Language
Turkish is spoken by over 200 million people and is the world’s 7th most widely used language, out of over 4000. Today’s Turkish has evolved from dialects known since the 11th century and is one of the group of languages known as Ural-Altaic which includes Finnish and Hungarian.
It can be quite difficult to get to grips with Turkish. Words sound unfamiliar and even the way they are written may appear strange. Basically, however, it is the Turkish version of the Latin alphabet – the same one which is used for English with the addition of 6 different characters. Turkish is unusual in that it is completely phonetic – each letter of the alphabet has only one sound, so each word sounds exactly how it is written. During Ottoman Empire Turkish was written in Arabic scripts, which few people could read and write. In 1928, Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic decided to switch to the new alphabet to improve levels of literacy. Although English is widely spoken in tourist areas, it will still be appreciated if you make the effort to learn a few phrases.
Turkish extensively uses agglutination to form new words from nouns and verbal stems. The majority of Turkish words originate from the application of derivative suffixes to a relatively small set of core vocabulary.
An example set of words derived from a substantive root:
| Turkish | Components | English | Word class |
|---|---|---|---|
| göz | göz | eye | Noun |
| gözlük | göz + -lük | eyeglasses | Noun |
| gözlükçü | göz + -lük + -çü | optician | Noun |
| gözlükçülük | göz + -lük + -çü + -lük | optician's trade | Noun |
| gözlem | göz + -lem | observation | Noun |
| gözlemci | göz + -lem + -ci | observer | Noun |
| gözle | göz + -le | observe | Verb (order) |
| gözlemek | göz + -le + -mek | to observe | Verb (infinitive) |