1.000.000:Birmilyon 7: Yedi 60:Atmış 8: Sekiz 70:Yetmiş 9: Dokuz 80:Seksen 10: On 90: Doksan
Sunday...Pazar
The
Time When?...Ne zaman?
While
travelling, in Hotel or in Restaurant...
Airport.....Hava alanı
It is cheap:
Bu ucuz
I like it: Begendim
Pharmacy: Eczane
Shopping center: Carsi
Cash machine: Bankamatik
Bank: Banka
Source : Richard
Chambers / Chicago University Since
1928, Turkish has been written in a slightly modified Latin alphabet
which is very nearly phonetic. The
Turkish alphabet has 8 vowels (A E I İ O Ö U Ü ) and 21 consonants. The letters Q,W and X do not exist in
Turkish. Most letters
are pronounced pretty much as you would expect, but some are not. Once
the phonetic value of all letters is known, then it is rather easy to
pronounce any word one sees or to spell any word one hears.The following
letters require explanation: Aa =
"a" as in "card" or "dark", never as
"a" in"cat" or "back" ( kan = blood ) Cc = "J"
as in "judge" ( can= life, soul, pronounced like
"John" ) Çç = "ch"
as in "church"( çay= tea, pronounced "chay", rhymes
with "buy" ) Ee = "e"
as in "bed" ( ekmek =bread ) Gg = "g"
as in "get" ( gelin =bride ) Ğ ( yumuşak
ge [soft g] Never appears as the first letter in a word; essentially
silent; sometimes lengthens preceding vowel; sometimes pronounced like
"y" in "yet" lı(
undotted "i" ) "u" as in "radium" or
"i" as in "cousin" (ışık =ligth, ırmak = river ) İi( dotted
"i" ) ="i" as in "sit" ( bir = one,
pronounced like "beer" ) Jj = "j"
as in "azure" (garaj = garage, pronounced as in French &
English ) Oo = "o"
as in "fold"(okul =school ) Öö German "ö"
as in "König" or French "eu" as in "peur"(
göl = lake, rhymes with furl) Ss="s"
as in "sing", never pronounced like a "z" as the
"s" in "his"(ses = voice) Şş="sh"as
in "ship" (şey = thing, pronounced "shey" ,
rhymes with "hay") Uu "oo"
as in "boot" (buz = ice, pronounced like "booze") Üü German "ü"
as in "für" or French "u" as in "tu" (gül
= rose) Zz="z"
as in "zoo" (beyaz = white) Turkish belongs to
the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. The earliest Turkic
inscriptions date from the 7th century C.E. and Islamic texts written in
Turkic appear in the 11th century. Turkish, the language of modern
Turkey, is spoken by about 60 million people. Other important Turkic
languages are Azeri (15 million speakers) and Uzbek (14 million speakers).
Turkish formerly used the same alphabet as Arabic, but has been written
in the Latin alphabet since 1928 as mentioned above; since 1940, Azeri
and Uzbek have been written in Cyrillic but efforts are now under way to
replace it with Latin. As an Altaic language, Turkish has virtually nothing in common with English or other
Indo-European languages except for some loan words, usually from French
or English. Turkish grammar is complex, but also quite
regular. Its two most characteristic features
are : (1) vowel harmony (vowels within a word follow certain harmonic
patterns) and (2) agglutination (addition suffixes to words.) Through
this process, astoundingly long word phrases can be encountered. For
example, the following means, "Maybe you are one of those whom we
were not able to Turkify." Türklestiremedikimizlerdensinizdir. Another
interesting feature is that there is no gender in Turkish. The same word
, "o", for example, means "he", "she" and
"it". Turks generally
call each other by their given names. For example, a man whose name is
Ahmet Kuran would be called Ahmet bey ( bey = Mr.), and his wife whose
name is Ayse Kuran would be called Ayşe hanım ( hanim =Ms.). Good friends drop the "bey" and "hanım".
But a letter would be addressed to Bay ve Bayan Ahmet Kuran (Mr. and Mrs...).
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