Turkish Language and Translation
Turkish language belongs to the Altay branch of the Ural Altaic linguistic family just like Finnish and Hungarian languages. Turkish is the westernmost of the Turkic languages spoken across Central Asia and is generally classified as a member of the southwest group also known as the “Oguz” group.The roots of the Turkish language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back to almost 1,300 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish, the precursor of today's Turkish, spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Turkish Republic, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet.
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 can expect, but some are definitely not. After the phonetic value of all letters is well known, it is then very easy to pronounce any word one sees or to spell any word one hears. The following letters require further 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 )
- Ğğ ( 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" (dağ =mountain, pronounced daa , rhymes with the "baa" of "baa baa black sheep"; diğer =other, pronounced diyer )
- 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)
Merhaba: Hello
Nasılsın : How are you?
İyiyim ya sen? : I am fine and you?
Ben de iyiyim : I am fine too
Teşekkürler : Thanks
Teşekkür Ederim : Thank you ( for pronounce say fast “Tea Sugar A Dream” :o)
Çok Teşekkür Ederim : Thank you very much
Görüşürüz : See you
Adın ne?: What is your name?
Tanıştığımıza memnun oldum : Pleased to meet you
Kaç Lira?: How much money?
Lütfen : Please
Hesap Lütfen: Bill Please / May I have the bill please
Güle güle : Bye
Şarap : wine
Kola : Coke
Su : water
Ekmek : Bread
A research conducted worldwide in 2005 has established that Turkish children are the fastest at learning their native language. The results were released at the International Association for the Study of Child Language's 10th congress in Berlin, Germany, where it was indicated that Turkish children could speak their native language by the age of 2 years in a grammatically correct manner. Linguistics Professor Klann Delius noted that The Turkish Language was rather easy to learn. "Suffixes in Turkish that determine person and tense are regular. Using them is like arranging Lego pieces." According to the same research, it takes almost 12 years for Arab speaking children, and 4-5 years for German children to acquire the grammatical mastery in their mother tongue.
In spite of this, Turkish sentences has a very different structure than western languages and thus it’s not easy to learn the language for a new learner.