Learn About Turkish
Türkçe • 75 million speakers worldwide
"Merhaba, nasılsın?"
Pronunciation: MEHR-hah-bah, nah-suhl-suhn?
Translation: Hello, how are you?
Speakers
75 million
Language Family
Turkic (Oghuz)
Writing System
Latin script
Official Status
Official language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus
Regions (3 countries)
Modern Turkish evolved from Ottoman Turkish, which used the Arabic script. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk reformed the language and adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928. The language underwent major simplification and standardization.
Agglutinative language - uses suffixes to indicate grammatical functions
Vowel harmony affects suffixes
No grammatical gender
Subject-Object-Verb word order
Rich system of tenses and moods
Istanbul Turkish (standard)
Aegean Turkish
Eastern Anatolian Turkish
Focus on vowel harmony when learning suffixes
Practice pronunciation of special letters (ç, ğ, ş, ü, ö)
Learn common verbs and daily expressions
Immerse with Turkish media for listening skills
Use repetition to remember agglutinative suffixes
Turkish culture emphasizes hospitality and family
Formal vs informal speech (siz vs sen) is important
Cuisine and tea culture are central
Turkish literature and poetry have deep historical roots
Turkish is spoken by over 80 million people worldwide
The language reform in 1928 replaced Arabic script with Latin
Turkish has borrowed words from Arabic, Persian, French, Italian
Vowel harmony is a key feature in grammar